Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a “candid, insightful” memoir​.

Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself.

He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson.

As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives.

As the average life expectancy continues to rise, the long-held assumption that age is a protective factor against criminal offending and victimisation is being challenged. Recognising that people who commit offences later in life are an overlooked group in criminology, Not Your Usual Suspect is the first collection to assemble research on different forms of violence and abuse perpetrated by individuals predominantly over 60. Examining intersections of gender, crime and age, this collection highlights how the increase in older people entering the criminal justice system has emphasised the unpreparedness of policies and practices for dealing with this cohort. Moving beyond existing research and policy which has focused primarily on those who are sentenced in later life for crimes they committed as younger adults - so called historic crimes - the chapters pay crucial attention to those who commit offences as long-term, repeat or first-time offenders in later life. Offering an important contribution for researchers across the criminological, gerontological, feminist and elder abuse fields, Not Your Usual Suspect expands existing research to consider the behaviour and drivers of older offenders, addressing the increasingly important issue of how the needs of this group can be addressed by policy and practice.

In Transfers of Belonging, Erdmute Alber traces the history of child fostering in northern Benin from the pre-colonial past to the present by pointing out the embeddedness of child foster practices and norms in a wider political process of change. Child fostering was, for a long time, not just one way of raising children, but seen as the appropriate way of doing so. This changed profoundly with the arrival of European ideas about birth parents being the 'right' parents, but also with the introduction of schooling and the differentiation of life chances. Besides providing deep historical and ethnographical insights, Transfers of Belonging offers a new theoretical frame for conceptualizing parenting.

As people grow older, cultural issues arise. Recognizing how social influences guide and restrict people leads to a better understanding of one's self and helps people as they age. Multicultural Perspectives on Gender and Aging provides emerging research on midlife issues, physical aspects of aging, and the emotional value in the context of the culture in which people are living. While highlighting topics such as elderly disabilities, quality of life, and gender dimensions, this publication explores self-esteem in older members of society. This book is an important resource for academicians, healthcare professionals, professionals, researchers, and students seeking current research on the social and cultural characteristics of growing old.

Diversity and Child Development: Essential Readings offers students an essential perspective on diversity and equality in childhood studies. The anthology features a selection of carefully curated articles that introduce readers to theories, definitions, and a variety of techniques that can be applied in diverse settings. Additionally, the text provides numerous studies that help students appreciate and understand the diversity in different social categories in terms of race, ethnic background, class, sexual orientation, language, religions, exceptions, and disabilities. The book is divided into four units. In Units I and II, readings address human development, diversity in childhood settings, and underscore the importance of recognizing, respecting, and helping individuals build positive and healthy identities in terms of their race and ethnicity in the early childhood classroom. Unit III discusses how recognition and acceptance of a child's disabilities and specific needs are essential for successful teaching, the learning process, and the overall performance outcome. The readings in Unit IV focus on cultural sustainability, tolerance, and respecting diversity amount immigrant children and their families. Gathering critical literature within the discipline, Diversity and Child Development is an ideal text for courses in early childhood development and early childhood education.

Psychology and Geriatrics demonstrates the value of integrating psychological knowledge and insight with medical training and geriatric care. Leading physician and geropsychologist contributors come together to share their collective wisdom about topics that are as emotionally uncomfortable as they are universally relevant. As the world struggles to respond to unprecedented gains in life expectancy and an explosion of new retirees living with chronic health conditions, this collaboration could not be more timely. This exceptional resource is, itself, evidence that physicians and psychologists can work together to optimize truly patient-centered geriatric care. Here at last is a scientifically rigorous, evidence-based response to the aging mind and body from those most expertly trained.

Are artistic engagements evolving, or attracting more attention? The range of artistic protest actions shows how the globalisation of art is also the globalisation of art politics. Here, based on multi-site field research, we follow artists from the MENA countries, Latin America, and Africa along their committed transnational trajectories, whether these are voluntary or the result of exile. With this global and decentred approach, the different repertoires of engagement appear, in all their dimensions, including professional ones. In the face of political disillusionment, these aesthetic interventions take on new meanings, as artivists seek alternative modes of social transformation and production of shared values. Contributors are: Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Sebastien Boulay, Sarah Dornhof, Simon Dubois, Shyam Iskander, Sabrina Melenotte, Franck Mermier, Rayane Al Rammal, Kirsten Scheid, Pinar Selek, and Marion Slitine.

