Intrusive mental images in the form of flashbacks have long been recognised as a hallmark of post-traumatic stress disorder. However, clinicians have become increasingly aware that distressing imagery is a more pervasive phenomenon. There appears to be a powerful link between imagery and autobiographical memory. The field of autobiographical memory needs to account for disorders of remembering in psychopathology, including the reliving of past experiences in the form of imagery. While the role of mental imagery in psychopathology has been an under-researched topic, recently, there has been a surge of interest. This Special Issue of Memory, Mental Imagery and Memory in Psychopathology, edited by Emily A. Holmes and Ann Hackmann, presents a novel series of papers investigating emotional, intrusive mental imagery across a wide range of psychological disorders. The topics include post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and social phobia, as well as psychosis, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, and depression. The roles of imagery in symptom maintenance and in psychological treatment are explored. Further studies using non-clinical samples address information processing issues and imagery qualities. These include innovative approaches to modelling cravings in substance misuse, and the role of imagery in conditioning aversions. Pioneering work is presented on vividness, emotionality, and the type of perspective taken in imagery. This Special Issue begins and ends with theoretical papers that provide complementary approaches: reviewing findings from a clinical psychology perspective and an autobiographical memory perspective. New developments in cognitive therapy require a conceptual framework within which to understand imagery in specific psychopathologies. Since the experience of imagery is not abnormal per se, it is helpful to make links with accounts of 'ordinary' processing. Conway's work on autobiographical memory may provide such a framework. According to this model, images are thought to be forms of autobiographical memory, referred to as sensory perceptual knowledge that is experience-near. Indeed, although they may be unaware at the time, patients often later report that images appear linked to autobiographical experiences. However, despite being a form of memory, images may be experienced as actual events happening in the present, or as representing the imagined future, and project meaning for the self. Images may provide particularly potent means of carrying emotion and information about the self, compared to other forms of processing. In this Special Issue, Conway presents novel insights that suggest imagery is highly associated with self goals. Imagery can both reflect and maintain goals linked to psychopathology. An exciting consequence of this framework is that imagery can be used to resolve dysfunctional states in therapy. Imagery in psychopathology tends to be highly intrusive, distressing, and repetitive. It may arise 'out of the blue', i.e. directly triggered from autobiographical memory. Images can hijack attention and reflect negative self goals. It may therefore understandably provoke a variety of cognitive and behavioural responses. For example, interpreting the image as representing fact rather than fiction, trying to block it out of mind, or avoiding triggers for the image. Cognitive behavioural therapy targets such responses because they are thought to maintain psychopathology in a vicious cycle. In contrast, responses that update the image in memory could break that cycle. Further there is a role for positive, alternative images. Conway suggests that generating new images can generate new goals and thus ameliorate distress: an insight that may further enhance therapy. This book appeals to clinicians and experimental psychologists working in memory and emotion. It provides a forum to forge links between experi

Contributors to this volume consider the implications of 'the Age of Breath': a spiritual shift in human awareness to the needs of the other figured through breathing. Awareness of the breath allows us to attend to our bodies and the bodies of others, to animals, nature, other cultures, oppressed minorities, and the other of sexual difference. As a way to connect body and spirit, self and other, nature and culture, and East and West, breathing emerges as the significant theological and philosophical gesture of our time. Philosophy has too often cut off metaphysical thought from this living, breathing world with its animal and female bodies, just as religious traditions have repressed the breathing flesh in favour of calcified word. The re-introduction of breath into philosophy and theology draws our awareness back to the body, to respect for the other, and to nature, making awareness of the breath essential for an embodied ethics of difference in our globalized, ecological age. These themes are addressed by an international team of scholars, including Luce Irigaray.

Imagery is one of the new, exciting frontiers in cognitive therapy. From the outset of cognitive therapy, its founder Dr. Aaron T. Beck recognised the importance of imagery in the understanding and treatment of patient's problems. However, despite Beck's prescience, clinical research on imagery, and the integration of imagery interventions into clinical practice, developed slowly. It is only in the past 10 years that most writing and research on imagery in cognitive therapy has been conducted.
The Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy is a landmark book, which will play an important role in the next phase of cognitive therapy's development. Clinicians and researchers are starting to recognise the centrality of imagery in the development, maintenance and treatment of psychological disorders - for example, in social phobia, agoraphobia, depression, PTSD, eating disorders, childhood trauma, and personality disorder. In the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, researchers are identifying the key role that imagery plays in emotion, cognition and psychopathology.
The Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy has been written both for clinicians and researchers. For clinicians, it is a user-friendly, practical guide to imagery, which will enable therapists to understand imagery phenomenology, and to integrate imagery-based interventions into their cognitive therapy practice. For researchers, it provides a state-of-the-art summary of imagery research, and points the way to future studies. Written by three well-respected CBT researcher-clinicians, it is essential reading for all cognitive therapists, who have recognised the limitations of purely 'verbal' CBT techniques, and want to find new ways to work with clients with psychological disorders.

People with bipolar disorder are particularly vulnerable to anxiety and intrusive mental imagery, which can contribute to mood swings and a heightened risk for relapse. This book presents a novel brief treatment that focuses on working with mental images to reduce distress and enhance mood stability. Grounded in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), the book provides therapists with tested techniques for formulating individualized treatment targets, using metacognitive strategies to reduce the power of images, rescripting problematic images, and building adaptive positive images. User-friendly instructions for assessment and intervention include case examples, sample scripts, and troubleshooting tips. In a large-size format for easy photocopying, the book includes 19 reproducible handouts and session agendas. Purchasers get access to a Web page where they can download and print the reproducible materials.

Women's theology has traditionally been pushed to the margins; it is "spirituality" or "mysticism" rather than theology proper. Theology from women has been transmitted orally, recorded by men as sayings or in hagiographies, or passed on as "stealth theology" in poems, hymns, or practices. In the past forty years, women have claimed theology for themselves and others as womanists, feminists, mujeristas, Asian, third-world, disabled, and queer women. Yet in most academic and ecclesial theology, the contributions of women skirt the borders of the written tradition. This unique volume asks about the conditions of women writing theology. How have women historically justified their writing practices? What internal and external constraints shape their capacity to write? What counts as theology, and who qualifies as a theologian? And what does it mean for women to enter a tradition that has been based, in part, on their exclusion? These essays explore such questions through historical investigations, theoretical analyses, and contemporary constructions.