Psychotherapy's Pilgrim-Poet: The Story Within imaginatively describes the interior experience of the therapeutic client by utilizing the images of epic literature as an interpretive lens for the psychotherapeutic process. Through the characters, plot, and psychological landscape of The Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer's Odyssey, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and Toni Morrison's Beloved, we look anew at the client's motivation to journey, their courage, affects, memories and wounds, the therapeutic bond, the encounter with the unconscious, and the act of story-telling. The author demonstrates that depth psychological work is a soulful pilgrimage characterized by a spiritual and heroic descent to the deep psyche in pursuit of wholeness and the authentic self. Although this book is theoretically informed, it is not intended to provide clinical explanations; rather, it aspires to describe the psychotherapeutic experience from an inside point of view, from the inner life of the client. The primary aim is to renew and deepen an understanding of the client's profoundly difficult and courageous psychological endeavor in depth psychotherapy. This book is a culmination of the author's experiences as researcher, teacher, therapist, enthused reader of epic, and most importantly, as client. It weaves together the author's personal stories with client vignettes, epic literature, depth psychology, mythological studies, and literary criticism.

Poetry discovers and speaks a truth ordinary language cannot express. And the passionate message in Finding What You Didn't Lose is that we're all poets--capable of giving voice to such truth. Poet-teacher John Fox reveals how imagery, sound, metaphor, rhythm, and other poetic elements can he us tell our inner story, heal psychological wounds, discover spiritual connection, and develop the rich creative imagination that lies within us all. Transcending the traditional academic approach to poetry writing, Finding What You Didn't Lose deals with craft but, more importantly, guides readers to explore their deepest feelings and express their own unique insights through the incomparable language of poetry. Through an intermingling of inventive exercises and illustrative poems--ranging from Nobel Prize winners to first-time poets--readers are inspired to add their own distinct voice to a world fellowship of poets. For those who already write poetry, and the many more who want to, this book is the key to finding what you never lose: your natural inclination to express who you are through the making of poems.

A revelatory look at how poet Allen Ginsberg transformed experiences of mental illness and madness into some of the most powerful and widely read poems of the twentieth century. Allen Ginsberg’s 1956 poem “Howl” opens with one of the most resonant phrases in modern poetry: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Thirty years later, Ginsberg entrusted a Columbia University medical student with materials not shared with anyone else, including psychiatric records that documented how he and his mother, Naomi Ginsberg, struggled with mental illness. In Best Minds, psychiatrist, researcher, and scholar Stevan M. Weine, M.D., who was that medical student, examines how Allen Ginsberg took his visions and psychiatric hospitalization, his mother’s devastating illness, confinement, and lobotomy, and the social upheavals of the postwar world and imaginatively transformed them. Though madness is often linked with hardship and suffering, Ginsberg’s showed how it could also lead to profound and redemptive aesthetic, spiritual, and social changes. Through his revolutionary poetry and social advocacy, Ginsberg dedicated himself to leading others toward new ways of being human and easing pain. Throughout his celebrated career Ginsberg made us feel as though we knew everything there was to know about him. However, much has been left out about his experiences growing up with a mentally ill mother, his visions, and his psychiatric hospitalization. In Best Minds, with a forty-year career studying and addressing trauma, Weine provides a groundbreaking exploration of the poet and his creative process especially in relation to madness. Best Minds examines the complex relationships between mental illness, psychiatry, trauma, poetry, and prophecy—using the access Ginsberg generously shared to offer new, lively, and indispensable insights into an American icon. Weine also provides new understandings of the paternalism, treatment failures, ethical lapses, and limitations of American psychiatry in the 1940s and 1950s. In light of these new discoveries, the challenges Ginsberg faced appear starker and his achievements, both as a poet and an advocate, even more remarkable.

Winner, 2011 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2009 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Against the background of the American and French revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, and the struggle for religious equality in Great Britain, a brilliant, embattled woman strove to defend Enlightenment values to her nation. Poet, teacher, essayist, political writer, editor, and critic, Anna Letitia Barbauld was venerated by contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the young Walter Scott, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Boston Unitarians such as William Ellery Channing. After decades in the historical limbo into which almost all work by women writers of her era was swept, Barbauld's writings on citizenly ethics, identity politics, church-state relations, and empire are still deeply relevant today. Inquiring and witty as well as principled and passionate, Barbauld was a voice for the Enlightenment in an age of revolution and reaction. Based on more than fifteen years of research in dozens of libraries and archives across five countries, this is the first full-length biography of one of the foremost women writers in Georgian England. "A superb biography that brings a radical literary figure back into the picture . . . a thrilling, brilliant book."—Guardian "McCarthy establishes Barbauld as a figure of major significance. His magnificent biography will draw many others to her, and give her a new and deserved prominence in Enlightenment and Romantic studies."—Women's Writing "A tour de force . . . Honest, wise, original."—Eighteenth-Century Studies William McCarthy is professor emeritus of English at Iowa State University. He is the coeditor of The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld and the author of Hester Thrale Piozzi: Portrait of a Literary Woman.

Therapists are increasingly using a variety of techniques in their clinical practice. From memory recovery to relaxation training, from cognitive restructuring to empathic reflection, today's interventions are based less on the theoretical preconceptions of the therapist and more on the problems and desires of the patient. With these changes as a backdrop, internationally renowned cognitive psychologist Hector Fernandez-Alvarez presents an integrated model of therapy. Theoretically sound and clinically rich, this volume offers a way of tailoring each clinical encounter to the needs of the particular patient, from the mildy distressed anxiety disordered the severely suffering borderline. This book is an invaluable guide to students and experienced therapists alike.

This companion to Favorite Counseling and Therapy Techniques contains more than fifty handouts and homework assignments used by some of the finest and most renowned therapists in the world, such as Albert Ellis, William Glasser, Richard B. Bolles, Allen E. Ivey, Marianne Schneider Corey, Gerald Corey, Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr., and Peter R. Breggin. Several new entries have been added to reflect the newest advancements in the counseling field. This is sure to be a highly useful and insightful read for any practitioner wishing to learn new techniques to benefit their practice and patients.