After twenty years of marriage Blanche Vernon is alone; abandoned by her husband Bertie for a childishly demanding computer expert named Mousie. While Blanche finds this turn of events baffling, she feels that Bertie must have left her because of her overly sensible demeanor. Yet many of their mutual friends disagree. In fact, Blanche has come to be regarded as undeniably eccentric--making elliptical remarks that no one knows how to read, and chatting at great length about characters in fiction. She resolutely fills her unwanted hours with activities, maintaining her excellent appearance, drinking increasingly more wine, and, in an attempt to turn her energy to good works, becoming severely enmeshed in the life of a disordered young family.

Diem’s alliance with Washington has long been seen as a Cold War relationship gone bad, undone by either American arrogance or Diem’s stubbornness. Edward Miller argues that this misalliance was more than just a joint effort to contain communism. It was also a means for each side to shrewdly pursue its plans for nation building in South Vietnam.

Recently divorced Blanche Vernon is convinced the divorce is somehow her fault, even though her husband left her for another woman. But her wit enables her to step forward and grasp what has previously eluded her, even though she's puzzled at the prospect.

The first ever in-depth study of the role played by the nobility in the Nazi rise to power in interwar Germany, this is a fascinating portrait of an aristocratic world teetering on the edge of self-destruction.

In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them. The more gross kinds of patient abuse, deliberate ones such as sexual and financial exploitation, are expressly forbidden by professional organizations. However, there are no regulations discouraging the more covert forms of manipulation, which are not even considered exploitative by many clinicians. In this book, noted psychiatrist Theo. L. Dorpat strongly disagrees. Using a contemporary interactional perspective Dorpat demonstrates the destructive potential of manipulation and indoctrination in treatment. This book is divided into three parts. Part I explores the various ways power can be abused. Part II examines eleven treatment cases in which covert manipulation and control either caused analytic failure or severely impaired the treatment process. Cases discussed include the analyses of Dora and the Wolf Man by Freud, the two analyses of Mr. Z by Kohut, as well as other published and unpublished treatments. An interactional perspective is used to examine the harmful short- and long-term effects of using indoctrination methods as well as to unravel conscious and unconscious communications between therapists and patients that can contribute to manipulations. Part III shows readers how to work using a non-directive, egalitarian approach in both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

In the past, short-term -- or brief -- treatment was practiced by few clinicians, its power relatively unknown. Today, the dual pressures of managed care and patient preference make it imperative to reconsider brief treatment, which has proven to be as effective as long-term therapy for many disorders and problems. This remarkable guide for conducting short-term psychotherapy details the tools and techniques of brief psychotherapy, addressing four main areas: Understanding, conceptualizing, and formulating the patient's problems -- Brief psychotherapy requires a concise formulation of the patient's problems within the first hours of treatment to ensure that the therapist understands and can focus on the patient's core problems early in therapy. The authors describe a detailed method of patient assessment and case formulation as the first building block in learning the fundamentals of short-term treatment. Setting realistic treatment goals -- Brief psychotherapy sets explicit goals from the beginning, based on a thorough evaluation that incorporates the patient's wishes, desires, and dissatisfactions and an agreement about what the work of therapy will encompass. Knowing what to say to patients (i.e., technique) -- Brief psychotherapy requires focused, concrete techniques within clear guidelines for each stage of treatment. With numerous clinical examples, the authors define a unified treatment that emphasizes the differential use of therapeutic interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral and interpersonal techniques, encompassing the continuum of interpretative to supportive approaches. They also offer an in-depth look into the therapeutic process: they use patient-therapist dialogues -- including both patient and therapist comments and accompanying third-voice explanations -- to chronicle the progress of four patients through the initial, middle, and termination phases of psychotherapy. Maintaining a positive therapeutic alliance -- Although the quality of the therapeutic alliance is the best predictor of outcome in both traditional and brief psychotherapy, it is absolutely vital to the success of brief psychotherapy. The authors present a framework for maintaining and enhancing this alliance, including how to heal misunderstandings. Concluding with a collaborative model and summary of the past 20 years' research on integrated treatment, this volume is more than a valuable clinical guide for integrated evaluation and treatment; it is also a practical blueprint for promoting and maintaining a flexible, positive patient/therapist relationship. As such, it will prove indispensable not only to practitioners, but also to educators and students.