Determining the amenability of personality disorders to psychotherapy& mdash;a patient's capacity to benefit from verbal approaches to treatment& mdash;is important in helping clinicians determine the treatability of cases. Michael Stone here shares the factors he has observed over long years of practice that can help practitioners evaluate patients, stressing the amenability of the various disorders to amelioration. By focusing on which patients are likely to respond well to therapeutic intervention and which will prove most resistive, his book will help therapists determine with what kinds of patients they will most likely succeed and with which ones failure is almost a certainty.

Stone establishes the attributes that affect this amenability& mdash;such as the capacity for self-reflection, motivation, and life circumstances& mdash;as guidelines for evaluating patients, then describes borderline and other personality-disordered patients with varying levels of amenability, from high to low. This coverage progresses from patients belonging to the DSM "anxious cluster," along with the depressive-masochistic character and the hysteric character, to patients who demonstrate an intermediate level of amenability to psychotherapy. He introduces the interrelationship between borderline personality disorder and dissociative disorders and discusses treatability among certain patients in Clusters "A" and "C," as well as others with narcissistic, histrionic, depressive disorders. Final chapters address the most severe aberrations of personality and the limitations they impose on the efficacy of therapy. "Personality-Disordered Patients" is filled with practical, clinically focusedinformation. This guideline structured book: Covers all personality disorders-including ones not addressed in the latest DSM such as sadistic, depressive, hypomanic, and irritable-explosive Identifies both attributes necessary for treatability and factors associated with low treatability Pays particular attention to borderline disorders, which represent the most discussed conditions and are among the most challenging to psychotherapists Reviews personality traits whose presence, if intense-even if unaccompanied by a definable personality disorder-creates severe problems for psychotherapy

Numerous case studies throughout the book provide examples that will help therapists determine which of their own patients are most likely to benefit from their efforts and thereby establish their own limits of effectiveness. By alerting practitioners to when therapy is likely to fail, these guidelines can help them avoid the professional disappointment of being unable to reach the most intractable patients.

Recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of obsessive- compulsive disorder have come from breakthroughs in neurobiologic and cognitive-behavioral studies. Essential Papers on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder represents the most significant thinkers and the various strands of thought on obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Divided into three sections focusing on classical psychoanalysis, psychological research, and neuro-psychiatric approaches, this definitive volume includes contributions bythe most experienced and renowned experts on the subject. Contributors include Sigmund Freud; Karl Abraham; Ernest Jones; Anna Freud; Paul E. Sifneos; Leonard Salzman; Joseph Sandler and Anandi Hazari; Lewis L. Judd; Heinz Hartmann; Stanley Rachman, Ray Hodgson and Isaac M. Marks; Paul M. Salkovskis; Paul Schilder; Steven P. Wise and Judith L. Rapoport; Joseph Zohar and Thomas R. Insel; Michael A. Jenike; Susan E. Swedo, Henrietta Leonard; Lewis R. Baxter, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Kenneth S. Bergman; Dan Stein and Eric Hollander.

A comprehensive compilation gathering classic articles on borderline psychology Essential Papers on Borderline Disorders: One Hundred Years at the Border gathers between two covers the classic articles on the subject of borderline psychology. It includes essays by such core figures as Otto Kernberg, John G. Gunderson, Edith Jacobson, and Erik H. Erikson, as well as an extensive introduction by the editor providing a comprehensive overview of the field. Contributors: Hagop S. Akiskal, Michael Balint, Helene Deutsch, Erik H. Erikson, John Frosch, Roy Grinker, Sr., John G. Gunderson, Paul Hoch, C. H. Hughes, Edith Jacobson, Otto Kernberg, Seymout S. Kety, Robert P. Knight, Margaret S. Mahler, Phillip Polatin, James Cowles Prichard, Sandor Rado, Irving C. Rosse, Melitta Schmideberg, Harold F. Searles, Margaret T. Singer, Robert L. Spitzer, Adolph Stern, and Leo Stone.

FROM NARCISSISM TO AGGRESSION, AN ORIGINAL LOOK AT THE PERSONALITY TRAITS AND BEHAVIORS THAT CONSTITUTE EVIL In this groundbreaking book, renowned psychiatrist Michael H. Stone explores the concept and reality of evil from a new perspective. In an in-depth discussion of the personality traits and behaviors that constitute evil across a wide spectrum, Dr. Stone takes a clarifying scientific approach to a topic that for centuries has been inadequately explained by religious doctrines. Stone has created a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior, which loosely reflects the structure of Dante's Inferno. Basing his analysis on the detailed biographies of more than 600 violent criminals, hetraces two salient personality traits that run the gamut from those who commit crimes of passion to perpetrators of sadistic torture and murder. One trait is narcissism, as exhibited in people who are so self-centered that they have little or no ability to care about their victims. The other is aggression, the use of power over another person to inflict humiliation, suffering, and death. What do psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience tell us about the minds of those whose actions could be described as evil? And what will that mean for the rest of us? Stone discusses how an increased understanding of the causes of evil will affect the justice system. He predicts a day when certain persons can safely be declared salvageable and restored to society and when early signs of violence in children may be corrected before potentially dangerous patterns become entrenched.

A CHILLING FOLLOW-UP TO THE POPULAR TRUE CRIME BOOK THE ANATOMY OF EVIL Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred. The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe forms of violence. They persuasively argue that, in at least some cases, a collapse of moral faculties contributes to the commission of such heinous crimes, such that "evil" should be considered not only a valid area of inquiry, but, in our current cultural climate, an imperative one. They consider the effects of new technologies and sociological, cultural, and historical factors since the 1960s that may have set the stage for "the new evil." Further, they explain how personality, psychosis, and other qualities can meaningfully contribute to particular crimes, making for many different motives. Relying on their extensive clinical experience, and examination of writings and artwork by infamous serial killers, these experts offer many insights into the logic that drives horrible criminal behavior, and they discuss the hope that in the future such violence may be prevented.

Recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of obsessive- compulsive disorder have come from breakthroughs in neurobiologic and cognitive-behavioral studies. Essential Papers on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder represents the most significant thinkers and the various strands of thought on obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Divided into three sections focusing on classical psychoanalysis, psychological research, and neuro-psychiatric approaches, this definitive volume includes contributions bythe most experienced and renowned experts on the subject. Contributors include Sigmund Freud; Karl Abraham; Ernest Jones; Anna Freud; Paul E. Sifneos; Leonard Salzman; Joseph Sandler and Anandi Hazari; Lewis L. Judd; Heinz Hartmann; Stanley Rachman, Ray Hodgson and Isaac M. Marks; Paul M. Salkovskis; Paul Schilder; Steven P. Wise and Judith L. Rapoport; Joseph Zohar and Thomas R. Insel; Michael A. Jenike; Susan E. Swedo, Henrietta Leonard; Lewis R. Baxter, Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Kenneth S. Bergman; Dan Stein and Eric Hollander.