This book examines a seemingly simple and absolutely essential topic: learning how to enjoy every aspect of your life on a daily basis. All of us look for happiness, well-being, and positivity throughout our lives, but for most people these goals are abstract and the processes established to achieve them ambiguous. The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life: Making Way for the Upside in the Midst of Modern Demands focuses attention upon the concrete, specific, and everyday sources of pleasure that are within the grasp of almost everyone. Prolific author Luciano L'Abate, PhD, ABEPP, examines at all kinds of pleasures, investigating where we find them, why they appeal to us, and what benefits they provide in terms of both mental and physical health. He explains how to increase our sensitivity to everyday opportunities for pleasure, and then gives tangible techniques to focus upon these moments in order to fully experience them. The author employs personal memories from his childhood in Italy, more recent stories from his travels abroad, and the findings of most recent scientific research on the benefits of pleasure-seeking to further illustrate his points. A great variety of references, ranging from The New Yorker to The Economist Exercises within some chapters and at the end of every chapter guide readers towards greater understanding Five tables provide valuable supplemental information Bibliographic notes are supplied with every chapter

This book explores current relational models of psychopathology that undergird a great many conflicts and destructive outcomes in family and intimate relationships. These models have similar features and can be considered as a group. They are all: (1) generational; (2) relational; and (3) fundamentally reactive processes stemming from existing psychopathology.

The field of psychotherapy is beset by a variety of problems including relative ineffectiveness, relatively high cost, and low availability. Hence, a more cost-effective, efficient and mass-producible method is needed that the current talk-based approach lacks. This volume explains that programmed distance writing - workbooks - can fill that need. Workbooks are inexpensive, specific, controllable, verifiable, and can be transmitted via the Internet to be used in clinical treatment, prevention, rehabilitation and research, all at a cost saving over talk therapy.

The rationale behind workbooks for children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families is explained. Professionals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, counseling, and social work will find this approach intriguing, as will academics and researchers seeking economic ways to link theory with practice. This volume will also interest graduate students studying alternative methods of behavioral intervention.

Most health professionals would agree that time and funds are in short supply, even under optimal conditions. Patients, too, would admit similar shortfalls, even with optimal motivation. This book offers self-administered and easily administered interventions designed to promote positive health behaviors while requiring little or no outside funding. Editor Luciano L Abate continues his long tradition of prolific innovations by identifying major changes in today 's health care systems and explaining how targeted, prescriptive promotion/prevention strategies can enhance traditional primary, secondary, and tertiary interventions in key behavioral and relational areas.

This handbook is the first resource for the practicing clinician that addresses the role of homework - patients' between-session activities - across major therapeutic paradigms and complex clinical problems. The book opens with a series of practice-orientated chapters on the role of homework in different psychotherapies. A wide range of psychotherapy approaches are covered, each illustrated with clinical examples. The book includes valuable coverage of complex and chronic disorders. Novice and seasoned psychotherapists from all training backgrounds will find useful ideas in this volume.

Relational competence-the set of traits that allow people to interact with each other effectively-enjoys a long history of being recorded, studied, and analyzed. Accordingly, Relational Competence Theory (RCT) complements theories that treat individuals' personality and functioning individually by placing the individual into full family and social context. The ambitious volume Relational Competence Theory: Research and Mental Health Applications opens out the RCT literature with emphasis on its applicability to interventions, and updates the state of research on RCT, examining what is robust and verifiable both in the lab and the clinic. The authors begin with the conceptual and empirical bases for the theory, and sixteen models demonstrate the range of RCT concerns and their clinical relevance, including: - Socialization settings for relational competence. - The ability to control and regulate the self. - Relationship styles. - Intimacy and negotiation. - The use of practice exercises in prevention and treatment of pathology. - Appendices featuring the Relational Answers Questionnaire and other helpful tools. Relational Competence Theory both challenges and confirms much of what we know about the range of human relationships, and is important reading for researchers, scholars, and students in personality and social psychology, psychotherapy, and couple and family counseling.

This book demonstrates how clinical psychology and psychotherapy practices may reach a scientific level provided they change the three basic paradigms that have controlled those practices in the last century. These three, now outdated, paradigms, are: (1) one-on-one (2) personal contacts (3) through talk. These paradigms have served well in the past but they are no less helpful in the current digitally focused world.

