Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction-a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives-by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself "Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I've read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn't self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read." -Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding-let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues-our successes and our failures-can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD) is now recognized as a distinct personality disorder. Those who suffer from PAPD are sorely in need not only of diagnostic recognition, but also of specific therapeutic intervention. This new book from Martin Kantor speaks to therapists; guides those who interact with passive-aggressive individuals to advance their own effective coping methods based on science, understanding, and compassion; and directly addresses passive-aggressive individuals themselves. Contrary to what is implied in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), and what some practitioners have believed in recent years, new thinking points to passive-aggression being a full disorder. A counterrevolution is now occurring, with some of the most centrist of authors participating in a concerted drive to bring back the diagnosis as being one of the fundamental personality disorders-indeed, a disorder that describes individuals with a distinctly troublesome personality. In this new book, Martin Kantor-a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and noted author of numerous medical texts-takes a new look at passive-aggression and passive-aggressive personality disorder (PAPD) that precisely and scientifically defines it in terms of description, causality, and therapeutic intervention, all based on recent theoretical findings. Kantor makes a powerful argument that passive-aggression can only be reliably identified by answering three fundamental questions, the answers to which define the disorder: why these patients get so angry; why these patients cannot express their anger directly; and what anger styles they employ to express their aggressions. His examination of passive-aggression, which involves two people enmeshed with each other, logically takes two distinct points of view: that of the passive-aggressive individual, and that of his or her "victim" or "target." Specific clinical observation is presented to clarify theory. The book explains how passive-aggression can develop into a complex dyadic interaction in which it is difficult to determine who is doing what to whom, who started it, and what path to take to deescalate; and how using mutual understanding and healthy empathy plus compassion can preclude getting involved in sadomasochistic mutual provocation. The author also suggests ways for those who suffer from passive-aggression to be less hypersensitive, and to express what hypersensitivity they can't help feeling more directly, rather than via the various unhealthy anger styles that constitute the passive-aggressive modus operandi. Presents powerful, eye-opening, and practical information for therapists, passive-aggressive individuals themselves, friends and family of passive-aggressive individuals, and on-the-job colleagues of those who treat others in a passive-aggressive manner Documents how the answers to three basic questions about passive-aggression are the keys to proper diagnosis, understanding causality, and providing improved therapeutic responses Covers a variety of treatment options and strategies-including cognitive, interpersonal, and psychoanalytic approaches as well as common transference and countertransference issues-that will aid victims of passive-aggressiveness and help passive-aggressive individuals themselves to do better Includes two chapters that specifically provide self-help therapy for sufferers and their victims