Treating the trauma of rape

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Gaie Houston

The ways in which people struggle to establish a sense of belonging, and their need to preserve their individuality, has long fascinated psychologists, therapists and group-workers. Overvaluing separateness may be at least as damaging as abandoning personal judgment to the dictates of the group. We all belong; yet many people are far less skilled at recognising and managing themselves as group members than at behaving as isolates. This highly original book brings new insights to this fundamental issue and examines the ways in which different theoretical interpretations of group processes may be integrated. The author gives an account of how the reality of belonging is dealt with during a residential group experience. The fictional participants talk for themselves but, at the same time, they also represent a range of theoretical perspectives. By means of this compelling dialogue, and commentary, the reader is guided through a series of crucial issues in the struggle to understand what happens when people attend to their experience in and between groups. This book is both a powerful drama and a handbook for all those working with groups as counsellors, therapists and facilitators.

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Theodore Millon, Seth Grossman

A revolutionary, personalized psychotherapy approach for the treatment of Axis II personality disorders, by renowned expert Dr. Theodore Millon Acknowledging the primacy of the whole person, Moderating Severe Personality Disorders: A Personalized Psychotherapy Approach takes into account all of the complexities of human nature - family influences, culture, neurobiological processes, unconscious memories, and so on--illustrating that no part of human nature should lie outside the scope of a clinician's regard. Part of a three book series, this book provides you with a unique combination of conceptual background and step-by-step practical advice to guide your treatment of Axis II personality disorders. Detailed case studies are provided throughout the text to illustrate the strategies of personalized psychotherapy for: Retiring/Schizoid Personality Patterns Shy/Avoidant Personality Patterns

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Lois Holzman

Vygotsky at Work and Play relates the discoveries and insights of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to ordinary people and their communities. The author--working with her intellectual partner Fred Newman--has advanced a performance-based methodology of development and learning that draws upon a fresh and in some ways unconventional reading of Vygotsky. In this book, Holzman shows this methodology at work in key learning environments: psychotherapy, classrooms, out-of-school youth programs, and the workplace. The book describes Vygotskian-inspired programs involving thousands of people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, ages and occupations. Interwoven in each chapter are discussions of Vygotsky's understandings of play, speaking, thinking, the zone of proximal development, the individual and the group. Holzman brings practice and theory together to provide a way forward for those who wish to liberate human development and learning from the confines of the social scientific paradigm, the institutional location of educational and psychological research, and the practices that derive from them. Vygotsky at Work and Play presents a challenge to the underlying distinctions and boundaries of psychology, most significantly to the presumption of a cognitive-emotive divide, the notion of fixed identity, the privileging of the individual over the group, and the instrumental nature of play and performance. --From publisher's description.

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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.