But until now, without compelling evidence, it has been impossible to say for sure that such a connection really exists and especially how it works.Now, that evidence has been discovered.A thrilling scientific detective story, The Balance Within tells how researchers finally uncovered the elusive mind-body connection and what it means for our health. In this beautifully written book, Dr. Esther Sternberg, whose discoveries were pivotal in helping to solve this mystery, provides first hand accounts of the breakthrough experiments that revealed the physical mechanisms - the nerves, cells, and hormones - used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. She describes just how stress can make us more susceptible to all types of illnesses, and how the immune system can alter our moods. Finally, she explains how our understanding of these connections in scientific terms is helping to answer such crucial questions as "Does stress make you sick?" "Is a positive outlook the key to better health?" and "How do our personal relationships, work, and other aspects of our lives affect our health?"A fascinating, elegantly written portrait of this rapidly emerging field with enormous potential for finding new ways to treat disease and cope with stress, The Balance Within is essential reading for anyone interested in making their body and mind whole again.

    This book has been replaced by Internal Family Systems Therapy, Second Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-4146-1.

    As he did in his hard-hitting and widely read New York Times Magazine article "Dr. Drug Rep," and as he continues to do in his popular watchdog newsletter, The Carlat Psychiatry Report, he writes with bracing honesty about how psychiatry has so largely forsaken the practice of talk therapy for the seductive—and more lucrative—practice of simply prescribing drugs, with a host of deeply troubling consequences. Psychiatrists have settled for treating symptoms rather than causes, embracing the apparent medical rigor of DSM diagnoses and prescription in place of learning the more challenging craft of therapeutic counseling, gaining only limited understanding of their patients’ lives. Talk therapy takes time, whereas the fifteen-minute "med check" allows for more patients and more insurance company reimbursement. Yet DSM diagnoses, he shows, are premised on a good deal less science than we would think. Writing from an insider’s perspective, with refreshing forthrightness about his own daily struggles as a practitioner, Dr. Carlat shares a wealth of stories from his own practice and those of others that demonstrate the glaring shortcomings of the standard fifteen-minute patient visit. He also reveals the dangers of rampant diagnoses of bipolar disorder, ADHD, and other "popular" psychiatric disorders, and exposes the risks of the cocktails of medications so many patients are put on. Especially disturbing are the terrible consequences of overprescription of drugs to children of ever younger ages. Taking us on a tour of the world of pharmaceutical marketing, he also reveals the inner workings of collusion between psychiatrists and drug companies. Concluding with a road map for exactly how the profession should be reformed, Unhinged is vital reading for all those in treatment or considering it, as well as a stirring call to action for the large community of psychiatrists themselves. As physicians and drug companies continue to work together in disquieting and harmful ways, and as diagnoses—and misdiagnoses—of mental disorders skyrocket, it’s essential that Dr. Carlat’s bold call for reform is heeded.

    They track the clients' associations, fantasies, and signs of psychic conflict, distress, and defenses. Yet while the majority of therapists are trained to notice the appearance and even the movements of the client's body, thoughtful engagement with the client's embodied experience has remained peripheral to traditional therapeutic interventions. Trauma and the Body is a detailed review of research in neuroscience, trauma, dissociation, and attachment theory that points to the need for an integrative mind-body approach to trauma. The premise of this book is that, by adding body-oriented interventions to their repertoire, traditionally trained therapists can increase the depth and efficacy of their clinical work. Sensorimotor psychotherapy is an approach that builds on traditional psychotherapeutic understanding but includes the body as central in the therapeutic field of awareness, using observational skills, theories, and interventions not usually practiced in psychodynamic psychotherapy. By synthesizing bottom-up and top down interventions, the authors combine the best of both worlds to help chronically traumatized clients find resolution and meaning in their lives and develop a new, somatically integrated sense of self.Topics addressed include: Cognitive, emotional, and sensorimotor dimensions of information processing • modulating arousal • dyadic regulation and the body • the orienting response • defensive subsystems • adaptation and action systems • treatment principles • skills for working with the body in present time • developing somatic resources for stabilization • processing