The existential exclusion of youths from the mainframe of the current global order is an increasingly pressing issue. Research to date has proven youths struggle to survive and be relevant within current systemic and institutional arrangements, resulting in a major existential and generational problem. One of two volumes filling a gap in the literature in understanding and responding to this grand challenge, this edited collection focuses particularly on contexts of economic, educational and governance concerns that confront youths, the complex consequences of these issues, their experience of exclusion, and sustainable pathways forward. Addressing youth issues from around the world, Youth Exclusion and Empowerment in the Contemporary Global Order engages with practical, pragmatic, intellectual and policy perspectives. Delving into the lived experiences of young people in many countries, the chapters bring together a rich collection of research from diverse methodologies. Revealing how young people appear trapped, strategically excluded, and helplessly frustrated by the supposedly supportive institutional frameworks of society, the authors tackle this question: how can young people become empowered and socially active in this context? The original materials, literature and data collated across both volumes of Youth Exclusion and Empowerment in the Contemporary Global Order, addressing policy and practice issues for youth, present a cutting edge and innovative major contribution to the field of global youth studies.

Transforming Teen Behavior: Parent-Teen Protocols for Psychosocial Skills Training is a clinician's guide for treating teens exhibiting emotional and behavioral disturbances. Unlike other protocols, the program involves both parents and teens together, is intended for use by varied provider types of differing training and experience, and is modular in nature to allow flexibility of service. This protocol is well-established, standardized, evidence-based, and interdisciplinary. There are 6 modules outlining parent training techniques and 6 parallel and complementary modules outlining psychosocial skills training techniques for teens. The program is unique in its level of parent involvement and the degree to which it is explicit, structured, and standardized. Developed at Children's Hospital Colorado (CHCO), and in use for 8+years, the book summarizes outcome data indicating significant, positive treatment effects.

Social media and digital tools permeate the everyday lives of young people. In the early stages of commentary about the impact of the digital age on civic life, debates revolved around whether the Internet enhanced or discouraged civic and political action. Since then we have seen new media move to center stage in politics and activism--from the 2008 US election to the 2011 Arab Spring to the Occupy movement. We have also seen new patterns in how different sub-groups make use of digital media. These developments have pushed people to move beyond questions about whether new media are good or bad for civic life, to ask instead: how, under what conditions, and for whom, do new digital tools become resources for political critique and action by the young? This book will provide a platform for a new wave of scholarship about young people's political participation in the digital age. We define "youth" or "young people" as roughly between the ages of 12 and 25. We include perspectives from political science, education, cultural studies, learning sciences, and youth development. We draw on the framework developed by the MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics (Cohen, Kahne, Bowyer, Middaugh, & Rogowski, 2012), which defines participatory politics as, "interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern."

In rural Mexico, people often say that Alzheimer's does not exist. ""People do not have Alzheimer's because they don't need to worry,"" said one Oaxacan, explaining that locals lack the stresses that people face ""over there"" - that is, in the modern world. Alzheimer's and related dementias carry a stigma. In contrast to the way elders are revered for remembering local traditions, dementia symbolizes how modern families have forgotten the communal values that bring them together. In Caring for the People of the Clouds, psychologist Jonathan Yahalom provides an emotionally evocative, story-rich analysis of family caregiving for Oaxacan elders living with dementia. Based on his extensive research in a Zapotec community, Yahalom presents the conflicted experience of providing care in a setting where illness is steeped in stigma and locals are concerned about social cohesion. Traditionally, the Zapotec, or ""people of the clouds,"" respected their elders and venerated their ancestors. Dementia reveals the difficulty of upholding those ideals today. Yahalom looks at how dementia is understood in a medically pluralist landscape, how it is treated in a setting marked by social tension, and how caregivers endure challenges among their families and the broader community. Yahalom argues that caregiving involves more than just a response to human dependency; it is central to regenerating local values and family relationships threatened by broader social change. In so doing, the author bridges concepts in mental health with theory from medical anthropology. Unique in its interdisciplinary approach, this book advances theory pertaining to cross-cultural psychology and develops anthropological insights about how aging, dementia, and caregiving disclose the intimacies of family life in Oaxaca.

