Defined by stable, long-term, subjective distress and/or social impairment, personality disorders affect up to 18% of the population. Social impairment and health care usage are far more prevalent among people with personality disorders than among people with major depressive disorders. Personality disorders are highly prevalent, variable, and notoriously difficult to treat, and they continue to challenge the therapeutic community and represent a formidable public health concern. This volume ably addresses personality disorders as one of the top priorities of psychiatry for the new millennium, offering a thorough and updated review and analysis of empirical work to point up the issues central to developing a therapeutic model for treatment as well as current research challenges. A review of extant research yields the heartening conclusion that psychotherapy remains an effective treatment for people with personality disorders. An examination of psychodynamic treatment for borderline personality disorder speaks to its efficacy. An analysis of the rationale for combining psychotherapy and psychopharmacology emphasizes the importance of identifying temperament and target conditions. A well-documented and reasoned treatise on antisocial personality disorder makes the crucial point that clinicians must acquire a depth of understanding and skill sufficient to determine what the cut-off point is for treatable versus nontreatable gradations. With the caveat that evidence supporting the efficacy of cognitive treatments for personality disorders is slight and that such approaches require tailoring, a strong case is made for their validity. This timely volume both answers and reframes many stubborn questions about the efficacy of psychotherapy for treating personality disorders.

In this book, depression is explored as a form of loss that manifests itself as an inability to connect with others, to narrate one's own existence, to derive meaning from life experiences, and ultimately, to symbolically represent one's inner world. This loss has the capacity to evolve into a chronic condition that can be seen as a form of subjective darkness. A hermeneutic, interpretative phenomenological approach is used that seeks to preserve the individual voices of each narrative, while embedding their stories in theoretical and current literature on depression. The clinical cases of five individuals are used to elucidate some common characteristics of depressive experience. Themes of loss, death, darkness, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and unmetabolized pain are explored through a psychoanalytic lens that seeks to shed light on the underlying dynamics of chronic depression.

Born in Vienna in 1864, Bernard Hollander was a London-based psychiatrist. He is best known for being one of the main proponents of phrenology. This title, originally published in 1922 contains the reflections of the author on his experience as a physician specialising in nervous and mental disorders. He looks at a range of patients "suffering from character defects leading to moral failings..." finding that these cases of "moral derangement" come in all kinds. Very much of its time, he suggests that treating the causes should be with both physical and mental measures, including psychotherapy, which at the time consisted of "persuasion, suggestion, auto-suggestion, hypnotism, psychological analysis, as well as re-education." A fascinating glimpse into psychology from the early twentieth century.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

It's not about them, it's about all of us. Abnormal Psychology, 8/e brings both the science and personal aspects of abnormal psychology to life with a focus on evidence-based practice and emerging research. Authors Thomas F. Oltmanns and Robert E. Emery present the most cutting edge information on abnormal psychology by covering methods and treatment in context. Organized around the way students learn, this title helps readers understand the biological, psychological, and social perspectives of abnormal psychology. The 8th edition has been updated to include DSM-5 information throughout. The authors have integrated DSM-5 into the fabric of every chapter in a thorough, critical way, helping readers think critically about these changes and discuss the pros and cons of the DSM diagnostic systems. MyPschLab (available as additional purchase, not offered standard with this text) MyPsychLab is an integral part of the Oltmanns / Emery program. Engaging activities and assessments provide a teaching and learning system that helps students think like a explore abnormal psychology.With MyPsychLab, students can develop critical thinking skills through writing, simulate classic experiments and surveys, watch videos on research and applications, and explore the Visual Brain in 3-D.

This book, first published in 1637, was the first full-length treatise on suicide published in English. Originally published in 1988 as part of the Tavistock Classics in the History of Psychiatry series, the introduction by Michael MacDonald places the book in the context of attitudes to suicide in its day, as well as showing some of the ways that this theological book is also a study of the psychology and sociology of suicide. He discusses the evolution of the law of suicide and analyses the religious beliefs held about it at the time, before going on to look at John Sym himself and the structure of his book.

The revised and updated edition of the groundbreaking book Asperger's and Girls describes the unique challenges of females on the autism spectrum. In it, you'll follow the lives of women with autism through childhood, the social and academic challenges of the education system, and into the career and dating worlds. You'll also hear from top experts on crucial and often under-discussed subjects, including: Diagnosing girls with ASD Navigating the neurotypical social world Puberty, sexual health, and personal safety Independence, relationships, and marriage The importance of the right career And so much more. This book is a necessity for women with autism and those who love and support them. Direct advice from leading professionals and candid stories written by the indomitable women who have lived them send an important message: we are women with autism. Give us the right tools and we can change the world. First edition was winner of the Gold Award, Foreword Book of the Year.

