Dr. Eric Berne, as the originator of transactional analysis, has attained recognition for developing one of the most innovative approaches to modern psychotherapy. Discover how many of these "secret games" you play everyday of your life: Iwfy (If it weren't for you); Sweetheart; Threadbare; Harried; Alcoholic, and many more. A groundbreaking book that bores deep into the heart of all our relationships, GAMES PEOPLE PLAY is a classic that should be read again and again.

From the country's foremost relationship expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. John M. Gottman comes a powerful, simple five-step program, based on twenty years of innovative research, for greatly improving all of the relationships in your life -- with spouses and lovers, children, siblings, and even your colleagues at work. In The Relationship Cure, Dr. Gottman: Reveals the key elements of healthy relationships, emphasizing the importance of what he calls "emotional connection"; Introduces the powerful new concept of the emotional "bid," the fundamental unit of emotional connection; Provides remarkably empowering tools for improving the way you bid for emotional connection and how you respond to others' bids. - Publisher.

Our own irrational attitudes and beliefs often influence our feelings of anger, fear, and anxiety. Only when we examine and understand our false ideas and their harmful effects can we begin to loosen their grip on us. If we change our mindset, we can control our relationships with other people and our reactions to the events in our lives. This is the core of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the treatment system developed by Albert Ellis, Ph. D., one of America's best-known psychologists. Here, he shows us how to use the strategies and techniques of REBT to stop our anxieties from limiting our lives. Throughout, he emphasizes that our emotions come from within, and as surely as we create them, we can control them---and conquer the paralyzing power of self-pity, depression, fear, and anxiety.--From publisher description.

In this important and insightful work, Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD, demonstrates the powerful healing potential of the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) process. You can transform emotional pain, depression, shame, and conflict into empowering connections. Rosenberg shares that behind all emotional pain are unmet needs. He provides simple steps to create the heartfelt presence necessary for healing to occur. Learn how to transform your relationships, find satisfying reconciliation, and move beyond pain to a place of clear, honest communication. Through role-play dialogues and every-day examples, Rosenberg demonstrates the keys to healing pain and conflict without compromise. The healing power of NVC provides practical and effective tools for individuals, mental health practitioners, mediators, families and couples.

Number one bestselling science writer Jonah Lehrer explores the “only happiness that lasts”—love—in a book that “is interesting on nearly every page” (David Brooks, The New York Times Book Review ). Weaving together scientific studies from clinical psychologists, longitudinal studies of health and happiness, historical accounts and literary depictions, child-rearing manuals, and the language of online dating sites, Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love plumbs the most mysterious, most formative, most important impulse governing our lives. Love confuses and compels us—and it can destroy and define us. It has inspired our greatest poetry, defined our societies and our beliefs, and governs our biology. From the way infants attach to their parents, to the way we fall in love with another person, to the way some find a love for God or their pets, to the way we remember and mourn love after it expires, this book focuses on research that attempts, even in glancing ways, to deal with the long-term and the everyday. The most dangerous myth of love is that it’s easy, that we fall into the feeling and then the feeling takes care of itself. While we can easily measure the dopamine that causes the initial feelings of “falling” in love, the partnerships and devotions that last decades or longer remain a mystery. “Lehrer uses scores of detailed vignettes to traverse a complicated intellectual landscape, eventually arriving at modern theories of love…He is a talent” ( USA TODAY ), and A Book About Love decodes the set of skills necessary to cultivate a lifetime of love. Love, Lehrer argues, is not built solely on overwhelming passion, but, fascinatingly, on a set of skills to be cultivated over a lifetime.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTELLER Conversations between sisters reveal a deep and constant tug between two dynamics—an impulse toward closeness and an impulse toward competition. It takes just a word from your sister to start you laughing, or to summon up a past you both share. But it also takes just a word to send you into an emotional tailspin. For many women, a sister is both a devoted friend and a fierce rival. Wise and witty, You Were Always Mom’s Favorite! will leave you with a profound new understanding of the unique and precious sister bond, as well as provide practical advice that will open up communication, dispel tensions, and make a vital connection even stronger, deeper, and more resilient.

From the author of the bestselling classic The Drama of the Gifted Child— a book that believes that children are inherently good and traces all forms of criminal deeds to past mistreatments. In direct opposition to the Freudian drive theory, "Alice Miller writes lucidly and passionately, asks daring questions and sees through conventions that most of us take for granted" ( San Francisco Chronicle).

