A bold, brilliant, and provocative look at childhood medication by New York Times bestselling author Judith Warner In Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety , the bestselling author and former New York Times columnist Judith Warner explained what's gone wrong with the culture of parenting, and her conclusions sparked a national debate on how women and society view motherhood. Her new book, We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication , will generate the same kind of controversy, as she tackles a subject that's just as contentious and important: Are parents and physicians too quick to prescribe medication to control our children's behavior? Are we using drugs to excuse inept parents who can't raise their children properly? What Warner discovered from the extensive research and interviewing she did for this book is that passion on both sides of the issue "is ideological and only tangentially about real children," and she cuts through the jargon and hysteria to delve into a topic that for millions of parents involves one of the most important decisions they'll ever make for their child. Insightful, compelling, and deeply moving, We've Got Issues is for parents, doctors, and teachers-anyone who cares about the welfare of today's children.

2010 Reprint of 1952 Edition. First published in 1924, Otto Rank's The Trauma of Birth took as its starting point a note that Freud added to his The Interpretation of Dreams: "Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety". Rank set out to identify "the ultimate biological basis of the psychical," the very "nucleus of the unconscious" (p. xxiii). For him this was the physical event of birth, whereby the infant passes from a state of perfectly contented union with the mother to a state of parlous separation via an oppressive experience of asphyxiation, constriction, confinement in the vaginal canal, and so on-all feelings recognizable in anxiety states of every kind. It was the struggle against this traumatic experience of birth, in Rank's account, that structured the fantasy life of the child, including the disavowal of the difference between the sexes, infantile sexual theories, and oedipal scenarios. Castration anxiety was a defensive derivative of the anxiety associated with the birth trauma.

Love or power ? these are the opposing poles of a choice every child is compelled to make, very early in its life, in a drama that sets it irrevocably on its path through life. This startling new insight into a formative experience fundamental to our development is the subject of THE BETRAYAL OF THE SELF, Dr. Arno Gruen's passionately argued contribution to the psychoanalytic view of the human soul, and what distorts it into pathology. What happens to an infant when it learns that the love it craves from its parents is available only at the price of submission to their will? In paying this price, as Dr. Gruen found in many years of experience with his patients, the infant renounces its true, autonomous self and instead embarks on a search for power with which to manipulate the world around it-a quest that will henceforth rule its life. Dr. Gruen maps out the process by which this striving for power, once the fatal choice has been made, masks the child's inner emptiness, dulls its fears, and soothes its secret feelings of self-loathing. Its need for power soon bars all access to its real emotions, and corrupts all of its relationships into ones based on mastery and domination. The power-oriented world around it, which puts a premium on stoic "strength" and "invulnerability," further confirms the child in this pursuit of power, leading it on to a path of dehumanization which pervades our entire society. Thus human destructiveness and evil are not innate, but develop in a complex process of growth marked by the failure to attain autonomy. In contrast, Dr. Gruen defines autonomy as that state of integration in which we live in full harmony with our feelings and needs. It is a natural state of being experienced in early childhood when the infant is loved unconditionally and without the need to earn this love by the self-sacrifice of submission. It allows the child to remain vulnerable to feelings of self-doubt, helplessness, pain, and rage ? the very emotions the infant fearfully flees in its decision to betray its own self. The fear of these emotions, Dr. Gruen shows, alienates the male in particular, destroying his soul, depriving him of his ability to love, and imposing on him the need to oppress others, women especially. How can therapy help the patient to find the way back to health and his autonomous self? Dr. Gruen discovered the clue to the therapeutic process in the active role the patient originally played in his choice between love and power, when he took refuge in power in his flight from pain. The therapist's task in helping the patient is to teach him how to accept the vulnerability he once feared in order to recover his lost autonomy. By defining man's vulnerability as his strength, Dr. Gruen points the way to a psychoanalysis of personal courage and social responsibility. At the same time, by exposing the childhood split which leads man to abandon his true self, Gruen has written a powerful indictment of our modern culture which mirrors the individual's self-alienation in growing social violence and loss of humanity. DR. ARNO GRUEN, who was born in Germany, emigrated to the U.S. as a child in 1936. He received his psychoanalytic training at New York University, and held many teaching posts in the United States, including seventeen years as professor of psychology at Rutgers University. Since 1979 he has lived and practiced in Switzerland. He is the author of many books and papers in both German and English. His other major work available in English is his 1992 book, THE INSANITY OF NORMALITY: TOWARD UNDERSTANDING HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS (republished in 2007 by Human Development Books).

Hidden Treasure is a follow up to Oaklander's first book, Windows To Our Children. Most of the books available in working with this population are written from a traditional 'play therapy' point of view. The Gestalt Therapy-based approach provides a more effective method for psychotherapeutic work with children of all ages. The focus is on the relationship between the therapist and client, rather than observation and interpretation. It is a vigorous, dynamic approach.Violet Oaklander uses a wide variety of creative, expressive and projective techniques in her work, and each chapter reflects and exemplifies the use of this work in the service of therapy. The approach is applicable to a wide variety of ages, as well as individual, family and group settings. The book will interest child and adolescent psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, interns, school personnel as well as graduate-level students. Parents may also find it helpful, as well as adults who are interested in the child within.

The precise relationship between high-functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome is still a subject of debate. This volume provides a general overview of the disorder and present diverse opinions on diagnosis and assessment, neuropsychological issues, treatment, and related conditions. A special section features personal essays by individuals diagnosed with autism or Asperger Syndrome. The result is a comprehensive and useful survey of the current state of the field that will be of great interest to clinicians, teachers, researchers, and parents.