Offers advice for creating more sustainable and authentic connections with others by using mindfulness exercises and meditation techniques to become more present and develop a deeper understanding of authentic love.

This approach to dealing with illness demonstrates how taking control of illness can result in successful treatment and emotional growth.

Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy, and relationships. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species. Ornish teaches that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease without drugs or surgery. Perhaps the most powerful intervention is love and intimacy and the emotional and spiritual transformation that often results.

"An unlikely pair of voices, the world's most recognizable beauty icon and 'America's rabbi', comes together to diagnose how meaningful, passionate sex is on the decline in Western culture, and how to save it"--

In Romantic Longings Steven Seidman offers an original perspective on the origins and current meaning of the American intimate culture. Drawing on a wide range of sources--sex surveys, advice literature, autobiographies, novels--he charts a change from a Victorian spiritual ideal to efforts by current reformers to sexualize love. Stressing that contemporary notions of intimacy are grounded in twentieth-century historical developments, he observes the birth of a culture of eroticism in the post-World War II years--a culture where sexuality is conceived as both a sphere of love and intimacy and a domain of pleasure and self-expression.

Tracing a lineage from Greek mythology to our own most intimate relationships, Carol Gilligan asks why, generation after generation, we relive tragic stories of loss and betrayal, and sets out to create a radical new map of love. Within the sweep of this book, Gilligan takes us through novels and dreams, ancient legends and contemporary research to an illumination of modern couples in crisis. She shows us that, although the women's movements of the 20th century have challenged patriarchal structures, the underlying patterns remain: the early channeling of boys into "masculinity, " the double consciousness of girls in adolescence, the silences between men and women, the splits between our social and inner selves. In the haunting love story of Psyche and Cupid, Gilligan discovers a crucial tale of resistance--showing us that the path of pleasure can be found in the heart of tragedy, that joy and harmony can defy anger and pain.

Few of us have been spared the agonies of intimate relationships. They come in many shapes: loving a man or a woman who will not commit to us, being heartbroken when we're abandoned by a lover, engaging in internet searches, coming back lonely from bars, parties, or blind dates, feeling bored in a relationship that is so much less than we had envisaged - these are only some of the ways in which the search for love is a difficult and often painful experience. Despite the widespread and almost collective character of these experiences, our culture insists they are the result of faulty or insufficiently mature psyches. For many, the Freudian idea that the family designs the pattern of an individual's erotic career has been the main explanation for why and how we fail to find or sustain love. Psychoanalysis and popular psychology have succeeded spectacularly in convincing us that individuals bear responsibility for the misery of their romantic and erotic lives. The purpose of this book is to change our way of thinking about what is wrong in modern relationships. The problem is not dysfunctional childhoods or insufficiently self-aware psyches, but rather the institutional forces shaping how we love. The argument of this book is that the modern romantic experience is shaped by a fundamental transformation in the ecology and architecture of romantic choice. The samples from which men and women choose a partner, the modes of evaluating prospective partners, the very importance of choice and autonomy and what people imagine to be the spectrum of their choices: all these aspects of choice have transformed the very core of the will, how we want a partner, the sense of worth bestowed by relationships, and the organization of desire. This book does to love what Marx did to commodities: it shows that it is shaped by social relations and institutions and that it circulates in a marketplace of unequal actors. -- Publisher description.

Everyone knows Dr. Ruth as the most famous and trusted sex therapist, but few people know she narrowly escaped death from the Holocaust, was raised in an orphanage in Switzerland, or that she was a sniper during Israel's War of Independence. After years spent as a student in Paris, Dr. Ruth came to America dreaming of a new life though never expecting the dramatic turns that would take place. And at the age of eighty-seven, she is as spirited as ever. Through intimate and funny stories, Dr. Ruth sheds light on how she's learned to live a life filled with joie de vivre. And she shows readers how they too can learn to deal with tragedy and loss, challenges and success, all while nourishing an intellectual and emotional spark, and, above all, having fun! Hilarious, inspiring, and profound, The Doctor Is In will change the way you think about life and love, in all their limitless possibilities.

The proliferation of dating websites, printed personals, and self-help relationship books reflects the new ways Americans seek close, personal relationships. Exposed to changing and often conflicting values, trends, and fashions--disseminated by popular culture, advertising, and assorted "experts"--Americans face uncertainties about the best ways to meet important emotional and social needs. How do we establish lasting and intimate personal relationships, including marriage? In Extravagant Expectations Paul Hollander investigates how Americans today pursue romantic relationships, with special reference to the advantages and drawbacks of Internet dating compared to connections made in school, college, and the workplace. By analyzing printed personals, dating websites, and advice offered by pop psychology books, he examines the qualities that people seek in a partner and also assesses the influence of the remaining conventional ideas of romantic love. Hollander suggests that notions of romantic love have changed due to conflicting values and expectations and the impact of pragmatic considerations. Individualism, high expectations, social and geographic mobility, changing sex roles, and the American national character all play a part in this fascinating and finally sobering exploration of the efforts of men and women to find love and meaning in life. --Book Jacket.

Beginning with women's most common complaints about men, this study explores the psychology of the male and identifies the divergent attitudes that separate men and women

This book presents an integrative theory of love as the most important of human experiences, drawing on data from psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology and history. It distinguishes and analyzes the differences between love cultures and hate cultures, showing how these differences affect social history, child-rearing practices and personal mental health. The book also examines the meaning of love from genetic, cultural, intrapersonal, and interpersonal perspectives.