As seen on The Today Show A page-turning memoir from a former opioid addict in an opioid addicted community-and an up-close look at America's new health crisis. Behind closed doors, millions of people abuse opioids. Nicholas Bush was one of them. In this beautifully poignant and refreshingly honest memoir, Bush boldly allows readers into his addiction-ravaged community. We see how heroin nearly claimed his life on multiple occasions, how it stole the lives of his young siblings and friends, and how it continues to wage a deadly toll on American neighborhoods-claiming thousands of lives and decreasing the average lifespan. But we also see that there is a way off of the devastating rollercoaster of opioid addiction, even for the most afflicted. Nicholas fights for recovery, claws his way out of a criminal livelihood, and finds his footing with faith and family, providing Americans with the inspirational story that is deeply needed today.

In American and NATO Veteran Reintegration, MaryCatherine McDonald and Gary Senecal examine mental health issues among former American service members. Data shows that American veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at significantly higher rates than veterans in other NATO ally countries involved in the war in Afghanistan. McDonald and Senecal argue that sociocultural factors, such as military training and civilian culture, have a dramatic impact on these rates.

In Decoding Madness, forensic neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Richard Lettieri gives a behind-the-scenes look at criminal psychology through case studies from his over 30 years of experience as a court-appointed and privately retained psychologist dealing with some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. From cases like Tina, who seriously injured her boyfriend and stabbed his son to death, to Michael who stabbed his mother in the back, believing she was the evil force causing the sun to descend upon the earth and gobble him up, Decoding Madness is filled with gripping stories and forensic analysis told from the author's perspective. Through psychological examination, it is his job to conclude whether these individuals are truly guilty and understand their actions are wrong, or if these individuals are not guilty due by reason of insanity and instead require treatment. Integrating insights from psychoanalysis, psychology and neuroscience, Dr. Lettieri contends that the legal system's view of human nature as governed by rationality is anachronistic. Nonetheless, he argues that our criminal justice system is slowly bending towards the humane. Decoding Madness offers a nuanced and in-depth psychological understating of defendants and their personal complexities beyond the usual clinical accounts offered by forensic psychologists. The book introduces the novel idea of the daimonic as a basic force of human nature that is the source of our constructive and destructive capacities. The venue of the criminal justice system, with its daily exposure to primal emotions, serves as a petri dish to investigate the full spectrum of our basic makeup.Dr. Lettieri brings these points home by presenting a nuts-and-bolts look into what it takes to complete psychological examinations of defendants accused of committing heinous crimes.

How can we understand the pull towards that which we fear: psychosis?

In this thought provoking book, Abensour proposes the idea of a temptation towards psychosis rather than a regression, as a response to the hatred or denial of the subject s origins. She shares her reflections on her psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients focusing on their struggle to achieve a coherent sense of a self that can inhabit a shared world. Abensour locates this struggle within the universal human struggle to achieve a balance between what we can and cannot allow ourselves to know about the reality of death and of our insignificance in the world.

Psychiatry suffers a lot of criticism, not least from within its own scientifically founded medical world. This book provides an account of mental health difficulties and how they are generally addressed in conventional medical circles, alongside critical reviews of the assumptions underpinning them to encourage more humanitarian perspectives.

Emotional Transformation Therapy: An Interactive Ecological Psychotherapy describes an entirely original approach to psychotherapy that drastically accelerates therapeutic outcomes in terms of speed and long-term effects. It includes an attachment-based interpersonal approach that increases the impact of the therapist-client bond and is amplified by the precise use of the client's visual ecology. This synthesis is called Emotional Transformation Therapy (R) (ETT (R)). Steven R. Vazquez, PhD, discusses four techniques that therapeutically harness the client's visual ecology. When the client is asked to view a maximally saturated spectral chart of colors, visual feedback provides immediate diagnostic information that helps the therapist to regulate emotional intensity or loss of awareness of emotions. A second technique offers an original form of directed eye movement that facilitates relief of emotional distress within minutes. A third technique uses peripheral eye stimulation to rapidly reduce extreme emotional or physical pain within seconds as well as to access previously unconscious thoughts, emotions, or memories related to the issue or symptom. The fourth technique uses the emission of precise wavelengths (colors) of light into the client's eyes during verbal processing that dramatically amplifies the effect of talk therapy and changes the brain in profound ways. Emotional Transformation Therapy uses theory, research, and case studies to show how this method can be applied to depression, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and complex trauma. Pre and post brain scans have shown that ETT (R) substantially changes the human brain. This method possesses the potential to revolutionize psychotherapy as we know it.