Childhood Deployed examines the reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone. Based on eighteen months of participant-observer ethnographic fieldwork and ten years of follow-up research, the book argues that there is a fundamental disconnect between the Western idea of the child soldier and the individual lived experiences of the child soldiers of Sierra Leone. Susan Shepler contends that the reintegration of former child soldiers is a political process having to do with changing notions of childhood as one of the central structures of society. For most Westerners the tragedy of the idea of "child soldier" centers around perceptions of lost and violated innocence. In contrast, Shepler finds that for most Sierra Leoneans, the problem is not lost innocence but the horror of being separated from one's family and the resulting generational break in youth education. Further, Shepler argues that Sierra Leonean former child soldiers find themselves forced to strategically perform (or refuse to perform) as the"child soldier" Western human rights initiatives expect in order to most effectively gain access to the resources available for their social reintegration. The strategies don't always work-in some cases, Shepler finds, Western human rights initiatives do more harm than good. While this volume focuses on the well-known case of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, it speaks to the larger concerns of childhood studies with a detailed ethnography of people struggling over the situated meaning of the categories of childhood.It offers an example of the cultural politics of childhood in action, in which the very definition of childhood is at stake and an important site of political contestation.

This collection of essays by a variety of scholars, compiled to celebrate the silver anniversary of The International Journal of Children's Rights, builds on work already in the literature to reveal where we are now at and how the law concerned with children is reacting to new developments. New, or relatively new subject matter is explored, such as film classification, intersex genital mutilation, the right to development. Rights within the context of sport are given an airing. We are offered new perspectives on discipline, on the significance of "rights flowing downhill," on the so-called six " General Principles." The uses to which the CRC is put in legal reasoning in some legal systems is critically examined. Though not intended as an audit, the collection offers a fascinating image of where the field of children's right is at now, the progress that has been made, and what issues will require work in the future.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the University of Sussex, UK. How can we know about children's everyday lives in a digitally saturated world? What is it like to grow up in and through new media? What happens between the ages of 7 and 15 and does it make sense to think of maturation as mediated? These questions are explored in this innovative book, which synthesizes empirical documentation of children's everyday lives with discussions of key theoretical and methodological concepts to provide a unique guide to researching childhood and youth. Researching Everyday Childhoods begins by asking what recent 'post-empirical' and 'post-digital' frameworks can offer researchers of children and young people's lives, particularly in researching and theorising how the digital remakes childhood and youth. The key ideas of time, technology and documentation are then introduced and are woven throughout the book's chapters. Research-led, the book is informed by two state of the art empirical studies - 'Face 2 Face' and 'Curating Childhoods' - and links to a dynamic multimedia archive generated by the studies.

What is wrong with young people today? This question has captured the concerns of the older generation about the habits and attitudes of the adolescents in their midst. The assumption is that there is indeed something wrong with young people. Even Plato must have rolled his eyes, as he relates his diatribe about the adolescents of Greece. Is the current generation of adolescents less motivated or less focused than their parents? How will they respond to the challenges facing them as they progress to adulthood? When, in fact, do they become adults? Although every generation draws upon their own unique and varied experiences, the speed of our current societal changes has created a very different adolescent passage for contemporary youth than ever before. The world as we know it has changed significantly and because of it, much of today's youth is decidedly different from their parents. Adolescence itself has shifted dramatically. Young children are displaying adolescent behaviors well before they are ready to act on or understand their meaning, and older adolescents are staying perpetual children. As one writer put it, "the conveyer belt that transported adolescents into adulthood has broken down." This book provides an interdisciplinary collection of research on the constants and challenges faced by young people today. Failure to launch? Social media? Economic stagnation? For the generation that is coming of age in a post-terrorist world and in the midst of economic upheaval, the challenges might seem insurmountable. However, in this book, scholars from across the academy, from sociology, psychology, education, philosophy, science, and business, explain how the young people today are responding to the constants of growth and change in adolescence and the unique challenges of life in the 21st century.

