Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person: Improving Outcomes for That Minority of People Who Are the Majority of Clients


Elaine N. Aron - 2010
    Elaine Aron's newest book, Psychotherapy and the Highly Sensitive Person, redefines the term "highly sensitive" for the professional researcher and practitioner. She dispels common misconceptions about the relationship between sensitivity and other personality traits, such as introversion and shyness, and further defines the trait for the benefit of both the clinician and patient. Readers will learn to assess for the trait, distinguish it from clinical diagnoses such as panic disorder or avoidant personality disorder, understand how sensitivity may change the presentation of a problem such as depression or shyness, and generally inform, validate, and improve the quality of life for these clients. She pays particular attention to self-esteem issues and helping patients separate effects of their innate temperament from problems due to their personal learning histories. Dr. Aron keeps both patient and practitioner in mind as she suggests ways to adapt treatment for highly sensitive persons and how to deal with the typical issues that arise. Three appendices provide the HSP Scale, a summary of the extensive research on this innate trait, and its relation to DSM diagnoses. Through this helpful guide, therapists will see a marked improvement in their ability to assist highly sensitive clients.

Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose


Ayala Malach Pines - 1999
    Renowned psychologist Ayala Pines shows us why we fall for the people we do, and argues convincingly that we love neither by chance nor by accident. She offers sound advice for making the right choices when it comes to this complicated emotion. Packed with helpful suggestions for those seeking love and those already in it, this book is about love's many puzzles. The second edition furthers the work of the popular and successful first edition. With expanded research, theory, and practice, this book once again provides one of a kind understandings of the experience of love. The new edition offers updated references to recent research, new chapter exercises, and "case examples" of romantic stories to begin each chapter.

Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia


Julia Kristeva - 1987
    She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart.In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than just strictly a pathology to be treated.

Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others


Marco Iacoboni - 2008
    But until recently, scientists didn’t understand what in the brain makes it possible. This has all changed in the last decade. Marco Iacoboni, a leading neuroscientist whose work has been covered in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, explains the groundbreaking research into mirror neurons, the “smart cells” in our brain that allow us to understand others. From imitation to morality, from learning to addiction, from political affiliations to consumer choices, mirror neurons seem to have properties that are relevant to all these aspects of social cognition. As The New York Times reports: “The discovery is shaking up numerous scientific disciplines, shifting the understanding of culture, empathy, philosophy, language, imitation, autism and psychotherapy.”  Mirroring People is the first book for the general reader on this revolutionary new science.

Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self


Harry Guntrip - 1968
    It includes revised versions of earlier papers, and also much original material.

Childhood and Society


Erik H. Erikson - 1950
    Erikson underlie much of our understanding of human development. His insights into the interdependence of the individuals' growth and historical change, his now-famous concepts of identity, growth, and the life cycle, have changed the way we perceive ourselves and society. Widely read and cited, his works have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.Combining the insights of clinical psychoanalysis with a new approach to cultural anthropology, Childhood and Society deals with the relationships between childhood training and cultural accomplishment, analyzing the infantile and the mature, the modern and the archaic elements in human motivation. It was hailed upon its first publication as "a rare and living combination of European and American thought in the human sciences" (Margaret Mead, The American Scholar). Translated into numerous foreign languages, it has gone on to become a classic in the study of the social significance of childhood.

An Introduction to Jung's Psychology


Frieda Fordham - 1953
    In his personal foreword, he wrote: 'Mrs Frieda Fordham has undertaken the by no means easy task of producing a readable resumé of all my various attempts at a better and more comprehensive understanding of the human psyche. She has delivered a fair and simple account of the main aspects of my psychological work. I am indebted to her for this admirable piece of work.'Originally issued in 1953, this Introduction immediately became the standard first step for those eager to understand the varied work and thought of this remarkable man. Mrs Fordham explains her reason for attempting the work. She wrote: 'Most people have heard of the late C. G. Jung, often linking him vaguely with Sigmund Freud; and although the terms 'complex', 'introvert', and 'extravert' are often used in everyday speech, few realise they were coined by him. Jung’s influence has been far-reaching, touching many of the human sciences, and his ideas have proved of value in such widely differing fields as biology and theology. Many of his writings are technical, and even those of a general nature often appear somewhat obscure, but they contain a core of significance for everyone. This book aims at revealing this core to the reading public in language which is easily comprehensive and yet does not do violence to the subtlety and creative genius of one of the greatest modern psychologists.'

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement


David Brooks - 2011
    Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.This is the story of how success happens. It is told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica—how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail, and succeed. Distilling a vast array of information into these two vividly realized characters, Brooks illustrates a fundamental new understanding of human nature. A scientific revolution has occurred—we have learned more about the human brain in the last thirty years than we had in the previous three thousand. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind—not a dark, vestigial place but a creative and enchanted one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, genetic predispositions, personality traits, and social norms: the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made. The natural habitat of The Social Animal. Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to school; from the “odyssey years” that have come to define young adulthood to the high walls of poverty; from the nature of attachment, love, and commitment, to the nature of effective leadership. He reveals the deeply social aspect of our very minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. Along the way, he demolishes conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on trust and humility.The Social Animal is a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress. Impossible to put down, it is an essential book for our time, one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world.

