"Bold and often brilliant.”—Science "It is no exaggeration to state that Szasz's work raises major social issues which deserve the attention of policy makers and indeed of all informed and socially conscious Americans...Quite probably he has done more than any other man to alert the American public to the potential dangers of an excessively psychiatrized society.”—Edwin M. Schur, Atlantic

    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.

    This volume examines the common factors underlying effective psychotherapy and brings the psychotherapist and the client-therapist relationship back into focus as key determinants of psychotherapy outcome. The second edition of The Heart and Soul of Change also demonstrates the power of systematic client feedback to improve effectiveness and efficiency and legitimize psychotherapy services to third party payers. In this way, psychotherapy is implemented one person at a time, based on that unique individual's perceptions of the progress and fit of the therapy and therapist. Readers familiar with the first edition will encounter the same pragmatic focus but with a larger breadth of coverage - this edition adds chapters on both youth psychotherapy and substance abuse treatment.

     Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a new, scientifically based psychotherapy that takes a fresh look at why we suffer and even what it means to be mentally healthy. What if pain were a normal, unavoidable part of the human condition, but avoiding or trying to control painful experience were the cause of suffering and long-term problems that can devastate your quality of life? The ACT process hinges on this distinction between pain and suffering. As you work through this book, you’ll learn to let go of your struggle against pain, assess your values, and then commit to acting in ways that further those values.ACT is not about fighting your pain; it’s about developing a willingness to embrace every experience life has to offer. It’s not about resisting your emotions; it’s about feeling them completely and yet not turning your choices over to them. ACT offers you a path out of suffering by helping you choose to live your life based on what matters to you most. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, or problem anger, this book can help—clinical trials suggest that ACT is very effective for a whole range of psychological problems. But this is more than a self-help book for a specific complaint—it is a revolutionary approach to living a richer and more rewarding life.Learn why the very nature of human language can cause suffering Escape the trap of avoidance Foster willingness to accept painful experience Practice mindfulness skills to achieve presence in the moment Discover the things you really value most Commit to living a vital, meaningful life This book has been awarded The Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies Self-Help Seal of Merit — an award bestowed on outstanding self-help books that are consistent with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) principles and that incorporate scientifically tested strategies for overcoming mental health difficulties. Used alone or in conjunction with therapy, our books offer powerful tools readers can use to jump-start changes in their lives.

    You'll get more of the answers you need to recognize abuse when it happens, respond to abusers safely and appropriately, and most important, lead a happier, healthier life.In two all-new chapters, Evans reveals the Outside Stresses driving the rise in verbal abuse--and shows you how you can mitigate the devastating effects on your relationships. She also outlines the Levels of Abuse that characterize this kind of behavior--from subtle, insidious put-downs that can erode your self-esteem to full-out tantrums of name-calling, screaming, and threatening that can escalate into physical abuse.Drawing from hundreds of real situations suffered by real people just like you, Evans offers strategies, sample scripts, and action plans designed to help you deal with the abuse--and the abuser.This timely new edition of The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Third Edition puts you on the road to recognizing and responding to verbal abuse, one crucial step at a time!

    At the same time, trauma remains a fact of life: the majority of us will experience a traumatic event in our lifetime, and up to 20% of us will develop posttraumatic stress. This means that anywhere mindfulness is being practiced, someone in the room is likely to be struggling with trauma.At first glance, this appears to be a good thing: trauma creates stress, and mindfulness is a proven tool for reducing it. But the reality is not so simple.Drawing on a decade of research and clinical experience, psychotherapist and educator David Treleaven shows that mindfulness meditation—practiced without an awareness of trauma—can exacerbate symptoms of traumatic stress. Instructed to pay close, sustained attention to their inner world, survivors can experience flashbacks, dissociation, and even retraumatization.This raises a crucial question for mindfulness teachers, trauma professionals, and survivors everywhere: How can we minimize the potential dangers of mindfulness for survivors while leveraging its powerful benefits?Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness offers answers to this question. Part I provides an insightful and concise review of the histories of mindfulness and trauma, including the way modern neuroscience is shaping our understanding of both. Through grounded scholarship and wide-ranging case examples, Treleaven illustrates the ways mindfulness can help—or hinder—trauma recovery.Part II distills these insights into five key principles for trauma-sensitive mindfulness. Covering the role of attention, arousal, relationship, dissociation, and social context within trauma-informed practice, Treleaven offers 36 specific modifications designed to support survivors’ safety and stability. The result is a groundbreaking and practical approach that empowers those looking to practice mindfulness in a safe, transformative way.

