Entwined Selves
Entwined Selves: Relational Encounter in Psychotherapy begins where Philosophical Foundations leaves off. If we are fundamentally relational beings, what does that actually mean when two people meet in psychotherapy?
Co-authored with Niall Keane, the book brings philosophical hermeneutics into close conversation with the lived experience of therapeutic encounter. Rather than treating therapy as something one person does to another, it explores what emerges between therapist and client — through language and embodiment, but also through silence, uncertainty, misunderstanding, vulnerability and moments of connection.
The therapist cannot stand outside this encounter as a detached observer. Both people bring histories, expectations and ways of understanding that shape what becomes possible between them. Understanding is not something we possess before the encounter; it is something that can emerge through it.
This shifts attention away from psychotherapy as the application of theory, technique or a set of predetermined outcomes. Instead, therapy becomes an experiential encounter: the difficult and sometimes fragile practice of remaining present with another person in the world being lived.
Endorsements
“There are many books that engage philosophically with psychotherapy, but few that are as well grounded, as clearly written, or as convincingly argued as Keane and Costello’s Entwined Selves.”
Jeff Malpas
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of Tasmania
“This book offers tremendous insight into the way it relates the phenomenological hermeneutics of understanding to the experiential encounter in psychotherapy.”
James Risser
Professor Emeritus in Philosophy, Seattle University
“Clearly written and persuasively honest, Keane and Costello sensitively capture our mutual vulnerability within a shared relational field, as shown in silences, uncertainties, missteps, and hesitant yet precious moments of connection.”
Linda Finlay
Integrative Psychotherapist and Academic Consultant
Related writing
The ideas developed in Entwined Selves continue in a series of papers exploring relational encounter, therapeutic meaning and the limits of individual understanding.
Costello, J. & Keane, N. When Reflection Is Not Enough: Rogers' Conditions and the Discipline of Therapeutic Encounter. Accepted for publication, Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies.
Costello, J. & Keane, N. When Structural Intelligibility Is Not Enough: From Existential Analysis to Hermeneutic Encounter in the Case of Ellen West. Under review.
A Return to Radical Relationality
Therapy Today, March 2026, 37(2), 70–72
An exploration of the relational ground from which Entwined Selves develops — moving from radical relationality as a philosophical position towards the lived encounter between therapist and client. Read the article →