Psychology.

Lessons from the personal experience and reflections of a therapist. The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight, emotional maturity, and calm centeredness are critical for successful psychotherapy, rote knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a result, the therapist's personal growth is either marginalized or ignored. The Making of a Therapist counters this trend by offering graduate students and beginning therapists a personal account of this important inner journey. Cozolino provides a unique look inside the mind and heart of an experienced therapist. Readers will find an exciting and privileged window into the experience of the therapist who, like themselves, is just starting out. In addition, The Making of a Therapist contains the practical advice, common-sense wisdom, and self-disclosure that practicing professionals have found to be the most helpful during their own training.The first part of the book, 'Getting Through Your First Sessions,' takes readers through the often-perilous days and weeks of conducting initial sessions with real clients. Cozolino addresses such basic concerns as: Do I need to be completely healthy myself before I can help others? What do I do if someone comes to me with an issue or problem I can't handle? What should I do if I have trouble listening to my clients? What if a client scares me?The second section of the book, 'Getting to Know Your Clients,' delves into the routine of therapy and the subsequent stages in which you continue to work with clients and help them. In this context, Cozolino presents the notion of the 'good enough' therapist, one who can surrender to his or her own imperfections while still guiding the therapeutic relationship to a positive outcome. The final section, 'Getting to Know Yourself,' goes to the core of the therapist's relation to him- or herself, addressing such issues as: How to turn your weaknesses into strengths, and how to deal with the complicated issues of pathological caretaking, countertransference, and self-care.Both an excellent introduction to the field as well as a valuable refresher for the experienced clinician, The Making of a Therapist offers readers the tools and insight that make the journey of becoming a therapist a rich and rewarding experience.

In these seven letters, practising psychiatrist Vincenzo Di Nicola offers wisdom to a young therapist from 25 years of experience conducting relational therapy. Ranging from what to read and how to begin therapy, the letters cover therapeutic temperaments and technique, how to create a relational dialogue, the myths of individual psychology and the need for relational psychology, the evolution of therapy in the past century and when therapy is over-all the while looking forward to the relational practices of the coming community. This book complements Di Nicola's model of working with families presented in A Stranger in the Family: Culture, Families, and Therapy (New York and London: W.W. Norton). -- It's a beautiful idea, this project of turning to young people... The relational dialogue offers an important new direction of study to discover the deep basis of the therapeutic alliance, in order to understand the still too-little known phenomenon of "change..". This is what you have brought together in your book: the search for the whole regarding the person and, at the same time, the network of primary affective relationships that we call the family and of social relationships ... -from the Foreword by Maurizio Andolfi, MD, Director of the Academy of Family Psychotherapy, Professor of Psychology, University of Rome Author description: Vincenzo Di Nicola, M.D. is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and relational therapist in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. After studies in clinical psychology, medicine and psychiatry, Di Nicola trained and collaborated in family therapy with Mara Selvini Palazzoli and Maurizio Andolfi and more recently in global mental health with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma. He has held clinical and teaching appointments at the universities of Ottawa, Queen's and McGill and is an Honorary Professor of Law in Minas Gerais, Brazil and a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal and a doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School.

Acclaimed author and renowned psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom distills thirty-five years of psychotherapy wisdom into one brilliant volume. The culmination of master psychiatrist Dr. Irvin D. Yalom’s more than thirty-five years in clinical practice, The Gift of Therapy is a remarkable and essential guidebook that illustrates through real case studies how patients and therapists alike can get the most out of therapy. The bestselling author of Love’s Executioner shares his uniquely fresh approach and the valuable insights he has gained—presented as eighty-five personal and provocative “tips for beginner therapists,” including: •Let the patient matter to you •Acknowledge your errors •Create a new therapy for each patient •Do home visits •(Almost) never make decisions for the patient •Freud was not always wrong A book aimed at enriching the therapeutic process for a new generation of patients and counselors, Yalom’s Gift of Therapy is an entertaining, informative, and insightful read for anyone with an interest in the subject.

The many thousands of readers of the best-selling Love's Executioner will welcome this paperback edition of an earlier work by Dr. Irvin Yalom, written with Ginny Elkin, a pseudonymous patient whom he treated -- the first book to share the dual reflections of psychiatrist and patient. Ginny Elkin was a troubled young and talented writer whom the psychiatric world had labeled as "schizoid." After trying a variety of therapies, she entered into private treatment with Dr. Irvin Yalom at Stanford University. As part of their work together, they agreed to write separate journals of each of their sessions. Every Day Gets a Little Closer is the product of that arrangement, in which they alternately relate their descriptions and feelings about their therapeutic relationship.

#1 New York Times Bestseller The groundbreaking work that poses one of the most provocative questions of a generation: what is happening to the selves of adolescent girls? As a therapist, Mary Pipher was becoming frustrated with the growing problems among adolescent girls. Why were so many of them turning to therapy in the first place? Why had these lovely and promising human beings fallen prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem? The answer hit a nerve with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves. Crashing and burning in a “developmental Bermuda Triangle,” they were coming of age in a media-saturated culture preoccupied with unrealistic ideals of beauty and images of dehumanized sex, a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases. They were losing their resiliency and optimism in a “girl-poisoning” culture that propagated values at odds with those necessary to survive. Told in the brave, fearless, and honest voices of the girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence, Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength, and urging a change where young hearts can flourish again, and rediscover and reengage their sense of self.

Mary Pipher's groundbreaking investigation of America's "girl-poisoning culture," Reviving Ophelia, has sold nearly two million copies and established its author as one of the nation's foremost authorities on family issues. In Letters to a Young Therapist, Dr. Pipher shares what she has learned in thirty years as a therapist, helping warring families, alienated adolescents, and harried professionals restore peace and beauty to their lives. Letters to a Young Therapist gives voice to her practice with an exhilarating mix of storytelling and sharp-eyed observation. And while her letters are addressed to an imagined young therapist, every one of us can take something away from them. Long before "positive psychology" became a buzzword, Dr. Pipher practiced a refreshingly inventive therapy -- fiercely optimistic, free of dogma or psychobabble, and laced with generous warmth and practical common sense. But not until now has this gifted healer described her unique perspective on how therapy can help us revitalize our emotional landscape in an increasingly stressful world. Whether she's recommending daily swims for a sluggish teenager, encouraging a timid husband to become bolder, or simply bearing witness to a bereaved parent's sorrow, Dr. Pipher's compassion and insight shine from every page of this thoughtful and engaging book.