The first interview

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Kathleen Degen and Ellen Nasper

By the mid-eighties, the provision of psychotherapy for people who could not get out of bed, bathe, get dressed, prepare meals, and manage their own money had diminished. Treatment centered on case management and rehabilitation. This virtual elimination of psychotherapy made sense economically as well as therapeutically: traditional psychotherapy had little success with people suffering from schizophrenia. However, the advent of novel antipsychotic medications has created a need for psychotherapy tailored to this population. Sudden reduction in pervasive, persistent delusions and hallucinations, and recovery of motivation, energy, volition, and the ability to experience pleasure from something other than cigarettes is a mixed blessing. Patients are relieved of terrible suffering but left with new problems. Shedding the lifelong identity of a mental patient, they no longer need case management but require help adjusting to major changes in their thinking and functioning. Kathleen Degen and Ellen Nasper describe group therapy that helps patients identify and cope with unexpected, intense feelings such as sadness or painful memories of childhood trauma, increase their interpersonal skills, and advance their sense of self beyond that of their label as mental patients. Degen and Nasper show how to build on the phenomenal changes that the new medications provide.

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David H. Barlow, V. Mark Durand

Balancing biological, psychological, social, and cultural approaches, David Barlow and V. Mark Durand's groundbreaking integrative approach is the most modern, scientifically valid method for studying abnormal psychology. In this Seventh Edition of their proven ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY: AN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH, Barlow and Durand successfully blend sophisticated research and an accessible writing style with the most widely recognized method of discussing psychopathology. Going beyond simply describing different schools of thought on psychological disorders, the authors explore the interactions of the various forces that contribute to psychopathology. A conversational writing style, consistent pedagogical elements, integrated case studies (95 percent from the authors' own files), video clips of clients, and additional study tools make this text the most complete learning resource available.

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Alex Fedde Kalverboer

The focus in this study is on relationships between neurological findings and free-field behavior in preschool children. The study was triggered by the problem of learning and behavior disorders in children, which are supposed to be related to a non-optimal condition of the nervous system and which are described in the literature under headings such as "minimal brain dysfunction (M. B. D.)" or "special learning disorders." There is much confusion and controversy as to the exact kinds of neurobehavioral relationships and their etiology. The study addresses the answer to this question: What are the relationships between neurological findings and "free-field" behavior, directly observed in variously structured environments, in a group of preschool aged children with a variety of minor neurological dysfunctions but without serious neurological handicaps and not selected because of behavioral problems? Additionally, direct observation and quantitative analyses of free-field behavior has not been used previously in relation to the M.B.D. problem nor on such a large scale in other human studies, but is promising as it can be applied in a variety of clinical and developmental problems.

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David Shapiro

From the publisher: In this strikingly original study, the author of the widely acclaimed Neurotic Styles develops a vivid picture of human autonomy and its meaning in psychology and psychopathology. Beginning with a discussion of the problem of autonomy in dynamic psychiatry and a review of the development of autonomy from infancy to adolescence, David Shapiro goes on to demonstrate in fascinating detail, with numerous clinical vignettes, the distortions of this development in obsessive-compulsive conditions, sadism and masochism, and, finally, in its extreme form, paranoia. Of particular interest are the author's new views on masochism and on the realotin between paranoia and homosexuality in Freud's famous paper on the Schreber case. The psychology of individual autonomy is significant in two ways, notes the author. First, since the neurotic is typically in conflict with his own wants and intentions, all symptomatic behavior can be said to involve some loss of autonomy. But there is also the phenomenon of conflict that emerges from the development of autonomy itself. What happens when the development of self-direction goes awry? How can distortions of autonomy become an independent source of psychopathology? By closely examining the behavior and the emotional experiences of obsessional, sadomasochistic, and paranoid people--whom David Shapiro characterizes as suffering from "rigid character"--he provides compelling answers to these and other vivid questions. All psychotherapists and students of human behavior will welcome this important book as essential to the understanding of the relationship between volition and psychopathology.