Perversion is a challenge for both theory and psychoanalytic practice. Juan Pablo Jimenez and Rodolfo Moguillansky, American psychoanalysts known for the originality of their contributions, offer us vivid and detailed clinical material of patients of analysis who presented various kinds of perversions, which they accompany by a comprehensive and accurate review of major psychoanalytic contributions on the subject, and their own contributions to it. The reader will find not only scholarship, but he will also find himself trapped in a thriller where the analyst is continually asked to leave his role as analyst to enter a game that fascinates and rejects. In a masterful way the authors describe their own internal vicissitudes in the treatment of these patients, the counter-transferential difficulties and how perversion becomes a source of inevitable collusions in the mind of the analyst. They take us to face, from an intersubjective perspective, to become aware of how the situations in which the classic transferential interpretation--when it is not attuned to the psychic reality of the patient--can retraumatize him and generate adverse events. We also count, as in thrillers, on researchers who help us review the facts and the storyline. The chapters of the book are accompanied by discussions with relevant well-known figures of psychoanalysis such as P. Fonagy, C. Featherson, and R. Krause. The end result enriches the reader with an exchange of opinions that is in agreement with the poliphonic character of current pluralistic psychoanalysis.

Based on twenty years of intense qualitative research, Transcending Trauma presents an integrated model of coping and adaptation after trauma that incorporates the best of recent work in the field with the expanded insights offered by Holocaust survivors. In the book s vignettes and interview transcripts, survivors of a broad range of traumas will recognize their own challenges, and mental-health professionals will gain invaluable insight into the dominant themes both of Holocaust survivors and of trauma survivors more generally. Together, the authors and contributors Sheryl Perlmutter Bowen, Hannah Kliger, Lucy Raizman, Juliet Spitzer and Emilie Scherz Passow have transformed qualitative narrative analysis and framed for us a new and profound understanding of survivorship. Their study has illuminated universal aspects of the recovery from trauma, and Transcending Trauma makes a vital contribution to our understanding of how survivors find meaning after traumatic events.

Accompanying Transcending Trauma is a CD of full-text life histories that documents the survivor experience. In seven comprehensive interviews, survivors paint a picture of life before and after war and trauma: their own feelings, beliefs, and personalities as well as those of their family; their struggles to deal with loss and suffering; and the ways in which their family relationships were able, in some cases, to mediate the transmission of trauma across generations and help the survivors transcend the trauma of their experiences.

Alcohol, opiates, cocaine and marijuana, among other drugs, have been used and abused for millennia. Prior to the disease model approach to drug addiction, which posits that addiction is a psychological and biological problem and that sufferers are victims, societies had a workable solution: let people consume what they want, and let informal cultural controls reinforce responsible behavior. Legal sanctions were reserved for any use that affected the safety of others. Blowing Smoke proposes an approach to the war on drugs that returns us to the pre-disease-model era. Dr. Reznicek asserts that addiction is not a medical problem to be treated in rehab or by prohibiting substance use. Rather, he debunks the disease model, arguing that it has exacerbated the problem by telling drug abusers that they are not responsible for their behavior, that they are sick, that they are not to blame. He skillfully argues for a new approach to drug use and abuse that requires a shift in the way we fight the war on drugs. Dr. Reznicek provides a new framework for understanding drug abuse: the habit model. Habits are practiced as long as they provide comfort, and are abandoned when they cause pain. The habit model is more consistent with current neuroscientific knowledge and it accounts for the widely observed phenomenon that most substance abusers don't change until they "hit bottom," the point where the consequences of drug use finally outweigh its benefits. Using the habit model, Dr. Reznicek suggests the solution to the drug problem is to turn back the clock, and to take lessons from societies that use social controls and consequences to deal with addiction and drug abuse. He recommends the legalization of drugs for adults, the implementation of social practices to dissuade abusers, and the end to the use of rehab as a way of handling addiction. Blowing Smoke shows how such an iconoclastic approach can work for us today.