There is increasing recognition that emotional distress plays a significant part in the onset of psychosis, the experience of psychosis itself and in the unfolding of recovery that follows. This book brings together leading international experts to explore the role of emotion and emotion regulation in the development and recovery from psychosis. Psychosis and Emotion offers extensive clinical material and cutting-edge research with a focus on: the diverse theoretical perspectives on the importance of emotion in psychosis the interpersonal, systemic and organisational context of recovery from psychosis and the implications for emotional distress the implications of specific perspectives for promoting recovery from psychosis With thorough coverage of contemporary thinking, including psychoanalytic, cognitive, developmental, evolutionary and neurobiological, this book will be a valuable resource to clinicians and psychological therapists working in the field.

This volume examines special issues associated with providing services and guidance to African American men. Although this group of men is like any other in its struggle with its social and economic problems, African American men experience a higher rate of murder, imprisonment, unemployment and racism. The contributors to this book provide a broad, interdisciplinary view of the possible solutions to the different problems facing African American men.

* The only resource available that focus solely on using clay work within art therapy to help women with negative body image * The case studies presented were researched as part of a PhD, examining the benefits for women of exploring body image through clay work within art therapy practice. The results of the research point to clay work as a significant resource, providing a positive and contained way to find personal acceptance and develop a balanced view of their body/person as a 'whole' rather than as a collection of 'imperfect' parts * As well as delineating the results of the study - offering both clinical and practical implications - this book provides a full protocol for the research and evaluation methods carried out, enabling further replication of the intervention, research, and analysis by other therapists

As healthcare costs rise, so too do the costs of assessment instruments, critical tools for mental health professionals. While some traditional assessment instruments have become prohibitively expensive, as with many other fields, the Internet offers a host of more affordable and equitable alternative assessment tools at little or no cost. The pitfall of this alternative, thus far, has been the lack of vetting and quality assessment. Assessing Common Mental Health and Addiction Issues With Free-Access Instruments fills this gap by providing the first analysis and assessment of these tools, provided by some of the leading names in mental health assessment instruments. This resource identifies the most efficient free access instruments and provides summary information about administration, scoring, interpretation, psychometric integrity, and strengths and weaknesses. The book is organized around the most common broad range issues encountered by helping professionals, and whenever possible, a link to the instrument itself is provided. This is an essential text for all mental health professionals looking to expand the scope and range of their assessment instruments.

For professionals working with people who experience severe psychosis, increasing empirical evidence for the benefits of psychotherapy for psychosis has been especially welcome. Given the limitations of medication-only approaches and the need for an expanded perspective, including for those diagnosed with schizophrenia, Surviving, Existing, or Living takes a fresh look at severe psychosis, offering a heuristic model for understanding psychosis along a continuum of severity, from the extreme experience of acutely impairing psychosis to a more enriched life experience. Pamela Fuller emphasizes that facilitating recovery from psychosis requires appropriately and effectively matching the type and timing of interventions to client readiness and capabilities. The need to consider each individual according to which of three primary issues/phases preoccupy the person with psychosis is essential for tailoring treatment. She identifies these phases as: Surviving Phase - preoccupation with survival Existing Phase - preoccupation with restriction of life experiences in order to cope Living Phase - preoccupation with quality of life and relationships Surviving, Existing, or Living examines the rationale for these three phases, and provides details of phase-specific treatment interventions as well as a 'how to' guide for facilitating engagement and for determining 'what to do when,' including with those experiencing acute, severe psychosis. Rich clinical case examples are provided to highlight concepts and the types of interventions. Trauma-specific and group interventions for psychosis are also described, as well as ways to foster resilience in the professional who works with individuals with psychosis. Surviving, Existing, or Living offers a detailed guide to help individuals experiencing psychosis move from suffering to recovery, beyond surviving or existing toward more fully living. The book will be essential reading for professionals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, counseling, medicine, social work, nursing, occupational, recreational, and vocational therapies, experience-based experts, and students.

Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships draws on current research, a wide variety of clinical modalities, and thirty years of clinical work with stepfamily members to describe the special challenges stepfamilies face. The book presents the concept of "stepfamily architecture" and the five challenges it creates, and delineates three different levels of strategies psychoeducation, building interpersonal skills, and intrapsychic work for meeting those challenges in dozens of different settings.

The model is designed to be useful both to stepfamily members themselves and to a wide variety of practitioners, from a highly trained clinician who needs to know how and when to work on all three levels, to a school counselor or clergy person who may work on the first two levels but refer out for level three. It will also be useful to educators, judges, mediators, lawyers and medical personnel who will practice on the first level, but need to understand the other two to guide their work."