Loneliness in Older Adults: Effects, Prevention, and Treatment analyzes loneliness as a complex phenomenon, taking into account the most recent contributions from neuroscience, psychology, medicine and sociology. This volume describes this phenomenon from an interdisciplinary point of view, with special emphasis on older people from a plural and heterogeneous perspective: older people in general, older immigrants, older women, older LGTBI, etc. Faced with the impact of this emerging issue, this book provides a comprehensive knowledge of loneliness, contributing scientific knowledge to the practice of evidence. Tools are also provided for professionals, providing intervention protocols with debates and proposals, and effective digital resources to combat it. Tables, images, and tools guide students, academics, and professionals step-by-step in solving the cases raised, through an integrated practice. There is no work that develops this theme from such a plural and pragmatic perspective, covering all the dimensions of loneliness in each of the thematic axes: psychological, neurological, social, and health. Readers are provided feedback for all the knowledge for a comprehensive scientific knowledge based on evidence and given the necessary instrumental skills related to being social and the functioning of our brain. This book is aimed at a very plural audience of researchers, academics and professionals in the social and behavioral sciences including psychologists, sociologists, social workers, anthropologists, and also professionals in the health sciences, among others.

This book engages with the experience of space and time in youth cultures across the world. Putting together contemporary case studies on young transnationalists, young glocals and young protesters in cities on the five continents, it analyzes new agoras and chronotopes in global cities. It is based on a selection of papers first presented to the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee 34 session on Youth Cultures, Space and Time that took place during the ISA World Congresses of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden (2010), and in Yokohama, Japan (2014). The value of this volume for youth researchers worldwide is twofold. Firstly, the chapters exemplify innovative approaches to understanding the fluid and dynamic urban space-time dimension in which young people's cultural and bodily practices are located. Secondly, the volume offers a transnational perspective. Chapter contributors come from countries across the world, and give account of very diverse youth culture phenomena. They represent both established researchers and new voices in youth research. Contributors are: Oscar Aguilera Ruiz, Ilenya Camozzi, Carles Feixa, Vitor Sergio Ferreira, Liliana Galindo Ramirez, Elham Golpoush-Nezhad, Leila Jeolas, Jeffrey J. Juris, Hagen Kordes, Sofia Laine, Carmen Leccardi, Pam Nilan, Jordi Nofre, Ndukaeze Nwabueze, Luca Queirolo Palmas, Yannis Pechtelidis, Geoffrey Pleyers, Jose Sanchez Garcia, Mahmood Shahabi. Youth, Space and Time is now available in paperback for individual customers.

This text provides readers with an in-depth understanding of the essential aspects of youth substance abuse-an important contemporary personal, social, and public health issue. Humans have been using natural and synthetic chemicals for at least two millennia-primarily for the purpose of treating medical problems, but also for recreational purposes. The 2014 Monitoring the Future survey of eighth, tenth, and twelfth grade students indicates a general decline in the use of illicit drugs over the last two decades. On the other hand, perceptions among youth that certain types of drug use-like marijuana and e-cigarettes-are harmless are growing. Youth Substance Abuse: A Reference Handbook provides an overview of the history and development of youth substance abuse along with a discussion of the medical, social, psychological, legal, and economic issues associated with youth substance abuse both in the United States and other parts of the world. The book begins with a comprehensive introduction to the subject of youth substance abuse that explains how modern societies have reached the point where abuse of both legal and illegal substances is a major health issue in many nations. Readers will learn about the effects of substances such as cocaine, marijuana, and heroin as well as substances that are typically legal but have deleterious health, social, or psychological effects, such as tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs, and electronic cigarettes. Subsequent chapters address how and why youth substance abuse has become a problem in the United States and other countries, the demographics of this widespread problem, the direct and indirect effects of youth substance abuse and addiction, and the range of services and methods that are available for treating substance abuse. Presents individual perspectives on youth substance abuse issues that provide readers with a very personal outlook on specific aspects of the topic Provides readers with broad coverage of current issues and topics in substance abuse by adolescents as well as a historical perspective of how this problem has developed in the United States over the past century Includes a chapter of primary documents sourced from a number of laws and court cases dealing with various aspects of youth substance abuse