The guide presented here will help us gain a level of understanding about our own discomfiting emotions and the incomprehensible behavior of others to a remarkable degree. This work takes a bio-psycho-social perspective in combination with human development to devise a targeted therapy that is distinct from available practices today. DSA begins by calling attention to chronic baseline emotions originating in adversity. The author explains how to use the Developmental and Systems Approach (DSA) for the treatment of anxiety, depression, addictions, eating disorders, self-mutilation, and externalizing behavior. For the discerning reader, learning through DSA will fuel authentic interpersonal growth and can be lateralized to many areas of human endeavors. Whether it is chronic low mood, absence of belonging, treatment resistant addiction, disenchantment with work and school, or recurring relationship challenges, we require a more compelling solution to these issues. Furthermore, this is a parenting book for healthy child development. This is also a manual for any enterprise that requires high performance. This is a unique conception for the national security agencies and law enforcement to analyze the criminal mindset and terrorist impetus. It is time to empower the individual, the family, and our social world with the knowledge to establish authentic affiliations in the context of Interpersonal Connectivity 3.0; otherwise, we are Essentially Alone.

This must-read for lovers of Stephen King's The Shining will leave readers breathless as Seda and her family find themselves at the mercy of a murderer in an isolated and snowbound hotel. Get ready for what Kirkus calls "A bloody, wonderfully creepy scare ride." When her mom inherits an old, crumbling mansion, Seda's almost excited to spend the summer there. The grounds are beautiful and it's fun to explore the sprawling house with its creepy rooms and secret passages. Except now her mom wants to renovate, rather than sell the estate—which means they're not going back to the city...or Seda's friends and school. As the days grow shorter, Seda is filled with dread. They're about to be cut off from the outside world, and she's not sure she can handle the solitude or the darkness it brings out in her. Then a group of teens get stranded near the mansion during a blizzard. Seda has no choice but to offer them shelter, even though she knows danger lurks in the dilapidated mansion—and in herself. And as the snow continues to fall, what Seda fears most is about to become her reality...

Drawing on the fields of psychology, literature, and philosophy, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature argues that loneliness has been the universal concern of mankind since the Greek myths and dramas, the dialogues of Plato, and the treatises of Aristotle. Author Ben Lazare Mijuskovic, whose insights are culled from both his theoretical studies and his practical experiences, contends that loneliness has constituted a universal theme of Western thought from the Hellenic age into the contemporary period. In Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature, he shows how man has always felt alone and that the meaning of man is loneliness. Presenting both a discussion and a philosophical inquiry into the nature of loneliness, Mijuskovic cites examples from more than one hundred writers on loneliness, including Erich Fromm, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, Clark Moustakas, Rollo May, and James Howard in psychology; Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Thomas Wolfe and William Golding in literature; and Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre in philosophy. Insightful and comprehensive, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature demonstrates that loneliness is the basic nature of humans and is an unavoidable condition that all must face. European Review, 21:2 (May, 2013), 309-311. Ben Mijuskovic, Loneliness in Philosophy, Psychology, and Literature (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. 2012). Ben Lazare Mijuskovic offers in his book a very different approach to loneliness. According to him, far from being an occasional or temporary phenomenon, lonelinessor better the fear of lonelinessis the strongest motivational drive in human beings. He argues that following the replenishment of air, water, nourishment, and sleep, the most insistent and immediate necessity is man desire to escape his loneliness, to avoid the feeling of existential, human isolation (p xxx). The Leibnizian image of the monadas a self-enclosed windowless beinggives an acute portrait of this oppressive prison. To support this thesis, Mijuskovic uses an interdisciplinary approach--philosophy, psychology, and literaturethrough which the picture of man as continually fighting to escape the quasi-solipsistic prison of his frightening solitude reverberates. Besides insisting on the primacy of our human concern to struggle with the spectre of loneliness, Mijuskovic has sought to account for the reasons why this is the case. The core of his argumentation relies on a theory of consciousness. In Western thought three dominant models can be distinguished: (a) the self-consciousness or reflexive model; (b) the empirical or behavioral model; and (c) the intentional or phenomenological model. According to the last two models, it is difficult, if not inconceivable, to understand how loneliness is even possible. Only the theory that attributes a reflexive nature to the powers of the mind can adequately explain loneliness. The very constitution of our consciousness determines our confinement. When a human being successfully reflects on his self, reflexively captures his own intrinsically unique situation, he grasps (self-consciously) the nothingness of his existence as a transcendental conditionuniversal, necessary (a prioristructuring his entire being-in-the-world. This originary level of recognition is the ground-source for his sensory-cognitive awareness of loneliness (p. 13). Silvana Mandolesi

In this 20th anniversary edition, Kolker continues and expands his inquiry into the phenomenon of cinematic representation of culture by updating and revising the chapters on Kubrick, Scorsese, Altman and Spielberg.

Robert Waldron's brief biography of Thomas Merton examines and exposes a man who lived a deeply spiritual life, yes, but also a deeply conflicted one as well. By the use of Jungian theory and archetypes, Waldron explores all of the major Merton works (e.g., Seven Storey Mountain, The Sign of Jonas, The Collected Poems, Zen and the Birds of Appetite), but especially all of the many volumes of Merton's private diaries, and discovers a man, a soul struggling to live "la vita nuova" in the monastery while being drawn by various sirens out of it. Edgy, chancy, and at times speculative, Waldron penetrates Merton's sometimes dense poetry and prose to discover or uncover what was wanting in Merton's soul his desire for his own hermitage; his longing for the nurse he fell in love with; his desire perhaps to establish an entirely new monastic foundation. Merton emerges less a saint than a sinner who never stopped trying to become a saint by "becoming who he really was."

Beloved author Elisabeth Elliot gives hope to the lonely through tender reflections on God's love for us and his plans to bless us.

Reinterpreting the Bible through Family Systems Theory, this fascinating exploration shows how the theology of creation, restoration, and salvation can be meaningfully and uniquely understood through the lens of the biblical family. It is not possible to recreate a "biblical" family in the modern world. Thus, we must think of the principles of faithful family life demonstrated in the Bible and express them in a new way. That is the idea underlying Families of the Bible: A New Perspective. Examining themes related to family health, connection, spirituality, and psychology, the author relates stories from the Bible to modern-day experience in an effort to help readers strengthen and heal their own families, whatever their structure. While the book addresses the family of the patriarchs and other major traditional families in the Bible, it also specifically examines Jesus's new definition of family, showing how his psycho-spiritual family has a different—and more inclusive—shape than the "natural family." The author, who is an Episcopal priest, insists that the Bible shows God as faithful in providing for his people. The many disadvantaged in our society, as well as those who are alone and those who have found that wealth does not provide satisfaction, will benefit from this thoughtful reinterpretation.