Contents:
I.H. Gotlib, H.S. Kurtzman, M.C. Blehar, The Cognitive Psychology of Depression: Introduction to the Special Issue. Z.V. Segal, M. Gemar, Changes in Cognitive Organisation for Negative Self-referent Material Following Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Depression: A Primed Stroop Study. E. Gilboa, I.H. Gotlib, Cognitive Biases and Affect Persistence in Previously Dysphoric and Never-dysphoric Individuals. L.B. Alloy, L.Y. Abramson, L.A. Murray, W.G. Whitehouse, M.E. Hogan, Self-referent Information-processing in Individuals at High and Low Cognitive Risk for Depression. P.T. Hertel, On the Contributions of Deficient Cognitive Control to Memory Impairments in Depression. J. Miranda, J.I. Gross, Cognitive Vulnerability, Depression, and the Mood-state Dependent Hypothesis: Is Out of Sight Out of Mind? E. Eich, D. Macaulay, R.W. Lam, Mania, Depression, and Mood Dependent Memory. J. Garber, N.S. Robinson, Cognitive Vulnerability in Children at Risk for Depression. W. Heller, J.B. Nitschke, Regional Brain Activity in Emotion: A Framework for Understanding Cognition in Depression. I.H. Gotlib, H.S. Kurtzman, M.C. Blehar, Cognition and Depression: Issues and Future Directions.

Integrating groundbreaking research on neuroplasticity, brain development and therapeutic change, this book details a novel neurobiological and psychotherapeutic paradigm-and reveals how therapists can use this paradigm for more precise and successful treatment. Clients arrive to therapy troubled by deeply ingrained neural circuits and emotional habits, such as "I am unlovable and incapable of love". The authors illustrate how integrating self-affirming, nonconscious emotional resources-or brain systems-changes rigid, maladaptive neural circuits. New, adaptive circuits inhibit toxic, dysfunctional patterns, releasing nonconscious emotions, such as fear, grief, guilt and shame. This allows the emergence of more complex and flexible mental functioning and produces more successful psychotherapeutic outcomes. Developed by two psychotherapists, with more than six collective decades of experience, this model reveals treatment strategies and procedures that harness the power of neuroplasticity, enabling the patient's mind to change the structure of their brain.

Many clinicians and researchers are convinced that there is an overlap between affective and schizophrenic spectra. In this book, an international team of experts discuss aspects of comorbidity, genetic models, clinical course, phenomenology and therapies. This is the first comprehensive overview of the schizoaffective spectra. Challenging cases presenting clinical and paraclinical features of both spectra are surprisingly numerous. Not only the phenomenology but also the course, outcome and treatment of such cases have their own characteristics. Recent research shows that the overlap also involves genetics and biological processes related to psychotic disorders. Within the overlap of affective and schizophrenic spectra it is possible to identify some groups of disorders having similar clinical and non-clinical features: the 'schizoaffective' group, 'Acute and Transient Psychotic Disorder' or 'Brief Psychosis', and other groups found in so-called 'Atypical Forms'.

The clinician needs to make sense of many client experiences in the course of daily practice: do these experiences reflect the simple product of complex neurochemical activity, or do they represent another dynamic involving the subjective self? When research findings from the neurosciences are applied to clinical psychology, reductionist thinking is typically followed, but this creates problems for the clinical practitioner. In this book Tony Schneider draws together the three strands of philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology to explore the mind/body question as it affects the clinician. Taking a position more closely aligned with dualism, he argues for the utility in making distinctions between brain activity and 'I' - the subjective self - both in general psychological functioning and in psychopathology. Schneider considers traditional psychological topics contextualized by neuroscience research and the mind/body issue, as well as applying the ideas to various areas of clinical practice. Topics include: -the mind and body from the clinician's perspective -fundamental aspects of the role and mechanics of the brain -the developing self and the relationship of 'I' with the self and with others -psychological functioning such as focus and memory, sleep and dreaming, and emotions and pain. The idea that 'I am not my brain' will resonate with many clinicians, and is systematically argued for in clinical literature and neuropsychology research here for the first time. The book will be of particular interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and clinicians who wish to incorporate advances in neuroscience research in the conceptualization of their clinical work, and are looking for a working model that allows them to do so.

