Other Lives, Other Selves: A Jungian Psychotherapist Discovers Past Lives


Roger J. Woolger - 1987
    Roger J. Woolger, a graduate of Oxford University and a certified Jungian analyst, reveals an exciting psychotherapeutic technique that produces astoundingly beneficial emotional and physical results--whether you believe in reincarnation as a literal or symbolic phenomenon.Drawing on both Western science and Eastern spirituality, Dr. Woolger shows how patients have unlocked the secrets of their innermost memories--the often self-destructive cycles that are repeated life after life--to overcome the insecurity, depression, guilt, inhibition, family dysfunction, and physical illness that they have inherited from their past lives. A lucid, compelling account of a revolutionary therapeutic technique, Other Lives, Other Selves offers an alternative path to self-improvement and self-enlightenment that addresses the whole person: mind, body, and spirit."An important and powerful book . . . fascinating."--Journal of Regression Therapy

Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness


Anne Harrington - 2019
    She shows how the stalling of early twentieth century efforts in this direction allowed Freudians and social scientists to insist, with some justification, that they had better ways of analyzing and fixing minds.But when the Freudians overreached, they drove psychiatry into a state of crisis that a new “biological revolution” was meant to alleviate. Harrington shows how little that biological revolution had to do with breakthroughs in science, and why the field has fallen into a state of crisis in our own time.Mind Fixers makes clear that psychiatry’s waxing and waning biological enthusiasms have been shaped not just by developments in the clinic and lab, but also by a surprising range of social factors, including immigration, warfare, grassroots activism, and assumptions about race and gender. Government programs designed to empty the state mental hospitals, acrid rivalries between different factions in the field, industry profit mongering, consumerism, and an uncritical media have all contributed to the story as well.In focusing particularly on the search for the biological roots of schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder, Harrington underscores the high human stakes for the millions of people who have sought medical answers for their mental suffering. This is not just a story about doctors and scientists, but about countless ordinary people and their loved ones.A clear-eyed, evenhanded, and yet passionate tour de force, Mind Fixers recounts the past and present struggle to make mental illness a biological problem in order to lay the groundwork for creating a better future, both for those who suffer and for those whose job it is to care for them.

ACT Made Simple: An Easy-to-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy


Russ Harris - 2009
    You are also well-aware of the challenges and frustrations that can present during therapy. If you are looking for ways to optimize your client sessions, consider joining the many thousands of therapists and life coaches worldwide who are learning acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). ACT is not just a proven effective treatment for depression, anxiety, stress, addictions, eating disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and myriad other psychological issues that focuses on mindfulness, client values, and a commitment to change. It's also a revolutionary new way to view the human condition, packed full of exciting new tools, techniques, and strategies for promoting profound behavioral change.A practical and entertaining primer, ideal for ACT newcomers and experienced ACT professionals alike, ACT Made Simple offers clear explanations of the six ACT processes and a set of real-world tips and solutions for rapidly and effectively implementing them in your practice. This book gives you everything you need to start using ACT with your clients for impressive results. Inside, you'll find: scripts, exercises, metaphors, and worksheets to use with your clients; a session-by-session guide to implementing ACT; transcripts from therapy sessions; guidance for creating your own therapeutic techniques and exercises; and practical tips to overcome 'therapy roadblocks.' This book aims to take the complex theory and practice of ACT and make it accessible and enjoyable for both you, the therapist, and your clients.

