A master of family therapy, Salvador Minuchin, traces for the first time the minute operations of day-to-day practice. Dr. Minuchin has achieved renown for his theoretical breakthroughs and his success at treatment. Now he explains in close detail those precise and difficult maneuvers that constitute his art. The book thus codifies the method of one of the country’s most successful practitioners.

Margaret S. Mahler and her collaborators break new ground in developmental psychology and present the first complete theoretical statement of Dr. Mahler's observations on the normal separation-individuation process.Separation and individuation are presented in this major work as two complementary developments. Separation is described as the child's emergence from a symbiotic fusion with the mother, while individuation consists of those achievements marking the child's assumption of his own individual characteristics. Each of the subphases of separation-individuation is described in detail, supported by a wealth of clinical observations which trace the tasks confronting the infant and his mother as he progresses toward achieving his own individuality.A number of chapters are devoted to following five children epigenetically through their subphase development. A separate section describes the authors' methodology, the importance of the research setting, and the effects of changes in the setting. The extensive appendices by Fred Pine discuss the uniqueness of the data-gathering techniques used by the authors. In addition, a useful glossary of concepts defines the new terms that Dr. Mahler has introduced.This book represents an important breakthrough in understanding the human infant and makes a unique contribution to the science of human behavior.

Why do we think, feel and act in ways we wished we did not? For decades, New York Times bestselling author Dr. David A. Kessler has studied this question with regard to tobacco, food and drugs. Over the course of these investigations, he identified one underlying mechanism common to a broad range of human suffering. This phenomenon—capture—is the process by which our attention is hijacked and our brains commandeered by forces outside of our control. In Capture , Dr. Kessler considers some of the most profound questions we face as human beings: What are the origins of mental afflictions—from everyday unhappiness to addiction and depression—and how are they connected? Where does healing and transcendence fit into this realm of emotional experience? Analyzing an array of insights from psychology, medicine, neuroscience, literature, philosophy and theology, Dr. Kessler deconstructs centuries of thinking, examining the central role of capture in mental illness and questioning traditional labels that have obscured our understanding of it. He explores the concept of capture through the emotionally resonant stories of both well-known and unknown people caught in its throes. Dr. Kessler argues that the closer we come to fully comprehending the nature of capture, the better the chance to alleviate its effects and successfully change our thoughts and behaviour. Capture offers insight into how we form thoughts and emotions, manage trauma and heal. For the first time, we can begin to understand the underpinnings of not only mental illness, but also our everyday worries and anxieties.

from Publisher's Weekly: This posthumous collection of case material illustrates the treatment modality successfully employed by psychiatrist Bruch with patients suffering from the eating disorder of anorexia. Two of her associates at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have edited this final work, taped by the author before her death in 1984. Bruch makes the reader privy to the therapeutic transaction between her patients who are in what she describes as "the relentless pursuit of thinness.'' Emphasizing the conversational ambiance of the therapy and discounting heretofore unsuccessful approaches of psychoanalysis and behavior modification, she helped her patients to heal. The dramatic dialogues in the cases presented allow us to hear these desperate young anorexic women individually explore their thwarted development, under the direction of a compassionate physician who guides them towards wellness. from Library Journal: Psychiatrist Bruch was a pioneer in developing psychotherapy for anorexia victims. Author of half a dozen books, her first work, Eating Disorders, appeared 15 years ago. She taped her interactions with clients, and these form the nucleus of this final book. Bruch's strength is her straightforward writing: it is honest, simple, and effective.

A vast amount of research linking stress and health has been done throughout the last decade in the fields of heart disease, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and many other potentially stress-related illnesses. The Handbook of Stress, Medicine, and Health brings together the most distinguished authors in the world and presents the role of stress in illness and health. This exciting book sets the agenda for the new field of stress medicine. Filled with valuable practical information, this comprehensive resource investigates the health effects of life events and work. The physiological impact of critical life changes is discussed, and general occupational stress as well as the stress, from exposure on the job to HIV and AIDS are examined. The relationship between personality types, behavior patterns, and the risk of disease is explored. The guide also reviews the importance of social support during times of illness. It details how families can help alleviate or exacerbate stress. The Handbook offers guidelines for preventing and treating stress-related illnesses and includes insightful steps for coping with the stress of cancer. The Handbook of Stress, Medicine, and Health provides-under one cover-an overview of research, important information that can readily be used, plus recommendations for the direction of future study.

Focus in the media on the risks posed to ordinary people has become increasingly strong in recent years - particularly on those risks popularly perceived to be posed by the mentally ill. But how justified is this concern? How do we best manage so-called dangerous people? In Will They Do It Again? Herschel Prins considers the issue of public protection within a broad context of risk in society generally, examining the concerns arising in contemporary society from dealing with uncertainty. It is argued that public fear over the danger posed by the mentally ill is at odds with the evidence, and that much of the concern is focused on a small number of high-profile cases. Prins goes on to examine such cases where management of the mentally ill has failed and sets out suggestions for improvements in practice. Will They Do It Again? cuts through popular misunderstanding and media hype over risk to give a clear, unbiased picture of the real risks to society from the mentally ill and how best they can be contained and managed, and will prove invaluable to a range of practitioners involved in the fields of criminal justice and psychiatry.

Shambhala Healing Emotions

Single-case research has played an important role in developing and evaluating interventions that are designed to alter a particular facet of human functioning. Now thoroughly updated in its second edition, acclaimed author Alan E. Kazdin's Single-Case Research Designs provides a notable contrast to the quantitative methodology approach that pervades the biological and social sciences. While focusing on widely applicable methodologies for evaluating interventions--such as treatment or psychotherapy using applied behavior analysis--this revised edition also encompasses a broader range of research areas that utilize single-case designs, demonstrating the pertinence of this methodology in various disciplines, from psychology and medicine to business and industry. This well-written, clear, and thoroughly updated text is ideal for practitioners, instructors, and students alike.

Mental Chronometry (MC) comprises a variety of techniques for measuring the speed with which the brain processes information. First developed in mid-1800, MC was subsequently eclipsed by more complex and practically useful types of psychometric tests stemming from Alfred Binet. This class of mental tests, however, has no true metric relating the test scores to any specific properties of the brain per se. The scores merely represent an ordinal scale, only ranking individuals according to their overall performance on a variety of complex mental tasks. The resulting scores represent no more than ranks rather than being a true metrical scale of any specific dimension of brain function. Such an ordinal scale, which merely ranks individuals in some defined population, possesses no true scale properties, possessing neither a true zero or equal intervals throughout the scale. This deficiency obstructs the development of a true natural science of mental ability. The present burgeoning interest in understanding individual differences in mental abilities in terms of the natural sciences, biology and the brain sciences in particular, demands direct measures that functionally link brain and behavior. One such natural ratio scale is time itself - the time it takes the brain to perform some elementary cognitive task, measured in milliseconds. After more than 25 years researching MC, Jensen here presents results on an absolute scale showing times for intake of visual and auditory information, for accessing short-term and long-term memory, and other cognitive skills, as a function of age, at yearly intervals from 3 to 80 years. The possible uses of MC in neurological diagnosis and the monitoring of drug effects on cognition, the chronometric study of special time-sensitive talents such as musical performance, and presents a theory of general intelligence, or g, as a function of the rate of oscillation of neural action potentials as