About this ebook
One unique feature of Psychotherapy Pearls is that we cover both technique and psychopathology in one book. Most textbooks tackle one or the other, but we believe this is wasteful, since it makes most sense to us to consider technique in close proximity to our discussions of the very illnesses and problems for which our technique is designed to address. Moreover, in considering technique we center our thinking about common sense psychology which most readers have been thinking about, whether they realize it or not, from the beginning of their lives, but without ever pulling these bits of insight together into a body of knowledge or theory as such. For example, our book begins with the following subjects: feelings, beginning therapy, listening, empathy, idealization, paying attention, free association, therapeutic relationship, referrals, patient selection, diagnosis, calming down, transference, resistance, defense, working through, and so forth.
It is not possible to cover everything in any book on a single subject. But we try hard not to leave out essentials, or correlated matters. For example, we cover not only suicidal, but homicidal impulses; biological as well as psychological illnesses; theoretical issues and practical matters. In the latter category, we consider such matters as how to decide when and whom to refer patients to and whom and when to accept patients into treatment, how to keep one's patient records, and how best to manage such things as vacation absences, billings, and even how to plan for the possible death of the therapist (i.e. how to help the patient deal with our absence, whether brief or permanent).
We have taken the time to personally create the index for our book, because we believe that only the author's involved can generate the proper subject headings, or know where important ideas appear in the text. This should make our book more user friendly than many other books where the index is generated simply on the basis of some computer program for doing so, without the sensitivity of the authors being involved in the process.
The reader may appreciate that each of the subject chapters have been discussed at length after they were composed by the authors, as we reviewed each word of our text, and debated with each other our conclusions, nuances, and wording. Often these debates lasted into the evening, and intense feelings were aroused on both sides. But our goal in this process was always finding a common denominator which we could better explicate for the reader, without doing any injustice to the complexity and evern beauty of the questions being asked. The mind and brain are complex beyond bel
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Fred M. Levin is on faculty of Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine (Psychiatry), Chicago Medical School (Neurology), and the Chicago and Minneapolis Institutes for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Mapping the Mind: The Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience (T.A.P.: Hillsdale, NJ, 1991) and Psyche and Brain: The Biology of Talking Cures (I.U.P.: Madison, CT, 2002). In over 60 publications and 85 invited lectures he has pursued in depth how psychotherapy works: this includes the psychology, anthropology, neurophysiology and chemistry of learning. Meyer S. Gunther is on faculty of Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine (Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Medicine) and the Chicago and Minneapolis Institutes of Psychoanalysis. In over five decades of clinical research he has pursued the details of doing psychotherapy so that it can be a teachable, learnable scientific discipline. He been particularly focused on the psychology of catastrophic traumatic injuries. He has written extensively about the problems of such patients, their caregivers and families. In the present volume Levin and Gunther bring together multidiscipinary viewpoints on how best to enable psychotherapeutic process. Their approach carefully respects the difficulty factors, and the need to appreciate both biological and psychological perspectives in a unified compassionate approach.
Fred M. Levin is on faculty of Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine (Psychiatry), Chicago Medical School (Neurology), and the Chicago and Minneapolis Institutes for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Mapping the Mind: The Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience (T.A.P.: Hillsdale, NJ, 1991) and Psyche and Brain: The Biology of Talking Cures (I.U.P.: Madison, CT, 2002). In over 60 publications and 85 invited lectures he has pursued in depth how psychotherapy works: this includes the psychology, anthropology, neurophysiology and chemistry of learning. Meyer S. Gunther is on faculty of Northwestern University Fineberg School of Medicine (Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Medicine) and the Chicago and Minneapolis Institutes of Psychoanalysis. In over five decades of clinical research he has pursued the details of doing psychotherapy so that it can be a teachable, learnable scientific discipline. He been particularly focused on the psychology of catastrophic traumatic injuries. He has written extensively about the problems of such patients, their caregivers and families. In the present volume Levin and Gunther bring together multidiscipinary viewpoints on how best to enable psychotherapeutic process. Their approach carefully respects the difficulty factors, and the need to appreciate both biological and psychological perspectives in a unified compassionate approach.