Play in Family Therapy


Eliana Gil - 1994
    Too good. Clearly, the title struck a chord, because children often seem to dislike family therapy. And who could fault them for it? The fact is that many family therapists either exclude young children or do not know how to involve them actively in family sessions.... "This is where Dr. Gil's new book succeeds so wonderfully. By drawing on her extensive training and experience as both a child therapist and a family therapist, she shows us how to use all family members' capacities for expressive play simultaneously. Never before have we been treated to such a variety of family play techniques that are presented in such vivid clinical detail....Her methods are captivating to read about and described with sufficient depth so that the reader can visualize their application in everyday clinical situations." --From the Foreword by Robert-Jay Green, Ph.D.In Play in Family Therapy, Dr. Eliana Gil provides a hands-on guide to a wealth of play therapy techniques for working with children ages 3 to 12, and shows how to adapt these techniques to conjoint family therapy. Illustrating the inexhaustible potential that play techniques hold for enhancing relatedness, communication, and understanding among families, this essential new volume represents a major step toward merging child and family therapy.Chapters in Part One cover the history of play therapy and the integration of play into family therapy. In Part Two, clinical vignettes illustrate in user-friendly detail the application of such techniques as puppet interviews, art therapy, and story-telling. Dr. Gil covers the presenting problems and family configurations clinicians are likely to encounter when working with children. Throughout, the text describes the problems that may arise--such as family members' reluctance to use play--and shows how to overcome them by setting a positive tone and conveying the expectation that families will find play enjoyable and rewarding.Providing clinicians with useful play techniques with which to expand their repertoire of family interventions, this work will be invaluable to all therapists and students who work with children and their families.

Re-Visioning Psychology


James Hillman - 1975
    This groundbreaking classic explores the necessity of connections between our life and soul and developing the main lines of the soul-making process.

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis


George Makari - 2008
    In a sweeping narrative, George Makari demonstrates how a new way of thinking about inner life coalesced and won followers who spread this body of thought throughout the West. Along the way he introduces the reader to a fascinating array of characters, many of whom have been long ignored or forgotten.Amid great ferment, Sigmund Freud emerged as a creative, interdisciplinary thinker who devised a riveting new theory of the mind that attracted acolytes from the very fields the Viennese doctor had mined for his synthesis. These allies included Eugen Bleuler, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, all of whom eventually broke away and accused the Freudian community of being unscientific. Makari reveals how in the wake of these crises, innovators like Sándor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Melanie Klein, and others reformed psychoanalysis, which began to gain wide acceptance only to be banished from the continent and sent into exile due to the rise of fascism.Groundbreaking, insightful, and compulsively readable, Revolution in Mind goes beyond myth and polemic to give us the story of one of the most controversial intellectual endeavors of the twentieth century.

Beyond Psychology


Otto Rank - 1958
    His ideas stimulated new lines of investigation not only in psychology but also in social science, religion, history, and anthropology. A pupil, colleague, and early follower of Freud (and later one of his chief dissenters), Rank settled in America in 1933 for a "sabbatical leave" devoted to therapy and teaching. Beyond Psychology was his first book in English, and it contains the results of a lifetime of thought and research about man's essential nature.In Beyond Psychology Rank explores the ultimates of human existence — the fear of death, the desire for immortality, the nature of sexuality, the basis of personality, the nature of social organization, the need for love, the meaning of creativity. He notes the failure of rational ideologies to cope with the instability in our social order, the lack of generally accepted ideals, the hostility, fear, and guilt that seem to characterize our civilization. Rank seeks to understand the basic human problems not by a rejection of irrationality but by an acceptance of it as an inevitable fact of human existence.After a detailed critique of rational psychologies, he examines the myth of The Double in legend and literature in order to investigate the development of the ideal of the Soul, and he traces the reflection of man's fear of final destruction in social organizations, ideologies, concepts of personality, sexual roles, and religion. Among the subjects investigated in this searching analysis are kingship and magic participation, the institution of marriage, power and the state, Messianism, the doctrine of rebirth, the two kinds of love (Agape and Eros), the creation of the sexual self, feminine psychology and masculine ideology, and psychology beyond the self.

I'm OK - You're OK


Thomas A. Harris - 1967
    “Happy childhood” notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the not ok feelings of a defenseless child wholly dependent on ok others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a “position” about ourselves which very significantly determines how we feel about ourselves, particularly in relation to other people. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is that I’m Not OK-You’re OK. This negative Life Position, shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational adult potential, leaving us vulnerable to the inappropriate, emotional reactions of our child and the uncritically learned behavior programmed into our parent. By exploring the four basic “life positions,” we can radically change our lives.

