Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities


Jill Freedman - 1996
    Clear and compelling demonstrations of narrative therapy practice, rich in case examples and creative strategies, are at the heart of this book.

Love and Will


Rollo May - 1969
    Bringing fresh insight to these concepts, May shows how we can attain a deeper consciousness.

The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better


Richard G. Wilkinson - 2009
    Why do we mistrust people more in the UK than in Japan? Why do Americans have higher rates of teenage pregnancy than the French? What makes the Swedish thinner than the Greeks? The answer: inequality. This groundbreaking book, based on years of research, provides hard evidence to show how almost everything—-from life expectancy to depression levels, violence to illiteracy-—is affected not by how wealthy a society is, but how equal it is. Urgent, provocative and genuinely uplifting, The Spirit Level has been heralded as providing a new way of thinking about ourselves and our communities, and could change the way you see the world.

On Being a Therapist


Jeffrey A. Kottler - 1986
    Jeffrey Kottler provides a candid account of the profound ways in which therapists influence clients and, in turn, are impacted personally and professionally by these encounters. He shows how therapists can learn, develop, and grow during the process of therapy and explains how practitioners can use the professional skills and insights gained from their sessions to address their own personal issues, realize positive change in themselves, and so become better helpers for others. This thoroughly revised edition includes discussion about how the business and practice of therapy has changed in recent years, the effects of technology and managed care, the breakdown of theoretical orientation, and the greater client diversity represented in contemporary practice.

Hypnosis for Change


Josie Hadley - 1985
    The book includes inductions for sleep, anxiety and panic, weight loss, nonsmoking, recovering from illness, self-esteem, motivation, enhancing creativity, improving learning, healing the adult survivor of child abuse, natural childbirth, and loss and separation.

Healing the Shame that Binds You


John Bradshaw - 1988
    The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed.” Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures. Key Features This is not just a recovery book. Among other things, it is a classic book on identifying and working through unresolved family issues. Includes affirmations, visualizations, inner voice and feeling exercises. Strong supporting studies make this a popular book with counselors and other professionals. Completely updated and revised

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving


Pete Walker - 2013
    I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd. I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone! The causes of Cptsd range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes – in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous. If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body. This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients’ journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have Cptsd but want to understand and help a loved one who does. This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored. Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt. The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery. I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.

Winnicott


Adam Phillips - 1988
    W. Winnicott (1896-1971) is now regarded as one of the most influential contributors to psychoanalysis since Freud. In over forty years of clinical practice, he brought unprecedented skill and intuition to the psychoanalysis of children. This critical new work by Adam Phillips presents the best short introduction to the thought and practice of Winnicott that is currently available.Winnicott's work was devoted to the recognition and description of the good mother and the use of the mother-infant relationship as the model of psychoanalytic treatment. His belief in natural development became a covert critique of overinterpretative methods of psychoanalysis. He combined his idiosyncratic approach to psychoanalysis with a willingness to make his work available to nonspecialist audiences. In this book Winnicott takes his place with Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan as one of the great innovators within the psychoanalytic tradition.

The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation


Stephen W. Porges - 2011
    Porges’s decades of research. A leading expert in developmental psychophysiology and developmental behavioral neuroscience, Porges is the mind behind the groundbreaking Polyvagal Theory, which has startling implications for the treatment of anxiety, depression, trauma, and autism. Adopted by clinicians around the world, the Polyvagal Theory has provided exciting new insights into the way our autonomic nervous system unconsciously mediates social engagement, trust, and intimacy.

The Art of Being


Erich Fromm - 1989
    Some of these chapters are contained in the present volume. They deal entirely with the "steps toward being" that the individual can take in order to learn the Art of Being. How can we realize and actualize Love, Reason, and meaningful, productive work? Fromm here offers the Art of Being, a way of living based on authentic self-awareness that comes only through honest self-analysis. Wisely, he warns of the pitfalls of our attaining enlightenment without effort, or believing that life can be lived without pain. The tantalizing "spiritual smorgasbord" offered by our consumer-oriented world, Fromm maintains, only feeds our illusions of "easy awareness." Confronting the psycho-Gurus who preach these shortcuts to enlightenment, Fromm offers another way to self-awareness and well-being, one based on psychoanalysis and self-awareness through meditation. If the Art of Being - the art of functioning as a whole person - can be considered the supreme goal of life, a breakthrough occurs when we move from narcissistic selfishness and egotism - from having - to psychological and spiritual happiness - being. The Art of Being will be one of the most important works in the Fromm canon for years to come.

The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization


Onno van der Hart - 2006
    Their suffering essentially relates to a terrifying and painful past that haunts them. Even when survivors attempt to hide their distress beneath a facade of normality—a common strategy—therapists often feel besieged by their many symptoms and serious pain. Small wonder that many survivors of chronic traumatization have seen several therapists with little if any gains, and that quite a few have been labeled as untreatable or resistant.In this book, three leading researchers and clinicians share what they have learned from treating and studying chronically traumatized individuals across more than 65 years of collective experience. Based on the theory of structural dissociation of the personality in combination with a Janetian psychology of action, the authors have developed a model of phase-oriented treatment that focuses on the identification and treatment of structural dissociation and related maladaptive mental and behavioral actions. The foundation of this approach is to support patients in learning more effective mental and behavioral actions that will enable them to become more adaptive in life and to resolve their structural dissociation. This principle implies an overall therapeutic goal of raising the integrative capacity, in order to cope with the demands of daily life and deal with the haunting remnants of the past, with the “unfinished business” of traumatic memories.Of interest to clinicians, students of clinical psychology and psychiatry, as well as to researchers, all those interested in adult survivors of chronic child abuse and neglect will find helpful insights and tools that may make the treatment more effective and efficient, and more tolerable for the suffering patient.

Helping Skills: Facilitating Exploration, Insight, and Action


Clara E. Hill - 1999
    Emphasizing the role of affect, cognition, and behavior in the process of change, the book presents an integrative approach grounded in clien

The Gossamer Thread: My Life as a Psychotherapist


John Marzillier - 2010
    It shows his progression from a hard-nosed behavior therapist with a strong commitment to science to a psychodynamic therapist with an interest in narrative. Along the way he shows the way the main schools of psychotherapy (behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic) work, drawing on case material from his professional practice. He shows the mistakes he made and the lessons he eventually learned from his patients. His focus on clinical cases enables readers to see psychotherapy in operation and get drawn into the ups and downs of trying to help some fascinating and often tricky people who rarely conform to what is expected of them.The book is free of jargon and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of psychology or psychotherapy. It is designed to entertain and inform the general readership about the mysterious world of psychotherapy, what goes on behind the consulting room door. It will be of particular interest to the increasing number of people who encounter psychotherapy either through their own experience of seeking help or the experiences of family and friends or through reading of popular books such as those of Oliver James and Irving Yalom.It should also prove invaluable for those interested in training as a clinical psychologist, counsellor or psychotherapist.

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity


Nadine Burke Harris - 2018
    Nadine Burke Harris was already known as a crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was Diego — a boy who had stopped growing after a sexual assault — who galvanized her journey to uncover the connections between toxic stress and lifelong illnesses.The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect, parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhood adversity changes our biological systems, and lasts a lifetime.  For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions in The Deepest Well represent hope for preventing lifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come​.

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.