Search results for ""free association books""

This work on breech birth is for parents, obstetricians, midwives and all who come into contact with women carrying breech babies. It addresses the whole experience of breech from causes to turning techniques to the options for birth. It engages with the controversial debate on caesarean versus vaginal breech birth and provides a powerful critique of recent evidence which has led to an increase in caesarean section. The book encourages parents to make an informed choice about the birth they want. For professionals this book is an essential resource on breech, deepening knowledge on breech, encouraging a critical examination of their own approach to breech and improving the quality of care they are able to offer to parents of breech babies.

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In this book, the case histories of Melanie Klein and her followers are scrutinised, to examine both what the clinicians were noticing in their patients, and how they conceptualized those processes.

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Why in the world not? aims to make daseinanalysis accessible to the English-speaking reader while retaining cross-references to the original texts, many of which were written in German.

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Now What? Is a reference book and guide offering practical advice to teenagers as they approach the key decisions regarding their futures, whether it be careers, university, apprenticeships or something else. The follow up to the No. 1 bestselling Amazon career guide, 'Is your school lying to you?' offers all new insights into the need for self reliance, adaptability and entrepreneurial spark to navigate and succeed in the new, post pandemic marketplace they'll be entering as adults. An honest, fresh and deliberately unacademic take on the evergreen issue of how best to advise teens on their choices free from bias and parental expectation. Now What? Challenges the myth that school will take care of this and empowers students to embrace their opportunities, achieve their goals and through self reliance, realise their ambitions.

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Pull Yourself Together, Man is written as a simple, usable guide on how to find some effective rhythms and healthy habits in your life. It offers ideas and thoughts to help people better manage their own emotional health. It contains stories, lists and ideas, as well as top tips and anecdotes. This book is for people who sometimes struggle with difficult emotions. In truth, that’s most of us. Most of us have built up unhealthy thinking habits which hold us back from being the best we can be. This book encourages you to build a healthier emotional approach to life. The author talks about this goal as a project. It’s not quick, and it’s not easy, but it is achievable. All the best projects need a guide, and this book is that guide.

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Parents have a natural and automatic desire to rescue, protect and shield their children from difficult situations. Parents want to show their love by stepping in and helping wherever they can: with homework, bedtime monsters, the dark, new experiences, making friends…But by rescuing our children, are we helping them to build their self-esteem? By stepping in and fixing things, we communicate that we don’t think they can do it on their own. We make them think they need us. What if there was a better way? This book will give parents the skills to guide their children to find their own solutions and to create new possibilities. These tried and tested coaching skills, drawn from the author's vast experience of working with parents and children, will give children choices. It will give them a positive mindset, and a ‘I can’ attitude. If we can show children how to fix things for themselves, then we set them up for a lifetime of independence, and confidence in their own abilities.

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The subject of schizophrenia tends to arouse people’s deepest-seated fears of mental illness and this is especially so when it relates to a loved one or to personal experience. It therefore becomes particularly important that services organizing efficient, effective and capable care for individuals suffering from psychosis are available to them and their families. This book offers a scientific, explanatory, visual model of the mind affected by schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, the general pathway it follows when it receives remedial treatment with psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and a way of visually conceptualizing its resolution when treated by this method. This book tries to present visually the overall sum of the changes these schizophrenic minds undergo during remedial psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It hopes thereby to illustrate the overall nature of their changing internal capacities and strengths as they interact with their psychoanalyst during their recovery from their schizophrenia to become independent individuals. Summarizing this process emphasizes its completeness and reality, demonstrating it as a clinical phenomenon. The experience of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is outlined, along with personal attributes required of the patient. This book aims to illustrate the very real possibility for future flourishing that working through difficulties like these makes possible for patients who persevere.

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My Mother, My Daughter, My Self is a significant self-revelatory work which chronicles the separation process between mother and child, focusing most specifically on the mother/daughter relationship. The book asks a core question for all mothers and adult children: how do we perform the perplexing, sometimes terrifying act of separation from our mothers and our children while simultaneously marching toward the unknown terrain of individuality? How do we yield to this inevitable process of emotional separation from that which was once our own self? The author uses her own experiences as a daughter, as a mother of a newly-adopted baby, and as a psychoanalyst to explore an essential truth: that our relationships with our mothers affect our other significant love relationships, our values, our self-esteem, and our sense of satisfaction, often throughout the whole of our lives. She also uses the experiences of some of her patients, taken from her forty years as a practicing clinician, to provide further fascinating insights and illustration.Readers are gifted with both an internal parenting 'guide' as well as a deeply profound memoir about the internal process of being a mother that is so crucial, yet rarely looked at so intently.