In this book, a distinguished historian of medicine surveys the basic elements that have constituted psychological healing over the centuries. Dr. Stanley W. Jackson shows that healing practices, whether they come from the worlds of medicine, religion, or philosophy, share certain elements that transcend space and time. Drawing on medical writings from classical Greece and Rome to the present, as well as on philosophical and religious writings, Dr. Jackson shows that the basic ingredients of psychological healing—which have survived changes of name, the fall of their theoretical contexts, and the waning of social support in different historical eras—are essential factors in our modern psychotherapies and in healing contexts in general.

The gap between psychotherapeutic practice and clinical theory is ever widening. Therapists still don't know what role interpersonal relations play in the development of the most common psychopathologies. Valeria Ugazio bridges this gap by examining phobias, obsessive-compulsions, eating disorders, and depression in the context of the family, using an intersubjective approach to personality. Her concept of "semantic polarities" gives a groundbreaking perspective to the construction of meaning in the family and other interpersonal contexts. At no point is theory left in the wasteland of abstraction. The concreteness of the many case studies recounted, and examples taken from well-known novels, will allow readers to immediately connect the topics discussed with their own experience.

This book explores what the American Civil Liberties Union calls the "third era" in cyberspace, in which filters "fundamentally alter the architectural structure of the Internet, with significant implications for free speech." Although courts and nongovernmental organizations increasingly insist upon constitutional and other legal guarantees of a freewheeling Internet, multi-national corporations compete to produce tools and strategies for making it more predictable. When Google attempted to improve our access to information containing in books and the World Wide Web, copyright litigation began to tie up the process of making content searchable, and resulted in the wrongful removal of access to thousands if not millions of works. Just as the courts were insisting that using trademarks online to criticize their owners is First Amendment-protected, corporations and trade associations accelerated their development of ways to make Internet companies liable for their users' infringing words and actions, potentially circumventing free speech rights. And as social networking and content-sharing sites have proliferated, so have the terms of service and content-detecting tools for detecting, flagging, and deleting content that makes one or another corporation or trade association fear for its image or profits. The book provides a legal history of Internet regulation since the mid-1990s, with a particular focus on efforts by patent, trademark, and copyright owners to compel Internet firms to monitor their online offerings and remove or pay for any violations of the rights of others. This book will be of interest to students of law, communications, political science, government and policy, business, and economics, as well as anyone interested in free speech and commerce on the internet.

The Electrified Mind helps therapists understand and empathize with patients who rely heavily upon cell phones and the internet for the purposes of self-expression as well as for defensive avoidance of actual interpersonal contact. The chapters by distinguished mental health professionals delineate therapeutic strategies for dealing with the dilemmas that arise in working with children, adolescents, and adults excessively involved with cyberspace at the cost of meaningful human relationships.

This book looks at dreams from a 21st century perspective. Taking inspiration from Freud 's insights, the contributors pursue psychoanalytic interest into both neuroscience and the modern psychoanalytic consulting room. The chapters cover laboratory research on dreaming alongside the modern clinical use of dreams and link together clinical and empirical research integrating classical ideas with the plurality of psychoanalytic theoretical constructs available to modern researchers. Dreams are created and psychoanalysts writing about dreams have traditionally represented the cutting edge of clinical and theoretical development. This book is no exception to this and many of the contributions, as well as the epistemological positions taken by the writers, represent a kind of radical openness to new ways of thinking about the clinical situation and about theory, which will be necessary for psychoanalysis as a discipline in the coming years. In line with the ambition of the editors of the volume, the book represents an integration of theories and disciplines, which creates the scientific context for modern psychoanalysis. Linking clinical research to extra-clinical research via the royal road of dreaming runs through all the contributions which cover dreaming as it sheds light on clinical conditions such as depression, trauma or dreams as they form a core aspect of clinical work, be that as a co-construction or as shared play between therapist and patients. The book provides insight through dreams to understand mental function in all clinical situations and across all conditions.

Adler, Freud, and Jung were the key figures in the development of psychology as we know it. Yet, while Freud and Jung are widely studied and debated, Adler is far less well known. Nonetheless, as Loren Grey demonstrates, some of Adler's novel early precepts are valuable tools for personality diagnosis, even to this day. Examples include his belief in the social equality of all human beings, regardless of race, position, class, or gender; that all human behavior is logical--however bizarre or psychotic its goal may be; that mistaken precepts about others, being learned, can be unlearned; and in the importance of understanding the dynamics behind the family interactions with particular emphasis on the ordinal position of each child in the family constellation. Many of these ideas, though ignored or rejected by the early Freudians and Jungians, have become part of the post-Freudian movements in psychology and counseling. In this book, Grey systematically examines the life and ideas of Alfred Adler as well as the approaches taken by his leading students. Many of Adler's early supporters felt that he was 100 years ahead of his time; Grey demonstrates that many of his approaches can serve humanity well in the new millennium. This text provides an important survey for students, scholars, and practitioners of psychology.