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand


Megan Devine - 2017
    Having experienced grief from both sides—as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner—Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, "happy" life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it. On this unabridged audio recording read by the author, Megan offers stories, research, life tips, and creative and mindfulness-based practices to guide us through an experience we all must face. With Megan’s gentle but direct guidance, you’ll learn: • Why well-meaning advice, therapy, and spiritual wisdom so often end up making it harder for people in grief • How challenging the myths of grief—doing away with stages, timetables, and unrealistic ideals about how grief should unfold—allows us to accept it as a mystery to be honored instead of a problem to solve • Practical guidance for managing stress, improving sleep, and decreasing anxiety without trying to "fix" your pain Many people who have suffered a loss feel judged, dismissed, and misunderstood by a culture that wants to "solve" grief. Megan writes, "Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution." It’s OK That You’re Not OK is a book for grieving people, those who love them, and all those seeking to love themselves—and each other—better.

Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy


Dave Mearns - 2005
    Focusing on the concept of 'relational depth', authors Dave Mearns and Mick Cooper describe a form of encounter in which therapist and client experience profound feelings of contact and engagement with each other and in which the client has an opportunity to explore whatever is experienced as most fundamental to her or his existence.

Living with limerence: A guide for the smitten


Dr. L. - 2020
    

The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples


John M. Gottman - 2011
    In this groundbreaking book, he presents a new approach to understanding and changing couples: a fundamental social skill called “emotional attunement,” which describes a couple’s ability to fully process and move on from negative emotional events, ultimately creating a stronger relationship.Gottman draws from this longitudinal research and theory to show how emotional attunement can downregulate negative affect, help couples focus on positive traits and memories, and even help prevent domestic violence. He offers a detailed intervention devised to cultivate attunement, thereby helping couples connect, respect, and show affection. Emotional attunement is extended to tackle the subjects of flooding, the story we tell ourselves about our relationship, conflict, personality, changing relationships, and gender. Gottman also explains how to create emotional attunement when it is missing, to lay a foundation that will carry the relationship through difficult times.Gottman encourages couples to cultivate attunement through awareness, tolerance, understanding, non-defensive listening, and empathy. These qualities, he argues, inspire confidence in couples, and the sense that despite the inevitable struggles, the relationship is enduring and resilient.This book, an essential follow-up to his 1999 The Marriage Clinic, offers therapists, students, and researchers detailed intervention for working with couples, and offers couples a roadmap to a stronger future together.

The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships


Harriet Lerner - 1985
    Harriet Lerner, in her renowned classic that has transformed the lives of millions of readers. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence our anger, to deny it entirely, or to vent it in a way that leaves us feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches women to identify the true sources of our anger and to use anger as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.

Becoming a Therapist: What Do I Say, and Why?


Suzanne Bender - 2002
    Suzanne Bender, at the time a junior clinician, and Edward Messner, a seasoned practitioner and supervisor, provide a unique, combined perspective on how therapy is conducted, what works and what doesn't work in treatment, and how to take care of oneself as a clinician. Organized around the treatment of one fictitious patient, with other case examples brought in as needed, the book speaks directly to the questions, concerns, and insecurities that beginning therapists typically face. Written with candor and empathy, it offers authoritative guidance for understanding and resolving common clinical dilemmas.

Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy And Its Dilemmas: Five Stories Of Psychotherapy


Deborah Anna Luepnitz - 2002
    Each generation of therapists can boast of only a few writers like Deborah Luepnitz, whose sympathy and wit shine in her fine, luminous prose. In Schopenhauer's Porcupines, she recounts five true stories from her practice, stories of patients who range from the super-rich to the destitute, who grapple with panic attacks, psychosomatic illness, marital despair, and sexual recklessness. Intimate, original, and triumphantly funny, Schopenhauer's Porcupines goes further than any other book in illuminating "how talking helps."