The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness is a multidisciplinary reference book that brings together cutting-edge health and illness topics from around the globe. It offers a range of theoretical and critical perspectives to provide contemporary insights into complex health issues that can offer ways to address inequitable patterns of illness and ill health.This collection, written by an international pool of expert academics from a rang...

Cultivating a sense of existential meaning is identified in psychological literature as an important factor in preventing illness, in promoting health, and in successfully adapting to life′s changing circumstances (resiliency as well as recovery). A lack of this sense of meaning, which the editors refer to as "existential vacuum", can form the basis of such disorders and diseases as neurosis, depression, aggression, suicide ideation, and substance abuse. Scholars have studied these relatio...

`This book constitutes a valuable resource for postgraduate students and researchers. Most.... of the chapters succeed in providing a clear and comprehensive introduction to the various approaches and/or methods, thus enabling the reader to make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to pursue the topic further. The book as a whole is also very well referenced and this makes it a source of essential information for students and researchers with an interest in qualitative healt...

What kinds of questions do experienced therapists ask themselves when facing a new client? How can clinical expertise be taught? From the author of the landmark Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, this book takes clinicians step-by- step through developing an understanding of each client's unique psychology and using this information to guide and inform treatment decisions. McWilliams shows that while seasoned practitioners rely upon established diagnostic categories for re...

Shame, the quintessential human emotion, received little attention during the years in which the central forces believed to be motivating us were identified as primitive instincts like sex and aggression. Now, redressing the balance, there is an explosion of interest in the self-conscious emotion. Much of our psychic lives involve the negotiation of shame, asserts Michael Lewis, internationally known developmental and clinical psychologist. Shame is normal, not pathological, though opposit...

Constructivist psychotherapy focuses on the meaning that clients attribute to their world, and the way that this shapes their life and contributes to their difficulties. In this book, Robert A. Neimeyer, a leading figure in the field, provides a clear and accessible explanation of the key features of this approach.Constructivist Psychotherapy: Distinctive Features concentrates on the 30 key commitments that distinguish constructivism from other cognitive behavioural perspe...

Desire, Self, Mind, and the Psychotherapies unifies psychological science with contemporary relational psychoanalysis, arguing that the disciplines can be integrated if the concept of repression is understood as motivated forgetting, creative aspects of unconscious processes are taken into account in cognitive science, and a "new experiences" model of change is acknowledged by psychoanalysts. Such a model of change allows for integration of behavioral, cognitive, visual, and other...

Otto Kernberg is a towering figure in the field of psychoanalysis and has accomplished seminal work in object relations and the treatment of borderline and narcissistic patients. This volume collects his recent work in several areas: severe personality disorders, couples in conflict, and religious experience. In each area, he explores the relationship between the psychoanalytic, clinical psychiatric, and neurobiological approaches, yielding insights and analysis that are compelling, though...

The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis: Understanding and Working With Trauma is an invaluable and cutting edge resource providing the current theory, practice, and research on trauma and dissociation within psychoanalysis. Elizabeth Howell and Sheldon Itzkowitz bring together experts in the field of dissociation and psychoanalysis, providing a comprehensive and forward-looking overview of the current thinking on trauma and dissociation.T...

In this book Frank Dumont presents personality psychology with a fresh description of its current status as well as its prospects. Play, sex, cuisine, creativity, altruism, pets, grieving rituals, and other oft-neglected topics broaden the scope of this fascinating study. This tract is imbued with historical perspectives that reveal the continuity in the evolving science and research of this discipline over the past century. The author places classic schemas and constructs, as well as curr...

Philosophy has much to offer psychiatry, not least regarding ethical issues, but also issues regarding the mind, identity, values, and volition. This has become only more important as we have witnessed the growth and power of the pharmaceutical industry, accompanied by developments in the neurosciences. However, too few practising psychiatrists are familiar with the literature in this area. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychiatry offers the most comprehensive reference r...

Adlerian Psychotherapy gives an account of Adlerian therapy and counselling from its origins to the present day, and proposes an advanced version of the theory. The main principles and concepts of Adler's thinking are re-examined from a contemporary perspective, placing them in the context of other contemporary approaches. Adler's techniques are described then applied to an understanding of what an Adlerian approach to family life would look like, using clinical examples throughou...