    Since its first publication, Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired has offered hope and coping strategies to thousands of people who suffer from ICI. Paul Donoghue and Mary Siegel teach their readers how to rethink how they themselves view their illness and how to communicate with loved ones and doctors in a way that meets their needs. The authors' understanding makes readers feel they have been heard for the first time. For this edition, the authors include a new introduction drawing on the experiences of the many people who have responded to the book and to their lectures and television appearances. They expand the definition of ICI to include other ailments such as depression, addiction, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. They bring the resource material, including Web sites, up to the present, and they offer fresh insights on four topics that often emerge: guilt, how ICI affects the family, meaningfulness, and defining acceptance.

    In recent decades, however, we have seen the rise of a therapeutic ethic that views Americans as emotionally underdeveloped, psychically frail, and requiring the ministrations of mental health professionals. Today---with a book for every ailment, a lawsuit for every grievance and a TV show for every conceivable problem---we are at risk of degrading our native ability to cope with life's challenges.Drawing on established science and common sense, Christina Sommers and Dr. Sally Satel reveal how therapism and the burgeoning trauma industry have come to pervade our lives, with a host of troubling consequences, including:*The myth of stressed-out, homework-burdened, hyper-competitive, and depressed schoolchildren in need of therapy and medication*The loss of moral bearings in our approach to lying, crime, and addiction*The unasked-for grief counselors who descend on bereaved families, schools, and communities following a tragedyIntelligent, provocative, and wryly amusing, One Nation Under Therapy demonstrates that talking about problems is no substitute for confronting them.

    In additional chapters, the author focuses on major issues such as starting the therapy, the use of interventions, goals and therapeutic action, ways to work with resistance, countertransference, the use of fantasies and dreams, and termination of therapy. The last two chapters cover the optimal use of supervision and how to measure core competency achievement.Though written with the psychiatric resident in mind, this remarkably practical text will appeal to a broad audience of trainees in fields such as psychology, social work, counseling, and nursing. It will also be welcomed by educators and students alike as an invaluable teaching tool that can be "put to work" right away as a powerful adjunct to supervision, classroom teaching, and clinical experience with a variety of patients.

    Erickson's theories in practice, through a series of case studies covering the kinds of problems that are likely to occur at various stages of the human life cycle. The results Dr. Erickson achieves sometimes seem to border on the miraculous, but they are brought about by a finely honed technique used by a wise, intuitive, highly trained psychiatrist-hypnotist whose work is recognized as a major contribution to the field.

    All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic.

    That, combined with her keen writing abilities has made her Beliefnet blog, Beyond Blue, one of the most trafficked blogs on the site.BEYOND BLUE, the book, is part memoir/part self-help. It describes Borchard's experience of living with manic depression as well as providing cutting-edge research and information on dealing with mood disorders. By exposing her vulnerability, she endears herself immediately to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone.Comprised of four sections and twenty-one chapters, BEYOND BLUE covers a wide range of topics from codependency to addiction, poor body image to postpartum depression, from alternative medicine to psychopharmacology, managing anxiety to applying lessons from therapy. Because of her laser wit and Erma Bombeck sense of humor, every chapter is entertaining as well as serious.

    In Scared Sick, Robin Karr-Morse connects psychology, neurobiology, endocrinology, immunology, and genetics to demonstrate how chronic fear in infancy and early childhood -- when we are most helpless -- lies at the root of common diseases in adulthood. Compassionate and based on the latest research, Scared Sick will unveil a major public health crisis. Highlighting case studies and cutting-edge scientific findings, Karr- Morse shows how our innate fight-or-flight system can injure us if overworked in the early stages of life. Persistent stress can trigger diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression, and addiction later on.

