When unmourned experiences of helplessness and disavowed desires turn into a passive fatalism, people stop hoping for the best and fear the worst, despairing that the real world has anything good to offer. This can lead individuals to memorialize past sufferings through psychological symptoms and compulsive repetitions. Dr. Shabad discusses how patients, after many years of living a life limited by resentment, fear, and despair, can come to terms with their childhood experiences: a mother who can never be satisfied, a father who consistently buries his head in the newspaper. He explains how people can overcome hardships endured and losses suffered. The authentic spontaneous dialogue between therapist and patient provides the generosity and courage necessary to shed their now obsolete defenses and mourn what cannot be remedied or replaced. Rich clinical material demonstrates how mourning can bring about self-acceptance, and set individuals free to take responsibility for and live out their own personal truths. This is a deeply felt, and beautifully written tribute to the redemptive power of psychotherapy and to the regenerative capabilities in all human beings.

The then-controversial message of Jerome D. Frank's Persuasion and Healing (1991) was that "the shared features of the various methods of psychological therapy are more important than those by which they differ." Alarcon (emeritus, psychiatry, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine), a former student of Frank's, and Julia Frank (psychiatry and behavioral sciences, George Washington U. School of Medicine), his daughter/coauthor, introduce essays treating his book's themes (e.g., the importance of life history, meaning, cultural concepts, demoralization, the mind-body interface); its impact on current practices; relevance to neuroscience; and applications to special populations. Frank's contributions are situated in the history of American psychiatry. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Despite the importance of the concept of hope in human affairs, psychoanalysts have long had difficulty accepting responsibility for the manner in which their various interpretive orientations and explanations of therapeutic action express their own hopes for their patients. In Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis, Steven Cooper remedies this longstanding lacuna in the literature, and, in the process, provides a thorough comparative analysis of contemporary psychoanalytic models with respect to issues of hope and hopefulness. Cooper's task is challenging, given that the most hopeful aspects of human growth frequently entail acceptance of the destructive elements of our inner lives. The analysis of hope, then, implicates what Cooper sees as a central dialectic tension in psychoanalysis: that between psychic possibility and psychic limit. He argues that analysts have historically had difficulty integrating the concept of limit into a treatment modality so dedicated to the creation and augmentation of psychic possibility. And yet, it is only by accepting the realm of limit as a necessary counterpoise to the realm of possibility and clinically embracing the tension between the two realms that analysts can further their understanding of therapeutic process in the interest of better treatment outcomes. Cooper persuasively demonstrates how each psychoanalytic theory provides its own logic of hope; this logic, in turn, translates into a distinctive sense of what the analyst may hope for the patient, and what the patient is encouraged to hope for himself or herself. Objects of Hope brings ranging scholarship and refreshing candor to bear on the knotty issue of what can and cannot be achieved in the course of psychoanalytic therapy. It will be valued not only as an exemplary exercise in comparative psychoanalysis, but also as a thoughtful, original effort to place the vital issue of hope at the center of clinical concern.

Hope has long been a topic of interest for psychologists, philosophers, educators, and physicians. In the past few decades, researchers from various disciplines and from around the world have studied how hope relates to superior academic performance, improved outcomes in the workplace, and improved psychological and physical health in individuals of all ages. Edited by Matthew W. Gallagher and the late Shane J. Lopez, The Oxford Handbook of Hope provides readers with a thorough and comprehensive update on the past 25 years of hope research while simultaneously providing an outline of what leading hope researchers believe the future of this line of research to be. In this extraordinary volume, Gallagher, Lopez, and their expert team of contributors discuss such topics as how best to define hope, how hope is distinguished from related philosophical and psychological constructs, what the current best practices are for measuring and quantifying hope, interventions and strategies for promoting hope across a variety of settings, the impact it has on physical and mental health, and the ways in which hope promotes positive functioning. Throughout its pages, these experts review what is currently known about hope and identify the topics and questions that will help guide the next decade of research ahead.

How do experiences of hope and despair impact upon our capacity to meet life's challenges in narrative and family therapy? Clients' experiences of hope and despair can be complex, reflecting individual and family histories, current patterns and dynamics, the stresses of everyday life, and the social contexts of families' lives. This book analyses how therapists meet and engage with these dichotomous aspects of human experience. The editors place the themes of hope and despair at the centre of a series of reflections on practice and theory. Contributors from all over the world are brought together, incorporating a range of perspectives from narrative, systemic and social constructionist frameworks. The book is divided into three sections, covering: reflections on hope and despair facing adversity: practices of hope reflections on reconciliation and forgiveness. Hope and Despair in Narrative and Family Therapy looks at the importance of hope in bringing about positive therapeutic change. This book will be of great use to family therapists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and students on therapeutic training courses.

Directly inspired by the work of Jerome D. Frank and his field-defining book Persuasion and Healing, this volume of essays by distinguished contemporary scholars broadly assesses the current state of research and practice in psychotherapy. Editors Renato D. Alarcón, a former student of Frank's, and Julia B. Frank, Jerome Frank's daughter and coauthor, bring diverse perspectives to the volume. Each chapter, based on one of the themes of Frank’s classic book, offers honest critique and fearless criticism of psychotherapy as it has evolved in the twenty-first century. Contributors update classical psychotherapeutic concepts such as demoralization, hope, meaning, rhetoric, and cultural variation and add new insight into how the neuroscience revolution affects our understanding of mental organization and psychotherapy. As Frank did in his own time, these authors challenge the claims made for the specificity or superiority of cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, and other varieties of psychotherapy, providing a candid assessment of the value and limitations of many competing approaches to diagnosis and treatment. They also focus attention on psychotherapies for special populations, including children, people with serious medical illness, and those from culturally and religiously diverse backgrounds. Like Persuasion and Healing, this volume advocates not for any particular approach but for psychotherapy more generally grounded in principles of evolutionary biology, culture, narrative, and behavior change. It provides researchers, theorists, and practitioners of every kind of training with a genuinely phenomenological approach to a wide range of psychiatric issues. Echoing Frank's voice, in particular his emphasis on the commonalities of suffering and the therapeutic power of hope, The Psychotherapy of Hope offers scholarly wisdom and practical advice on how to understand psychotherapy—and apply its principles to the greatest benefit of patients.

Milton H. Erickson is most commonly examined through the lens of hypnosis. This book takes a much broader approach and defines several key components that made him successful as a therapist. The fundamental strategies described are relevant to all mental health care professionals, regardless of their theoretical orientation.