Review: Counselling for Toads by Robert de Board

Counselling is quite the adventure for anyone who commits to it, and starting your first counselling journey can be particularly so, at least until you learn what it feels like to be in therapy.

With this in mind, books like Counselling for Toads: A Psychological Adventure can be informative and reassuring.

What’s It About?

This book picks up from the end of Wind In The Willows (yes, the very same!). After the battle at Toad Hall, Toad quietened down a lot. While at first Mole, Ratty, and Badger were relieved to be living the quiet life of the river bank again, they soon realised that something wasn’t right with their friend. Toad seemed to have lost his interest in life. They tried to be there for him, but after doing everything they could think of to help him find his spark again and having little to no luck, they gave up and decided to send him for counselling.

So Which English Countryside Character Is The Therapist?

Why, a heron of course!

Heron is a specialist in transactional analysis. Over the course of the book we watch Toad attend 10 sessions in full. Heron describes some common concepts that Toad can use (and that you can, too), listens when Toad needs to talk, and tracks his progress to make sure he’s getting the best out of his counselling.

This book is a lovely, at-a-distance introduction to the world of counselling, and not too long a read either. It’s written in the same quaint style as Wind In The Willows — although less so during the therapy sessions — and you don’t need to be any more than passingly familiar with WitW to know what’s going on. If you‘re considering having therapy for the first time or are interested in what a transactional analysis therapist would bring to the table, I heartily recommend this book.

Come to think of it, I recommend it if you enjoyed Wind in the Willows.

Credits

Photography by Frank Cone.