This volume shows how we play at various ages and stages, and why play is so vital to our wellbeing. Most American adults have little respect for play, for themselves or, increasingly, for their children. Are we losing anything with this attitude? Yes, says longtime clinical psychologist Luciano L'Abate. In a book that has a message for us all, L'Abate presents research showing that play, as one scholar put it, "is not a luxury, but rather a crucial dynamic of healthy physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development at all age levels." The Praeger Handbook of Play across the Life Cycle: Fun from Infancy to Old Age, shows how play and playful activities have developed and changed across recent history, and how their necessity has been the subject of changing cultural and educational views and controversies. The book overviews the history of play, summarizes current research and theory, shows how we play at various ages and stages, and explains why that helps us develop into healthy people-physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Homework is a central feature of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), given its educational emphasis. This new text is a comprehensive guide for administering assignments.
The first part of the text offers essential introductory material, a comprehensive review of the theoretical and empirical support for the use of homework, models for practice, and systems for evaluating client compliance and therapist competence in administering assignments. Part two focuses on the role of homework in cognitive therapy, demonstrating successful methods of integration and discussing solutions to common barriers. Rather than offering one-size-fits-all, pre-designed tasks, this book illustrates application of a model with detailed case study and recommendations for adjusting administration methods for particular problems and specific client populations. Over the last nine chapters, homework administration is described within cognitive and behavioral therapy for anxiety and depression, chronic pain, delusions and hallucinations, obsessions and compulsions, marital and sexual problems, personality disorders, children and adolescents, group and family therapy, and older adults. Readers will be provided with a full range of knowledge to successfully incorporate individualized homework assignments into their practice to maximize the proven long-term benefits of CBT.

Within the field of psychology there is a proliferation of paradigms, theories, models, and dimensions without an underlying conceptual framework or theory. This conclusion has been reached by representatives of many different psychological specialties. In response to this inconsistency this book presents a hierarchical framework about important theoretical issues that are present in psychological thinking. These issues concern definitions of three major theoretical concepts in theory and practice: (a) paradigms, (b) theories, and (c) models. It focuses on defining, comparing, and contrasting these three conceptual terms. This framework clarifies differences among paradigms, theories, and models, terms which have become increasingly confused in the psychological literature. Paradigms are usually confused with theories or with models while theories are confused with models. Examples of misuses of these terms suggest the need for a hierarchical structure that views paradigms as conceptual constructions overseeing a variety of psychological theories and verifiable models.

Four decades of contributions to personality theory and family practice have earned Luciano La (TM)Abate a worldwide reputation for therapeutic insights. Now he expands on his pathbreaking relational theory of personality to apply it to the twenty-first-century family in all its configurations. Personality in Intimate Relationships showcases La (TM)Abatea (TM)s trademark elegant style and provocative ideas in his most accessible work to date.
Based on Axes I and II of the DSM-IV, the book describes relationships along a readily identifiable continuum ranging from optimal functionality to severe pathology, linking the authora (TM)s conceptual framework to specific diagnostic strategies, therapeutic interventions, and prevention programs. La (TM)Abatea (TM)s theory not only integrates individual and family theories and seemingly disparate schools of thought, but is also inclusive of nontraditional relationshipsa "grandparent/grandchild dyads, adoptive families, same-sex couples, and othersa "that are often left out of the family literature.
Among the key areas explored in the book:
a [ Selfhood and self-differentiation
a [ Confrontation and sharing of hurt feelings
a [ Negotiating, bargaining, and problem-solving
a [ Dealing with distance and closeness
a [ Intimacy and the ability to love

In addition, the reader is referred to complementary online appendices that supply helpful questionnaires, workbooks, and ideas for further applications.
Personality in Intimate Relationships offers fresh perspective to all frontline practitioners as well as investigators in this area. It is also ideal for graduate courses in abnormal psychology and personaldevelopment.

This provocative volume updates L' Abate's signature ideas, focusing in particular on the concepts of concreteness and specificity as basic tenets of evaluation and therapy. Noting society's growing familiarity with technology, current concerns about treatment accessibility, and widespread interest in wellness promotion, he argues for remote-writing exercises targeted to specific client issues and monitored by the clinician instead of relying on traditional talk-based therapy. This attention to concreteness and specificity in baseline evaluation, post-treatment evaluation, and follow-up, the author asserts, is central to making treatment replicable, less subject to impasses or missteps, and more professional, with the potential of changing how therapy is conducted as well as how clinicians are trained and practice. The book's framework includes rationales, models, empirical data, and examples of prescriptive remote-writing exercises. Featured in the coverage: Online interventions: here to stay and to grow. Verifiability in clinical psychology practices. Present status and future perspectives for personality and family assessment. Practice without theory/combining theory with practice. Toward a unifying framework of human relationships PIPES: Programmed Interactive Practice Exercise and Prescriptions. Concreteness and Specificity in Clinical Psychology will bring a new level of discussion and debate among clinical psychology practitioners and practicing psychotherapists in private practice and the public sector.

