Clinical Dicta and Contra Dicta examines the therapy process both from the inside out and the outside in. Over many years of sitting with patients and supervisees, John Espy found that the themes presented in his office had threads of similarities. Are we winsome or loathsome? Do we desire self-knowing or do we seek out more psychically sophisticated ways of self-deception? Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is a psychic pilgrimage that reveals the depths of both our capacity to love and our capacity for hate. Life is not clean and no one gets out unscathed. We are fraught with temptations and unconscious desires to deceive ourselves by engaging in behaviors that undermine our own best self-interests. The best therapy results in an exploration of our illusions of who we imagine ourselves to be confronted by who in fact we are.

Clinical Dicta and Contra Dicta explores these issues both visually and in narrative form. Iconic adages and clinical vignettes are presented as well as a treatise on how serial perpetrators use projective-identification to groom and ultimately ensnare their victims.