    The ways in which we understand and share the stories of our lives therefore make all the difference. If we tell stories that emphasize only desolation, then we become weaker. If we tell our stories in ways that make us stronger, we can soothe our losses and ease our sorrows. Learning how to re-envision the stories we tell about ourselves can make an enormous difference in the ways we live our lives. Drawing on wisdoms from the field of narrative therapy, this book is designed to help people rewrite and retell the stories of their lives.The book invites readers to take a new look at their own stories and to find significance in events often neglected, to find sparkling actions that are often discounted, and to find solutions to problems and predicaments in unexpected places. Readers are introduced to key ideas of narrative practice like the externalizing problems - 'the person is not the problem, the problem is the problem' -and the concept of "re-membering" one's life. Easy-to-understand examples and exercises demonstrate how these ideas have helped many people overcome intense hardship and will help readers make these techniques their own. The book also outlines practical strategies for reclaiming and celebrating one's experience in the face of specific challenges such as trauma, abuse, personal failure, grief, and aging. Filled with relatable examples, useful exercises, and informative illustrations, Retelling the Stories of Our Lives leads readers on a path to reclaim their past and re-envision their future.

    From our earliest years, we develop an attachment style that follows us through life, replaying in our daily emotional landscape, our relationships, and how we feel about ourselves. And in the wake of a traumatic event—such as a car accident, severe illness, loss of a loved one, or experience of abuse—that attachment style can deeply influence what happens next. In The Power of Attachment, Dr. Diane Poole Heller, a pioneer in attachment theory and trauma resolution, shows how overwhelming experiences can disrupt our most important connections— with the parts of ourselves within, with the physical world around us, and with others. The good news is that we can restore and reconnect at all levels, regardless of our past. Here, you’ll learn key insights and practices to help you: • Restore the broken connections caused by trauma • Get embodied and grounded in your body • Integrate the parts of yourself that feel wounded and fragmented • Emerge from grief, fear, and powerlessness to regain strength, joy, and resiliency • Reclaim access to your inner resources and spiritual nature "We are fundamentally designed to heal," teaches Dr. Heller. "Even if our childhood is less than ideal, our secure attachment system is biologically programmed in us, and our job is to simply find out what’s interfering with it—and learn what we can do to make those secure tendencies more dominant." With expertise drawn from Dr. Heller’s research, clinical work, and training programs, this book invites you to begin that journey back to wholeness.

    It is now the third leading cause of death for fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds in the United States, raising alarms across the nation about the rising tide of hopelessness seen in our young people. It is a taboo subtext to our successes and our happiness, a dark issue that is often euphemized, avoided, and little understood. In our century, psychology and psychiatry alike have attempted to understand, prevent, and medicalize these phenomena. But they have failed, argues Dr. Edwin Shneidman, because they have lost sight of the plain language, the ordinary everyday words, the pain and frustrated psychological needs of the suicidal individual.In The Suicidal Mind, Dr. Shneidman has written a groundbreaking work for every person who has ever thought about suicide or knows anybody who has contemplated it. The book brims with insight into the suicidal impulse and with helpful suggestions on how to counteract it. Shneidman presents a bold and simple premise: the main cause of suicide is psychological pain or "psychache." Thus the key to preventing suicide is not so much the study of the structure of the brain, or the study of social statistics, or the study of mental diseases, as it is the direct study of human emotions. To treat a suicidal individual, we need to identify, address, and reduce the individual's psychache. Shneidman shares with the reader his knowledge, both as a clinician and researcher, of the psychological drama that plays itself out in the suicidal mind through the exploration of three moving case studies. We meet Ariel, who set herself on fire; Beatrice, who cut herself with the intent to die; and Castro, a young man who meant to shoot his brains out but survived, horribly disfigured. These cases are presented in the person's own words to reveal the details of the suicidal drama, to show that the purpose of suicide is to seek a solution, to illustrate the pain at the core of suicide, and to isolate the common stressor in suicide: frustrated psychological needs. Throughout, Shneidman offers practical, explicit maneuvers to assist in treating a suicidal individual—steps that can be taken by concerned friends or family and professionals alike.Suicide is an exclusively human response to extreme psychological pain, a lonely and desperate solution for the sufferer who can no longer see any alternatives. In this landmark and elegantly written book, Shneidman provides the language, not only for understanding the suicidal mind, but for understanding ourselves. Anyone who has ever considered suicide, or knows someone who has, will find here a wealth of insights to help understand and to prevent suicide.

    Because the information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious. During dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.