Self-help is big business, but alas not a scienti c business. The estimated 10 billion-that's with a "b"-spent each year on self-help in the United States is rarely guided by research or monitored by mental health professionals. Instead, marketing and metaphysics triumph. The more outrageous the "miraculous cure" and the "r- olutionary secret," the better the sales. Of the 3,000 plus self-help books published each year, only a dozen contain controlled research documenting their effectiveness as stand-alone self-help. Of the 20,000 plus psychological and relationship web sites available on the Internet, only a couple hundred meet professional standards for accuracy and balance. Most, in fact, sell a commercial product. Pity the layperson, or for that matter, the practitioner, trying to navigate the self-help morass. We are bombarded with thousands of potential resources and c- tradictory advice. Should we seek wisdom in a self-help book, an online site, a 12-step group, an engaging autobiography, a treatment manual, an inspiring movie, or distance writing? Should we just do it, or just say no? Work toward change or accept what is? Love your inner child or grow out of your Peter Pan? I become confused and discouraged just contemplating the choices.

Never has the need for a compendium of self-help workbooks been so great! From the founder of the world's first PhD program in Family Psychology comes an extensive guide to nearly all of the mental health workbooks published through 2002. Placed together in one volume for the first time, A Guide to Self-Help Workbooks for Mental Health Clinicians and Researchers includes reviews and evaluates the complexity of each workbook in regards to its form, content, and usability by the client. From abuse to women's issues, this annotated bibliography is alphabetized by author, but can also be researched by subject. While self-help workbooks are currently not as popular or as mainstream as self-help books and video, that could soon change. Self-help workbooks are versatile, cost-effective, and can be mass-produced. The workbook user is active rather than passive, and the mental healthcare worker can analyze a more personal response from the user, whether in the office or via the Internet. A Guide to Self-Help Workbooks for Mental Health Clinicians and Researchers brings these workbooks together into one sourcebook to suit anyone's needs. Each self-help workbook is reviewed according to specific criteria: contents structure specificity goal level of abstraction a subjective evaluation usually concludes the review of the workbook A Guide to Self-Help Workbooks for Mental Health Clinicians and Researchers also includes: an in-depth introduction discussing the need for workbooks in mental health practices indices for subject as well as author an address list of the publishing houses for the workbooks annotated in the bibliography an Informed Consent Form to verify compliance with ethical and professional regulations before administering a workbook to a client A Guide to Self-Help Workbooks for Mental Health Clinicians and Researchers offers you a complete resource to self-help workbooks for all mental health subjects. Dr. L'Abate's highly selective review process helps you find exactly what you need. This unique sourcebook is vital for mental health clinicians, counselors, schoolteachers, and college and graduate students.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1982. Paradoxical psychotherapy has rapidly become one of the most* important approaches to family therapy and psychotherapy during the past few years. The aim of this book is to present an overview of paradoxical therapy. Paradoxical Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice with Individuals, Couples, and Families Is designed for all clinical psychologists. Applications are offered for the individual, marital, and family therapist.

The use of workbooks in therapy might represent one of the biggest breakthroughs that has occurred in decades. Using Workbooks in Mental Health: Resources in Prevention, Psychotherapy, and Rehabilitation for Clinicians and Researchers examines the effectiveness of mental health workbooks designed to address problems ranging from dementia and depression to addiction, spousal abuse, eating disorders, and more. Compiled by Dr. Luciano L'Abate, a leading authority on mental health workbooks, this resource will help clinicians and researchers become aware of the supportive evidence for the use of workbooks. Using Workbooks in Mental Health examines workbooks designed to specifically help: clients affected by dementia or depression abused women gambling addicts women who have substance-abuse addictions incarcerated felons couples preparing for marriage children with school refusal disorder and more! An essential reference for mental health professionals, graduate students, administrators, and researchers, Using Workbooks in Mental Health also explores the role of workbooks in psychological intervention over the past decade. Although workbooks are not yet part of the mainstream of psychological intervention, they are growing in popularity as their many advantages are recognized. They are easy to use by almost any client, they are cost-effective to both therapist and client in terms of money and time, they provide therapists with written assignments to use as homework for individuals, couples, and families, and they can be used in any setting, especially in computer-assisted offline or online interventions. In addition, this book shows how workbooks can be used to administer therapy to previously unreachable clients such as: people who are reluctant to talk to an authoritative figure or a stranger people who cannot afford face-to-face treatments incarcerated offenders who have not been helped by talk therapies Internet users who are searching for help via computer rather than in person

