This book examines how modern medicine's mechanistic conception of the body has become a defense mechanism to cope with death anxiety. Robbins draws from research on the phenomenology of the body, the history of cadaver dissection, and empirical research in terror management theory to highlight how medical culture operates as an agent which promotes anesthetic consciousness as a habit of perception. In short, modern medicine's comportment toward the cadaver promotes the suppression of the memory of the person who donated their body. This suppression of the memorial body comes at the price of concealing the lived, experiential body of patients in medical practice. Robbins argues that this style of coping has influenced Western culture and has helped to foster maladaptive patterns of perception associated with experiential avoidance, diminished empathy, death denial, and the dysregulation of emotion.

This book examines how modern medicine's mechanistic conception of the body has become a defense mechanism to cope with death anxiety. Robbins draws from research on the phenomenology of the body, the history of cadaver dissection, and empirical research in terror management theory to highlight how medical culture operates as an agent which promotes anesthetic consciousness as a habit of perception. In short, modern medicine's comportment toward the cadaver promotes the suppression of the memory of the person who donated their body. This suppression of the memorial body comes at the price of concealing the lived, experiential body of patients in medical practice. Robbins argues that this style of coping has influenced Western culture and has helped to foster maladaptive patterns of perception associated with experiential avoidance, diminished empathy, death denial, and the dysregulation of emotion.

There is a thin place where dream and event meet, a pivotal place where, as the poet John Keats once noted, the world is the vale of soul making. Robert D. Romanyshyn's life in psychology has been a journey in the world in search of those threshold places and their momentary epiphanies. Along the way he has come to realize that psychology has been more than a profession he chose. It has been a vocation that chose him. Indeed, he has expressed that, in coming to be a psychologist, he senses at times that he has been in some way following a path coded in his name, Romanyshyn, which means 'son of a gypsy.' He has been a wanderer drawn to those fringe areas where psychology spills into philosophy and poetry, where history and literature percolate with the shared collective dreams of the soul, and where the splendor of the world's simple displays can awaken a forgotten, lost and elemental sense of home. These philosophical, psychological and poetic reflections by former students, colleagues and friends, speak to the ways in which Dr. Romanyshyn's journey has crossed paths with their own. These authors join him in a return home from exile which is never finished.

This book exposes the skyrocketing rate of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, identifies grave dangers when children's mental health care is driven by market forces, describes effective therapeutic care for children typically prescribed antipsychotics, and explains how to navigate a drug-fueled mental health system. Since 2001, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of antipsychotics to treat children for an ever-expanding list of symptoms. The prescription rate for toddlers, preschoolers, and middle-class children has doubled, while the prescribing rate for low-income children covered by Medicaid has quadrupled. In a majority of cases, these drugs are neither FDA-approved nor justified by research for the children's conditions. This book examines the reasons behind the explosion of antipsychotic drug prescriptions for children, spotlighting the historical and cultural factors as well as the role of the pharmaceutical industry in this trend; and discusses the ethical and legal responsibilities and ramifications for non-MDs-psychologists in particular-who work with children treated with antipsychotics. Contributors explain how the pharmaceutical industry has inserted itself into every step of medical education, rendering objectivity in the scientific understanding, use, and approvals of such drugs impossible. The text describes the relentless marketing behind the drug sales, even going as far as to provide coloring and picture books for children related to the drug at issue. Valuable information about legal recourse that families and therapists can take when their children or patients have been harmed by antipsychotic drugs and alternative approaches to working with children with emotional and behavioral challenges is also provided. A chapter on effective parenting coauthored by a leading parenting expert, Laura Berk Contributions by noted medical journalist Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic Information on legal issues by Harvard-educated lawyer Jim Gottstein Insights from former pharmaceutical industry insider, Gwen Olsen An examination of community approaches to children's mental health care by internationally known psychologist Stuart Shanker