The enormous human and economic toll of Alzheimer's Disease in societies in which more and more people are living into old age is well-recognized. Scientists and practitioners alike have been working to limit it. Their major focus has been patients in the later stages of the disease, when dementia is fully established. Yet patients in the early stages of cognitive decline, far more numerous, often still living independently with family members, present a bewildering variety of challenges. Bringing together leading authors with diverse expertise, this Handbook offers the first comprehensive overview of approaches to the management of early-stage issues. The authors summarize the important implications of the latest research in their own fields for: * the recognition and formal diagnosis of cognitive problems; * the assessment of specific difficulties in daily functioning; * the formulation of a management plan integrating pharmacological, neuropsychological, behavioral, and cognitive strategies; and * the facilitation and support of caregivers' efforts. All professionals involved in any way with the care of early Alzheimer's patients and their families will find this book an indispensable reference.

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.

Psychologists are under increasing pressure to demonstrate the ecological validity of their assessment procedures--to show that the recommendations concluding their evaluations are relevant to urgent concerns in the legal and social policy arenas, such as predicting dangerousness, awarding compensation, and choosing a custodial parent. How much damage does a referred patient have? Who or what "caused" the damage? What impact will it have on his or her future life, work, and family? And what can be done to remediate the damage? The purpose of this book is to provide sound objective methods for answering these questions. It integrates the knowledge of experienced practitioners who offer state-of-the-art summaries of the best current approaches to evaluating difficult cases with that of basic theorists who describe emerging methods in both predictive and inferential statistics, such as Bayesian networks, that have proven their value in other scientific fields. Arguably, the enterprise of psychological assessment is so interdependent with that of data analysis that attempts to make inferences without consideration of statistical implications is malpractice. Prediction in Forensic and Neuropsychology: Sound Statistical Practices clarifies the process of hypothesis testing and helps to push the clinical interpretation of psychological data into the 21st century. It constitutes a vital resource for all the stakeholders in the assessment process--practitioners, researchers, attorneys, and policymakers.

Family-Centered Treatment With Struggling Young Adults is an indispensible guidebook to the unique set of problems and opportunities that families face when young adults are experiencing difficulty pulling anchor and setting sail. Renowned clinician Brad Sachs, PhD, provides both a conceptual framework for understanding the reasons behind the increasing number of young adults who are unable to achieve psychological and financial self-reliance and a treatment framework that will enable practitioners to help these young adults and their families to get unstuck and experience age/stage-appropriate growth and development. In Family-Centered Treatment With Struggling Young Adults, clinicians will gain an in-depth understanding of the complex psychological challenges that parents and young adults face as the latter forges a path towards success and self-reliance. Moreoever, they'll come away from the book having learned an innovative approach to sponsoring family engagement ant the launching stage-one that reduces tension, resolves conflicts, and promotes evolution and differentiation on both generations' parts.

What role does animal like and infantile communication play in life and in psychoanalysis? How are painful childhood experiences recreated with people who are nothing like the original family? What are the roles of loving and horrible feelings in psychoanalytic cure? In Emotional Communication, Paul Geltner places the pre-linguistic type of communication that is shared with infants and animals at the core of the psychoanalytic relationship. He shows how emotional communication intertwines with language, permeating every moment of human interaction, and becoming a primary way that people involuntarily recreate painful childhood relationships in current life. Emotional Communication integrates observations from a number of psychoanalytic schools in a cohesive but non-eclectic model. Geltner expands psychoanalytic technique beyond the traditional focus on interpretation and the contemporary focus on authenticity to include the use feelings that precisely address the client's repetitive patterns of misery. The author breaks down analytic interventions into their cognitive and emotional components, describing how each engages a different part of the client's mind and serves a different function. He explains the role of emotional communication in psychoanalytic technique both in classical interpretations and in non-interpretive interventions that use the analyst's feelings to amplify the therapeutic power of the psychoanalytic relationship. Offering a clear alternative to both Classical and contemporary Relational and Intersubjective approaches to understanding and treating clients in psychoanalysis, Paul Geltner presents a theory of communication and maturation that will interest psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and those concerned with the subtleties of human relatedness.