    They found it too difficult or too frightening or just decided that for them it was too late. But as a therapist and trauma survivor herself, Dr. Schmelzer wants us to know that it is never too late to heal from trauma, whether it is the suffering caused within an abusive relationship or PTSD resulting from combat. Sometimes what feels like a big setback is actually an unexpected difficult step forward. So she wrote Journey Through Trauma specifically for survivors--to help them understand the terrain of the healing process and stay on the path. There are three basic principles that every trauma survivor should know: Healing is possible. It requires courage. And it cannot be done alone. Traumas that happen more than once--child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, gang violence, even war--are all relational traumas. They happened inside a relationship and therefore must be healed inside a relationship, whether that relationship is with a therapist or within a group. Journey Through Trauma gives us a map to help guide us through that healing process, see where the hard parts show up, and persevere in the process of getting well. We learn the five phases that every survivor must negotiate along the way and come to understand that since the cycle of healing is not linear, circling back around to a previous stage does not mean defeat - it actually means progress as well as facing new challenges. Authoritative and accessible, Journey Through Trauma provides support for survivors and their loved ones through one of the most challenging but necessary processes of healing that anyone can face.

    Hakomi work incorporates the idea of respect for the wisdom of each individual as a living organic system, organizing matter and energy to maintain its goals, and identity. It is written with clarity, humor and simplicity; sure to inspire and give insight to both therapists and laypersons.

    But why does it work? And why does it matter that we understand how it works?In Why Therapy Works, Louis Cozolino explains the mechanisms of psychotherapeutic change from the bottom up, beginning with the brain, and how brains have evolved—especially how brains evolved to learn, unlearn, and relearn, which is at the basis of lasting psychological change.Readers will learn why therapists have to look beyond just words, diagnoses, and presenting problems to the inner histories of their clients in order to discover paths to positive change. The book also shows how our brains have evolved into social organs and how our interpersonal lives are a source of both pain and power. Readers will explore with Cozolino how our brains are programmed to connect in intimate relationships and come to understand the debilitating effects of anxiety, stress, and trauma.Finally, the book will lead to an understanding of the power of story and narratives for fostering self-regulation, neural integration, and positive change.Always, the focus of the book is in understanding underlying therapeutic change, moving beyond the particular of specific forms of therapy to the commonalities of human evolution, biology, and experience.This book is for anyone who has experienced the benefits of therapy and wondered how it worked. It is for anyone thinking about whether therapy is right for them, and it is for anyone who has looked within themselves and marveled at people's ability to experience profound transformation.

    This work is a composite case study of the developmental course of one child following years of abuse and neglect. Building the Bonds of Attachment focuses on both the specialized psychotherapy and parenting that is often necessary in facilitating a child's psychological development and attachment security. It develops a model for intervention by blending attachment theory and research, trauma theory, and the general principles of parenting, and child and family therapy. This book is a practical guide for the adult--whether professional or parent--who endeavors to help such children. The second edition of this widely popular book will present the many changes in the intervention model over the past 8 years. These include many changes in both the psychotherapist's and parent's interventions. The attachment history of the adults is made more relevant. There is greater congruence between attachment theory and research and the interventions being demonstrated as well as greater reference to this theory and research.

    But little has been written or researched about the potential to heal these attachment wounds and address the damage sustained from neglect or poor parenting in early childhood. This book presents a therapy that focuses on precisely these areas. Laurel Parnell, leader and innovator in the field of eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), offers us a way to embrace two often separate worlds of knowing: the science of early attachment relationships and the practice of healing within an EMDR framework. This beautifully written and clinically practical book combines attachment theory, one of the most dynamic theoretical areas in psychotherapy today, with EMDR to teach therapists a new way of healing clients with relational trauma and attachment deficits.Readers will find science-based ideas about how our early relationships shape the way the mind and brain develop from our young years into our adult lives. Our connections with caregivers induce neural circuit firings that persist throughout our lives, shaping how we think, feel, remember, and behave. When we are lucky enough to have secure attachment experiences in which we feel seen, safe, soothed, and secure—the “four S’s of attachment” that serve as the foundation for a healthy mind—these relational experiences stimulate the neuronal activation and growth of the integrative fibers of the brain.EMDR is a powerful tool for catalyzing integration in an individual across several domains, including memory, narrative, state, and vertical and bilateral integration. In Laurel Parnell’s attachment-based modifications of the EMDR approach, the structural foundations of this integrative framework are adapted to further catalyze integration for individuals who have experienced non-secure attachment and developmental trauma.The book is divided into four parts. Part I lays the groundwork and outlines the five basic principles that guide and define the work. Part II provides information about attachment-repair resources available to clinicians. This section can be used by therapists who are not trained in EMDR. Part III teaches therapists how to use EMDR specifically with an attachment-repair orientation, including client preparation, target development, modifications of the standard EMDR protocol, desensitization, and using interweaves. Case material is used throughout. Part IV includes the presentation of three cases from different EMDR therapists who used attachment-focused EMDR with their clients. These cases illustrate what was discussed in the previous chapters and allow the reader to observe the theoretical concepts put into clinical practice—giving the history and background of the clients, actual EMDR sessions, attachment-repair interventions within these sessions and the rationale for them, and information about the effects of the interventions and the course of treatment.