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This book attempts to ‘shake up'the current complacency around therapy and ‘mental health'behaviours by putting therapy fully into context using Social Contextual Analysis; showing how changes to our social, discursive, and societal environments, rather than changes to an individual's ‘mind', will reduce suffering from the ‘mental health'behaviours.Guerin challenges many assumptions about both current therapy and psychology, and offers alternative approaches, synthesized from sociology, social anthropology, sociolinguistics, and elsewhere. The book provides a way of addressing the ‘mental health'behaviours including actions, talking, thinking, and emotions, by taking people's external life situations into account, and not relying on an imagined ‘internal source'. Guerin describes the broad contexts for current Western therapies, referring to social, discursive, cultural, societal, and economic contexts, and suggests that we need to research the components of therapies and stop treating therapies as units. He reframes different types of therapy away from their abstract jargons, offering an alternative approach grounded in our real social worlds, aligning with new thinking that challenges the traditional methods of therapy, and also providing a better framework for rethinking psychology itself. The book ultimately suggests more emphasis should be put on ‘mental health'behaviours as arising from social issues including the modern contexts of extreme capitalism, excessive bureaucracy, weakened discursive communities, and changing forms of social relationships.Practical guidelines are provided for building the reimagined therapies into clinics and institutions where labelling and pathologizing the ‘mental health'behaviours will no longer be needed. By putting ‘mental health'behaviours and therapy into a naturalistic or ecological social sciences framework, this book will be practical and fascinating reading for professional therapists, counsellors, social workers, and mental health nurses, as well as academics interested in psychology and the social sciences more generally.

Noted for its fair and equal coverage of men and women, Psychology of Gender reviews the research and issues surrounding gender from multiple perspectives, including psychology, sociology, anthropology, and public health. Going far beyond discussions of biological sex and gender identity, the text explores the roles that society has assigned to females and males and the other variables that co-occur with sex, such as status and gender-related traits. The implications of social roles, status, and gender-related traits for relationships and health are also examined. The text begins with a discussion of the nature of gender and development of gender roles, before reviewing communication and interaction styles and how they impact our friendships and romantic relationships. It concludes with an exploration of how gender influences both physical and mental health.New to the 6th Edition: Emphasis on the intersectionality of gender, considering it as a part of wider social categories such as race, ethnicity, social class, and gender identity Recognition of the increasingly prevalent view that gender is nonbinary Extended coverage of LGBTQ individuals, their relationships, and their health Expanded discussions of key issues including gender-role strain, gender fluidity, women and STEM, parenthood, balancing family and work demands, online communication, and sexual harassment Accompanied by a comprehensive companion website featuring resources for students and instructors, alongside extensive student learning features throughout the book, Psychology of Gender is an essential read for all students of gender from psychology, women's studies, gender studies, sociology, and anthropology.

While the body has received significant attention in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the last couple of decades, this still focused primarily on the body of pathology - the body as speaking for (or on behalf of) the mind. Here, leading psychoanalysts and psychotherapists join with experts whose field is the body to examine and celebrate generative, creative, vital, and irreducible aspects of our embodiment. The book is divided into seven themes, each including a chapter by a therapist and another by a specialist pondering various aspects of the body. Fashion journalists speak with a relational psychotherapist about beauty, a chef discusses sensuality with a couple therapist, and a Rabbi and a psychoanalyst speak of divinity and the body. This is a book aimed at igniting our imagination and faith in the possibility of living a full embodied life, and of integrating such practices within therapeutic and psychoanalytic work.

In The Mystery of Personality: A History of Psychodynamic Theories, acclaimed professor and historian Eugene Taylor synthesizes the field's first century and a half into a rich, highly readable account. Taylor situates the dynamic school in its catalytic place in history, re-evaluating misunderstood figures and events, re-creating the heady milieu of discovery as the concept of'mental science'dawns across Europe, revisiting the widening rift between clinical and experimental study (or the couch and the lab) as early psychology matured into legitimate science. Gradual but vital evolutions form the heart of this chronicle: the ebb and flow of analytic theory and practice, the shift from doctor-centered to client-centered therapy, the movement from exclusionary to multidisciplinary, the evolving role of the therapist. And as can be expected from the author, there is special emphasis on the sublime in psychology: the philosophy/psychology fusion of the New England transcendentalists, the battle between spiritualism and science in 1880s America, and early versions of today's spiritually-attuned therapies. Pivotal concepts and key individuals covered are: Charcot, Janet, and the origins of dynamic personality theory in the so-called French, Swiss, English, and American psychotherapeutic axis. Person and personality: William James's'radical empiricism'The rise of psychoanalysis: Freud, the Freudians, and the Neo-Freudians Adler and Jung, who were never'students'of Freud: Toward, within, and beyond the self Murray, Allport, and Lewin at Harvard in the 30s Culture and personality, pastoral counseling, and Gestalt Psychology in New York in the ‘40s and ‘50s An Existential-humanistic and Transpersonally oriented depth psychology in the 60s The current era:'science confronts itself', as neuroscience enters the picture. Studentsof psychology and its history will find in this inspiring narrative both possibilities for further study and a new appreciation of their own work. The Mystery of Personality: A History of Psychodynamic Theories is a stimulating course conducted by a master teacher.

Jerome Bruner is one of the grand figures of psychology. From his role as a founder of the cognitive revolution in the 1950s to his recent advocacy of cultural psychology, Bruner′s influence has been dramatic and far-reaching. Such is the breadth of his vision that Bruner′s work has inspired thinkers in many of the major areas of psychology and has had a powerful impact on adjacent disciplines. His writings on language acquisition, culture and education are of profound and enduring importance. Focusing on the dominant themes of language, culture and self, this volume provides a comprehensive exploration of Bruner′s fertile ideas and a considered appraisal of his legacy. With a distinguished list of contributors including Jerome Bruner himself, the result is an outstanding volume of interest to students and scholars in psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, anthropology, linguistics, and education. Among the contributors are Judy Dunn, Howard Gardner, Clifford Geertz, Rom Harré, David Olson, Edward Reed, Talbot Taylor, Michael Tomasello, and John Shotter. The volume is framed by an editorial introduction that considers the distinctively philosophical dimensions of Bruner′s thought, and a final chapter by Bruner himself in which he re-examines prominent themes in his work in light of issues raised by the contributors. The volume will be invaluable to students and researchers in the fields of psychology, cognitive science, education, and the philosophy of mind.

The'endless night'that film theory and psychoanalysis share is the darkness that these two disciplines face in their quest for the logics of intelligibility. This collection emphasizes the history of theory to demonstrate that film theory must be written with a strong sense of historical consciousness, curiosity, and archaeological craft. The volume brings together film theorists and practicing psychoanalysts to encourage an exchange of views between disciplines that encounter each other all too rarely.

The result of the 1993 Connectionist Models Summer School, the papers in this volume exemplify the tremendous breadth and depth of research underway in the field of neural networks. Although the slant of the summer school has always leaned toward cognitive science and artificial intelligence, the diverse scientific backgrounds and research interests of accepted students and invited faculty reflect the broad spectrum of areas contributing to neural networks, including artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, engineering, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Providing an accurate picture of the state of the art in this fast-moving field, the proceedings of this intense two-week program of lectures, workshops, and informal discussions contains timely and high-quality work by the best and the brightest in the neural networks field.