Freud


Jonathan Lear - 2005
    These include the philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, rationality, the nature of the self and subjectivity, and ethics and religion. He also considers some of the deeper issues and problems Freud engaged with, brilliantly illustrating their philosophical significance: human sexuality, the unconscious, dreams, and the theory of transference.Freud is one of the most important introductions and contributions to understanding this great thinker to have been published for many years, and will be essential reading for anyone in the humanities, social sciences and beyond with an interest in Freud or philosophy.

Tales of Un-Knowing: Therapeutic Encounters from an Existential Perspective


Ernesto Spinelli - 1997
    Yet the dynamic between therapist and client remains an enigma. In Tales of Un-Knowing, Ernesto Spinelli presents eight tales of a therapeutic approach that has proven highly effective in assisting troubled individuals in confronting the problems of everyday life. According to Spinelli, therapy at its most fundamental level involves the act of revealing and reassessing the life stories that clients tell themselves in order to establish or maintain meaning in their lives. The role of the therapist is not only to listen, but to help the client to explicate and reconstruct this life story.Tales of Un-Knowing presents the lives of eight individuals whose experiences illuminate a variety of dilemmas and anxieties that most of us encounter at different points in our lives. We meet a man who refuses to grow old gracefully, a woman who fears that she is only loved for her body, and an octogenarian who lives simultaneously in the present and in the past. We also meet Giles, whose obsessive identification with Einstein led him to theorize about his sex until it became a living mathematics full of enthralling permutations and combinations. In the course of the book Spinelli tackles head on the last great taboo of therapeutic practice--sexual attraction between therapist and client.Existential therapy, then, requires that the therapist experience life through the client's eyes. This frequently leads to challenges to the therapist's own ways of being, and the underlying values, beliefs, and assumptions that maintain them. The term un-knowing refers to the challenge to the therapist, who must force him or herself to remain open to new interpretations of that which is familiar, and to treat the seemingly familiar as novel, unfixed in meaning, and accessible to previously unexamined possibilities.

Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind


Robert Kurzban - 2010
    Why? Hypocrisy is the natural state of the human mind.Robert Kurzban shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's design. The human mind consists of many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection. While these modules sometimes work together seamlessly, they don't always, resulting in impossibly contradictory beliefs, vacillations between patience and impulsiveness, violations of our supposed moral principles, and overinflated views of ourselves.This modular, evolutionary psychological view of the mind undermines deeply held intuitions about ourselves, as well as a range of scientific theories that require a self with consistent beliefs and preferences. Modularity suggests that there is no I. Instead, each of us is a contentious we--a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world.In clear language, full of wit and rich in examples, Kurzban explains the roots and implications of our inconsistent minds, and why it is perfectly natural to believe that everyone else is a hypocrite.

Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood


Edward M. Hallowell - 1992
    Discusses the causes, symptoms, and treatment of attention-deficit Disorder (ADD).

The Psychology of C.G. Jung


Jolande Jacobi - 1942
    Dr Jacobi's synthesis, which Jung applauds in his Foreword, offers the reader a comprehensive review of the central content of his system by a student & colleague who worked closely with him for many years. For this definitive, new edition, Jolande Jacobi has written a new introduction & revised footnotes to refer to the complete works of C.G. Jung. The book also includes the complete bibliography of the many journal articles & books written by Jung during his long productive lifetime. There are eight color plates among the "pictures from the unconscious" & other illustrations which give a better idea of the intrapsychic process than can be conveyed in words.

Born to Win: Transactional Analysis with Gestalt Experiments


Muriel James - 1971
    This bestselling classic uses the well-known psychological method called transactional analysis (TA) to uncover the roles we unconsciously act out day after day. Its fifty gestalt exercises have helped a generation realize how they communicate with others and think about themselves. If you want to have more control over your life, work more efficiently, and love others happily, Born to Win will help bring out the insight and confidence of a born winner."For the general reader [Born to Win] is probably the clearest and most up-to-date statement of the current thinking in transactional analysis, and easily the best of the popular books."--Psychology Today "Enriching, stimulating, rewarding reading is here for anyone interested in understanding himself, his relationship with others, and his goals."--Kansas City Times

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children


Po Bronson - 2008
    In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel?  Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter?  Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?  If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie?  What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?NurtureShock is a groundbreaking collaboration between award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.  They argue that when it comes to children, we've mistaken good intentions for good ideas.  With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, they demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring--because key twists in the science have been overlooked.Nothing like a parenting manual, the authors' work is an insightful exploration of themes and issues that transcend children's (and adults') lives.