As healthcare costs rise, so too do the costs of assessment instruments, critical tools for mental health professionals. While some traditional assessment instruments have become prohibitively expensive, as with many other fields, the Internet offers a host of more affordable and equitable alternative assessment tools at little or no cost. The pitfall of this alternative, thus far, has been the lack of vetting and quality assessment. "Assessing Common Mental Health and Addiction Issues With Free-Access Instruments" fills this gap by providing the first analysis and assessment of these tools, provided by some of the leading names in mental health assessment instruments. This resource identifies the most efficient free access instruments and provides summary information about administration, scoring, interpretation, psychometric integrity, and strengths and weaknesses. The book is organized around the most common broad range issues encountered by helping professionals, and whenever possible, a link to the instrument itself is provided. This is an essential text for all mental health professionals looking to expand the scope and range of their assessment instruments.

Beauty is often an invisible yet potent presence in clinical work. The Psychology of Beauty: Creation of a Beautiful Self, by Ellen Sinkman, LCSW, addresses the vital importance of beauty, its sources, and manifestations in everyone s lives including psychotherapy patients. The ability to be mesmerizingly beautiful and beautifully creative, strivings toward mastering beauty, and wishes to be transformed are universal desires. During psychotherapy, patients manifest or defend against these forces. So it is striking that patients as well as therapists often overlook or dismiss issues about creating beauty in themselves. The book introduces this seeming contradiction with the ancient myth of Pygmalion and his sculpture of a beautiful woman. These enduring mythic figures represent the wish to emerge as a beautiful being and the wish for the power to create beauty in another. Patients in psychotherapy often pursue these elusive goals outside clinical work, rather than within treatment. Manifold venues enticingly promise reinvention. These activities may involve plastic surgery, beauty salon make-overs, diet gurus, elocution coaches, tattooing, and athletic training. Seekers of beauty engage with people whom they see as agents offering them ravishing physical or charismatic attractiveness. Psychotherapists may or may not be among agents seen as having the power to transform. The quest for beauty is widespread and in many instances non-pathological. Sinkman looks at multiple avenues of understanding and appreciation of efforts toward beauty, including artistic creativity and political activities. However there is a spectrum of investment in creating beauty. Pursuing beauty can become pathological. Therapists need to watch out for its appearance outside the psychoanalytic arena. Such material can be missed when the analyst falls into counter-transference difficulties such as feeling invested in transforming the patient, identifying with the patient s narcissistic injuries and/or needs to compete, or enacting battles with the patient. Such difficulties interfere with attunement to patients experiences. The Psychology of Beauty considers definitions of beauty, gender identity themes, and origins of beauty in the mother-infant relationship. It investigates ugliness, sadomasochistic beauty pursuits, evolutionary factors, and aspects of aging. The book highlights emerging clinical material which has yet to gain notice and suggests what analysts may be missing, and why."

Part I considers theoretical perspectives in bridging developmental neuroscience with child psychology, with the role of neuroscience furthering our understanding of the child's mental development, and a separate chapter outlines the importance of plasticity in this growth. Chapters also cover methodological issues arising from epidemiological perspectives and from psychometric concepts and issues. Methods for measuring biological brain function and structure and their particular application to child neuropsychological disorders are covered next, including ERP, PET, SPECT, MRI and fMRI technologies. Included is a chapter devoted to childhood seizure disorders. Separate chapters follow on neuropsychological assessment in infancy, in the preschool child, and in school-aged children. Following this are presentations on the development of motor control, including handedness, and somatosensory perception.

The Inside Scoop on Eating Disorder Recovery is a fresh, smart, how-to book that helps people with eating disorders to heal their relationship with food, their bodies, and ultimately themselves. Written from the perspective of two eating disorder therapists, both of whom are recovered from their own eating disorders, the text uses humor, personal narratives, and research-proven techniques to offer specific actionable guidelines on how to reclaim one's life from an eating disorder. The authors explain the difference between dieting and eating disorders, break down the stages of recovery, and provide tips on how to thrive in each stage. The book provides powerful myth-busting on topics that have historically not been addressed in eating disorder recovery books, such as clean eating and orthorexia, exercising in recovery, and fat positivity. Tangible exercises at the end of each chapter provide readers with advice and tips on implementing this approach to recovery in their day-to-day lives. The humorous and down-to-earth tone of the book creates an authentic and genuine feel that leaves those who struggle with chronic dieting, eating disorders, and negative body image feeling connected and heard.