    By 2000, that number jumped to 7 percent, and in 2014 the number rose to an alarming 11 percent. To combat the disorder, two thirds of these children, some as young as three years old, are prescribed powerful stimulant drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to help them cope with symptoms. Meanwhile, ADHD rates have remained relatively low in other countries such as France, Finland, and the United Kingdom, and Japan, where the number of children diagnosed with and medicated for ADHD is a measly 1 percent or less. Alarmed by this trend, family therapist Marilyn Wedge set out to understand how ADHD became an American epidemic. If ADHD were a true biological disorder of the brain, why was the rate of diagnosis so much higher in America than it was abroad? Was a child's inattention or hyperactivity indicative of a genetic defect, or was it merely the expression of normal behavior or a reaction to stress? Most important, were there alternative treatments that could help children thrive without resorting to powerful prescription drugs? In an effort to answer these questions, Wedge published an article in Psychology Today entitled "Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD" in which she argued that different approaches to therapy, parenting, diet, and education may explain why rates of ADHD are so much lower in other countries.In A Disease Called Childhood, Wedge examines how myriad factors have come together, resulting in a generation addictied to stimulant drugs, and a medical system that encourages diagnosis instead of seeking other solutions. Writing with empathy and dogged determination to help parents and children struggling with an ADHD diagnosis, Wedge draws on her decades of experience, as well as up-to-date research, to offer a new perspective on ADHD. Instead of focusing only on treating symptoms, she looks at the various potential causes of hyperactivity and inattention in children and examines behavioral and environmental, as opposed to strictly biological, treatments that have been proven to help. In the process, Wedge offers parents, teachers, doctors, and therapists a new paradigm for child mental health--and a better, happier, and less medicated future for American children

    Jeffrey Kottler and Jon Carlson, who include their own therapy mishaps, interview twenty of the world's most famous practitioners who discuss their mistakes, misjudgements, and miscalculations on working with clients. Told through narratives, the failures are related with candor to expose the human side of leading therapists. Each therapist shares with regrets, what they learned from the experience, what others can learn from their mistakes, and the benefits of speaking openly about bad therapy.

    As her son and as an experienced psychotherapist I discovered the secret who Alice Miller really was. My mother always cared that nothing of her private life got public. She created a fictional character in her books and in mine she gets a real person, a man of flesh and blood. It’s also my history because I describe, how it is when you are faced, as a child and in second generation, with the not coped post-war trauma of your parents. Alice Miller created a mother image in her books she never complied. My book shows what happens when you do not overcome your traumas and you pass them on the next generation. The book is also a concrete application of Alice Miller’s theory. It shows how you can overcome the terrible legacy of your parents in a therapeutical way. I can release myself of the filial involvement with my parents by having elaborated my own biography.

    With literary finesse, compassion, and a powerful gift of storytelling, Marie Williams writes poignantly of her husband Dominic’s struggles with early onset dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the age of 40, and how their family found hope amidst the wreckage of a mysterious neurological condition.  As the condition develops and progresses, the normally devoted family man and loving partner seems to disappear beneath an expressionless facade, erratic behavior, and a relentless desire to wander that often leaves him lost. The road to diagnosis is long and confusing, and what starts off as perplexing for the family then becomes frightening. The man they love is changing, and no one seems to know why. He no longer turns up to his sons’ high school events. He falls and bumps into things. He becomes verbally disinhibited, emotionally disengaged, and, at times, belligerent. He doesn’t seem to be able to read the social cues of other people. He gets lost in familiar places, as well as on obsessive work trips overseas. He recklessly spends the family money, leaving them in near financial ruin. Despite this, Williams and her children strive to find new ways to keep him safe and to connect with the husband and father they love so dearly.   While the family learns to cope with Dominic’s illness—which they call the Green Goblin—Williams is determined that her children reclaim the dad of their memories. She finds creative ways to make visible the stories of the man beyond the illness, and helps them remember him as the engaged, healthy, and loving man she fell in love with. She humanizes the experience through storytelling and assembling a quilt made up of transferred photographs, painted artwork, family footprints, and personal inscriptions from family and friends. This, along with tea rituals, music, and stories of fatherhood, love and value, support them as fierce advocates for Dominic’s dignity and give the family new ways to be together as they journey through his decline. Spanning between moments of intense joy and incredible sadness, this book is a passionate testament to one family’s unconditional love for one another. It is, “a tale of a strange place—the real world— in which green goblins and hope find a way to live together.”   Above all, it is a love story.