About Roberta Russell 

 

 

 Mutual Alliance

Therapy

 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

  
  
 

Please click on the blue hyperlinks for copious details about each topic that interests you, and don't forget to bookmark this site so that you can find your way back. 

   

What the psychotherapy authorities in research and practice have said about this ground-breaking Report on the effectiveness of psychotherapy:  

"The Report is concise, well-written and balanced. Roberta Russell is an excellent expositor and teacher." 
        Jerome Frank, M.D., Johns Hopkins University

 "Roberta Russell has performed an invaluable service to psychotherapists-and to the general public--in updating her classical survey of research in psychotherapy outcomes. Her new material is accurate, fair, and comprehensive. It contains information, controversies and surprises-as does psychotherapy itself."             Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Saybrook Institute

ISBN 0-940106-00-0   #3 R.D. Laing & Me: Lessons in Love 

"R.D. Laing & Me: Lessons in Love is a unique book about power and love--novel verité which unfolds in the form of a "how-to" book. It offers and depicts a way in which one person can be empowered by another's attention in an intimate realm. Borrowing from the psychotherapeutic model, it guides the reader in constructing a mutually beneficial paradigm with a carefully chosen other. It is an intimate reality told and experienced at the same time. The course of discovery unfolds between the authors, Roberta Russell and R.D. Laing, as it happens. The book is "real." You will see how the authors made each other crazy in the process of creating "RD Laing & Me: Lessons in Love," united only by the common goal of doing a "how-to" book together that would be useful to themselves and to you. Both the unfolding of the relationship depicted in this book, and the content discussed are intended to help you to achieve your realistic goals. 
 

To the Reader from the authors: 

"The discerning reader, using the insights of psychoanalysis, will discover the nuances of communication between the authors as they wrestle the obstacles to achieve their goals. In turn, the readers are encouraged to join in this experiment with their own partner, carefully chosen on the basis of conceptual level and mutual intent, and to make of it a vitalizing experience. If you can manage to survive each other’s onslaughts, a well-matched partnership is a lot more fun and more motivating than the lone pursuit of solitary goals into further solitude. We both wish you the best of luck." 
                            RD Laing & Roberta Russell 

The Critics: 
"...fascinating... an intelligent self-help book... reads like a novel."  

Daphne Merkin, ed. The New Yorker,
     National Book Critics Circle Judge  

"A moving account of [Russell's] relationship with R.D. Laing, the doyen of British antipsychiatry, during the 1980s. [It] creatively provoke(s) and appeal(s). ...Recommendable and might even move some in theoretical conflict with Laing to some useful self-reflection." 
Geoff Fisk, M.D.,

    British Journal of Psychiatry 

"An admirable courageous work of love and self-determination, science and romance, bonding in a high-wire act that is all the lovelier for working without a net."          

Andrew Vachss, Author  

"Fascinating..."           Sean Connery 
 

 

Mutual Alliance Therapy is a way of getting strength from understanding and joining with another person in the pursuit of your individual goals. It is based on conclusions drawn from psychotherapy research, but the results will depend on the character and determination of both you and your partner. Individual therapeutic alliances will benefit from the knowledge garnered about their own specific challenges. Many self-imposed limitations can be overcome with the shared interest and support of a trusted ally. This is what the Alliance Therapy Workshop is all about.