This book explores current relational models of psychopathology that undergird a great many conflicts and destructive outcomes in family and intimate relationships. These models have similar features and can be considered as a group. They are all: (1) generational; (2) relational; and (3) fundamentally reactive processes stemming from existing psychopathology.

This provocative volume updates L' Abate's signature ideas, focusing in particular on the concepts of concreteness and specificity as basic tenets of evaluation and therapy. Noting society's growing familiarity with technology, current concerns about treatment accessibility, and widespread interest in wellness promotion, he argues for remote-writing exercises targeted to specific client issues and monitored by the clinician instead of relying on traditional talk-based therapy. This attention to concreteness and specificity in baseline evaluation, post-treatment evaluation, and follow-up, the author asserts, is central to making treatment replicable, less subject to impasses or missteps, and more professional, with the potential of changing how therapy is conducted as well as how clinicians are trained and practice. The book's framework includes rationales, models, empirical data, and examples of prescriptive remote-writing exercises.  Featured in the coverage:  Online interventions: here to stay and to grow. Verifiability in clinical psychology practices. Present status and future perspectives for personality and family assessment. Practice without theory/combining theory with practice. Toward a unifying framework of human relationships PIPES: Programmed Interactive Practice Exercise and Prescriptions. Concreteness and Specificity in Clinical Psychology will bring a new level of discussion and debate among clinical psychology practitioners and practicing psychotherapists in private practice and the public sector.

Relational competence-the set of traits that allow people to interact with each other effectively-enjoys a long history of being recorded, studied, and analyzed. Accordingly, Relational Competence Theory (RCT) complements theories that treat individuals' personality and functioning individually by placing the individual into full family and social context. The ambitious volume Relational Competence Theory: Research and Mental Health Applications opens out the RCT literature with emphasis on its applicability to interventions, and updates the state of research on RCT, examining what is robust and verifiable both in the lab and the clinic. The authors begin with the conceptual and empirical bases for the theory, and sixteen models demonstrate the range of RCT concerns and their clinical relevance, including: - Socialization settings for relational competence. - The ability to control and regulate the self. - Relationship styles. - Intimacy and negotiation. - The use of practice exercises in prevention and treatment of pathology. - Appendices featuring the Relational Answers Questionnaire and other helpful tools. Relational Competence Theory both challenges and confirms much of what we know about the range of human relationships, and is important reading for researchers, scholars, and students in personality and social psychology, psychotherapy, and couple and family counseling.

Within the field of psychology there is a proliferation of paradigms, theories, models, and dimensions without an underlying conceptual framework or theory. This conclusion has been reached by representatives of many different psychological specialties. In response to this inconsistency this book presents a hierarchical framework about important theoretical issues that are present in psychological thinking. These issues concern definitions of three major theoretical concepts in theory and practice: (a) paradigms, (b) theories, and (c) models. It focuses on defining, comparing, and contrasting these three conceptual terms. This framework clarifies differences among paradigms, theories, and models, terms which have become increasingly confused in the psychological literature. Paradigms are usually confused with theories or with models while theories are confused with models. Examples of misuses of these terms suggest the need for a hierarchical structure that views paradigms as conceptual constructions overseeing a variety of psychological theories and verifiable models.

This book demonstrates how clinical psychology and psychotherapy practices may reach a scientific level provided they change the three basic paradigms that have controlled those practices in the last century. These three, now outdated, paradigms, are: (1) one-on-one (2) personal contacts (3) through talk. These paradigms have served well in the past but they are no less helpful in the current digitally focused world.

This handbook is the first resource for the practicing clinician that addresses the role of homework - patients' between-session activities - across major therapeutic paradigms and complex clinical problems. The book opens with a series of practice-orientated chapters on the role of homework in different psychotherapies. A wide range of psychotherapy approaches are covered, each illustrated with clinical examples. The book includes valuable coverage of complex and chronic disorders. Novice and seasoned psychotherapists from all training backgrounds will find useful ideas in this volume.