Since the publication of her landmark book In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan has transformed the way we think about women and men and the relations between them. It was ‘the little book that started a revolution’, and with more than 800,000 copies in print it has become one of the most widely read and influential books ever written on gender and human development. In her new book Joining the Resistance Carol Gilligan reflects on the evolution of her thinking and shows how her key ideas were interwoven with her own life experiences. Her work began with the question of voice: who is speaking to whom, in what body, telling what stories about which relationships? By listening carefully she heard a voice that had been held in silence, and in the process realized the extent to which we – both women and men – had been telling false stories about ourselves. In her subsequent work Gilligan found that adolescent girls resisted pressures to disengage themselves from their honest voices, and by joining their resistance she opened the way for the development of a more humane way of thinking about personal and political relationships. For the central conviction of her work today – and the central thesis of this book – is that the requisites for love and the requisites for citizenship in a democratic society are one and the same. Both voice and the desire to live in relationships inherent in our human nature, together with the capacity to resist false authority. Combining autobiographical reflection with an analysis of key questions about gender and human development, this timely and highly readable book by one of America’s greatest contemporary thinkers will appeal to a wide readership.

"Dating is hard-but when you live with anxiety, OCD, and/or depression, dating can feel like a minefield. At last, a book that focuses solely on mental health and dating-an intersection that demands attention, given that one in five Americans will experience a mental illness in a given year. Overthinking About You is a memoir-driven self-help book that explores the complex connection between brain and heart, for an engaging, useful, and relatable read for anyone whose mental health has gotten in the way of successful romantic relationships"--

This is the first book to apply Dr. Ellis's famous Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy principles to intimate relationships. The seven guidelines for better couple communication offered in this user-friendly guide emphasize non-blaming acceptance, integrity, mutual support, appreciation, replacing irrational ideas and expectations with realistic attitudes. An effective resource for couples seeking greater closeness, intimate partners who are willing to make "unilateral" changes, marriage and family therapists -- a breakthrough relationship guide from the father of rational therapy."

This book is a continuation of my Motivation and Personality, published in 1954. It was constructed in about the same way, that is, by doing one piece at a time of the larger theoretical structure. It is a predecessor to work yet to be done toward the construction of a comprehensive, systematic and empirically based general psychology and philosophy which includes both the depths and the heights of human nature. The last chapter is to some extent a program for this future work, and serves as a bridge to it. It is a first attempt to integrate the "health-and-growth psychology" with psychopathology and psychoanalytic dynamics, the dynamic with the holistic, Becoming with Being, good with evil, positive with negative. Phrased in another way, it is an effort to build on the general psychoanalytic base and on the scientific-positivistic base of experimental psychology, the Eupsychian, B-psychological and metamotivational superstructure which these two systems lack, going beyond their limits. It is very difficult, I have found, to communicate to others my simultaneous respect for and impatience with these two comprehensive psychologies. So many people insist on being either pro-Freudian or anti-Freudian, pro-scientific-psychology or anti-scientific-psychology, etc. In my opinion all such loyalty-positions are silly. Our job is to integrate these various truths into the whole truth, which should be our only loyalty.

Psychologist, writer, speaker, advisor Dr. Joyce Brothers knows WHAT EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MEN, and she tells it all in this explicit and informative guide to understanding and coping with the opposite sex. FEATURING: * New explanations of male development and behavior * Guidelines for creating a better home life and family * Strategies on dealing with men at work -- and with sexual harrassment * Answers to the age-old question: why don't men call when they promise they will? * Numerous hints for making sex more exciting and fulfilling and much, more more. Here is the book that will help women and men increase communication, improve relationships, and achieve lasting love and happiness.

Publisher abstract: "Why does talk in families so often go in circles, leaving us tied up in knots? In this illuminating book, Deborah Tannen, the linguist and and bestselling author of You Just Don't Understand and many other books, reveals why talking to family members is so often painful and problematic even when we're all adults. Searching for signs of acceptance and belonging, we find signs of disapproval and rejection. Why do the seeds of family love so often yield a harvest of criticism and judgment? In I Only Say This Because I Love You, Tannen shows how important it is, in family talk, to learn to separate word meanings, or messages, from heart meanings, or metamessages — unstated but powerful meanings that come from the history of our relationships and the way things are said. Presenting real conversations from people's lives, Tannen reveals what is actually going on in family talk, including how family conversations must balance the longing for connection with the desire for control, as we struggle to be close without giving up our freedom. This eye-opening book explains why grown women so often feel criticized by their mothers; and why mothers feel they can't open their mouths around their grown daughters; why growing up male or female, or as an older or younger sibling, results in different experiences of family that persist throughout our lives; and much, much more. By helping us to understand and redefine family talk, Tannen provides the tools to improve relationships with family members of every age."

Whether you are male or female, single or married, gay or straight, Dr. Ellis's simple and effective REBT techniques will show you how to relate lovingly, intimately, and lastingly. Using an even-handed, non-judgmental approach, this book is more than just a guide to getting along better with a significant other'. There is help here too for improving relationships with friends, children and even in-laws. Now is the time to take matters into your own hands - and heart - and stop the cycle of relationship-ruin. With doses of wisdom and humour you will soon be on the path to love.'

Good love relationship isn't really that important. In fact, it uses up a lot of time you could spend thinking about yourself . . . and doing things all alone or with your drunken, loser friends. That's why Ben Stein has written How to Ruin Your Love Life. Following up on the wild success of his pioneering ''do-the-opposite-of-what-I-say''self-help book, How to Ruin Your Life, he now brings you, in 35 easy to follow steps, ways to definitively and absolutely . . . ruin your love life. Learn from this book and for heaven's sake, do the opposite right now.

In her fabulously witty style, Miss Manners reacquaints us with the proper use of implements for navigating nourishment from plate to mouth and gives specific, practical advice on all manner of mealtime issues: serving takeout food; how to fillet a fish, pound (pop open) a crab, and cope with the mysteries of the mango, the artichoke, a thick, juicy steak, and that long stringy glop of cheese, atop French onion soup; safely feeding children in restaurants; place cards.

Having studied how boys and girls develop differently, Michael Gurian turns his attention to adult men in this entertaining, informative, and groundbreaking book on the male brain. Following two decades of neurobiological research, "What Could He Be Thinking? answers the questions women and the world are asking about husbands, fathers, boyfriends, and coworkers. Mixing neurobiology with Gurian's very readable writing style, anecdotes from everyday life, and a new vision of the male psyche, the book will satisfy the tremendous curiosity women and our culture have about the roots of male behavior. Women know intuitively that men are different from them. What women are now just coming to realize is that the men they are married to, having sex with, working with, parenting with, and trying to fathom, act and think in very male ways, not only because they are socialized to do so, but because they are built to - neurobiologically. The new field of brain science has revealed wonderful secrets about a man's mind. In this book, women who are eager to understand the men in their lives can discover the new brain science in an entertaining way, as they get answers to the prime question every woman asks at some time in her life: What could he be thinking? The book provides fascinating information about the male brain, male habits, male tendencies and the nuances of men's' actions and thoughts. It is a provocative, exciting vision into the minds of men.

NAMED ONE OF THE 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME MAGAZINE “A cheerful, mischievous rebuke to all that spiritual sincerity and floaty nonattachment and sugary loving kindness” ( The Wall Street Journal ), this first and only comprehensive examination of the universal, but widely misunderstood, practice of grudge-holding will show you how to use grudges to be your happiest, most optimistic, and most forgiving self. Secretly, we all hold grudges, but most of us probably think we shouldn’t, and many of us deny that we do. To bear a grudge is too negative, right? Shouldn’t we just forgive and move on? Wrong, says prolific crime novelist and self-appointed grudge guru Sophie Hannah, in her groundbreaking and irreverent self-help guide. Yes, it’s essential to think positively if we want to live happy lives, but even more crucial is how we get to the positive. Denying our negative emotions and experiences is likely to lead only to more pain, conflict, and stress. What if our grudges are good for us? What if we could embrace them, and use them to help ourselves and others, instead of feeling ashamed of our inability to banish negative emotions and memories from our lives? With contributions from expert psychotherapists as well as extracts from her own extensive catalog of grudges, Sophie Hannah investigates the psychological origins of grudges and also offers not-so-obvious insights into how we should acknowledge—and embrace—them in order to improve the quality of our interpersonal relationships and senses of self. Grudges do not have to fill us with hate or make us toxic, bitter, and miserable. If we approach the practice of grudge-holding in an enlightened way, it will do the opposite—we will become more forgiving. For fans of Sophie Hannah’s bestselling crime novels who have ever wondered what is going on in her unusual, brilliant mind, How to Hold a Grudge is “a perfect document” ( The New York Times ) that also reveals everything we need to know about the many different forms of grudge, the difference between a grudge and not-a-grudge (not as obvious as it seems), when we should let a grudge go, and how to honor a grudge and distill lessons from it. Hannah’s practical, compassionate, and downright funny guide can turn us into better, happier people.

"Trans activist and educator Dean Spade dares us to be the change we want to see-both out in the world and among our closest connections-with a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands"-- Provided by publisher.