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"Part of these institutionalized biases, we think, results from the institutionalized racism that lies at the heart of the conceptual systems we use in psychiatry". There is a crisis of credibility within child and adolescent psychiatry. Child and adolescent mental health theory and practice have come to be dominated by a narrow biomedical frame. Rising numbers of children are being diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses and given psychotropic medication to 'treat' these 'illnesses'. This text brings together knowledgeable specialists across the spectrum of child and adolescent psychiatry, which are deeply critical about current mainstream theory and practice. These 'critical voices' drawing upon research and writing from related disciplines, radically question many of psychiatry's most cherished assumptions and offer new ways of thinking about theory and practice. This courageous book aims to bring marginal voices into the mainstream. Exploring the influence of drug companies, the impact of trauma, the crisis in academic medicine, systemic perspectives, adolescent in-patient units, ADHD, childhood depression and the role of diet and nutrition, the contributors offer hope to those looking for alternatives to diagnosis and medication for children and families with emotional and behavioral problems.

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How we know ourselves, how we are known by the institutions in which we work, and how we are known by our co-workers and our families is increasingly affected in a constantly changing network of technologies and strategies. As we enter the 21st century, these include computers and telecommunications, as well as management, 'psy' fields, and accounting. In the workplace, these technological forms are lashed together into systems and strategies that reflect a form of rationality and allow norms for seeing, representing and knowing work and workers to arise. These norms and forms produce distinctly modern forms of subjectivity, 'truth' and power to make workers into subjects. Tertiary (service) labour is the fastest growing form of paid work in the economic catchment of the West. Mediation of labour through computers and telecommunication is also increasing at a remarkable rate. Nonetheless, there are few detailed analyses of subjectivity in technology-mediated tertiary labour. Drawn from ethnographic research using post-structural analytics, this book describes how a collection of technologies is taken up in a common form of tertiary labour - call centres - to produce 'truth', knowledge, power and modern forms of subjectivity and social subjects. It also challenges assumptions of Marxian and management theory by demonstrating that workers are neither dominated nor liberated, rather how they are made responsible for and caught up in the apparatus that renders them as subjects. This book provides a detailed look at the 'genealogy of subjectivity' at work. It shows 'how we are now' as a population whose selves and subjectivity are produced face-to-face with technology-mediated systems.

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The author began her working career as a freelance conference steno-typist, and it was in this capacity that she was Jacques Lacan's steno-typist ("keybasher") from 1967 to 1979. Awarding him a "gold medal for boorishness" - Lacan did not speak a word to her in those twelve years - it was only after she became a psychoanalyst herself that Pierrakos felt adequately equipped to explore and write about, this experience in depth. Her careful but excoriating criticism of the Lacanian system will be of interest to all readers wishing to understand more about one of the most curious phenomena of our time - how a large part of the French intelligentsia came to be captivated by "the pathetic spectacle of an old man tossing bits of string representing Borromean knots to his audience, and of hands stretching out to receive them like children at the circus". The author records: "the posturing was backed up by a quasi-military organization, interlinking regions by sending analysts into virgin territory to preach the good word. Some had undergone only summary analysis and training, since, to quote Lacan "the analyst is only answerable to himself".

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During the 1980s discourse concerning child sexual abuse became central to the US/UK media, and in the 1990,s popular culture frequently took child sexual abuse as a subject for representation. Numerous claims of child sexual abuse were made between 1984 and 1994, not all of which were real. Everyday news throughout the 1990s highlighted concerns concerning abduction by paedophiles and children being at risk from predatory paedophiles using the Internet. While the media continually made child sexual abuse a central concern of public debate, popular culture, particularly films, explored this issue in fiction and docudrama. Many of these films reproduced some of the central myths concerning child sexual abuse and paedophilia. Men abusing children, women abusing children, children abusing other children, became staple fodder in mainstream feature films. In 2005 'the most famous person in the world' was again on trial for what is popularly considered to be the most heinous of crimes. Pervasive Perversions analyses a range of media and popular culture texts concerned with child sexual abuse. With sections on new media, fiction film, and celebrity culture, key questions are examined. Why did mass hysteria break out in the 1980s over sexual abuse and continue throughout the final decades of the twentieth century? What was the significance of this phenomenon? How have the constructions and representation of child sexual abuse in the media and popular culture altered? What do these images and narratives convey concerning the understanding of child sexual abuse in the public consciousness? How does this relate to the reality? What is the relationship between celebrity culture and child sexual abuse? The author examines these questions through an extensive evaluation of all forms of media and popular culture and comprehensively unearths and demystifies the key myths of child sexual abuse in contemporary media and popular culture.

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Psychoanalysis has continuously been applied to the exploration of creativity and artistic genius, but up to now, this has not produced its own systematic body of knowledge. The traditional psychoanalytic approach to art is to attempt to decode it, in order to capture its hidden meaning. But in this book, the author explains that it is through the arts, we discover important aspects of ourselves. Antonio Di Benedetto argues for a completely new approach.. By employing analytic receptivity to listen to the aesthetic object and what it has to say, art becomes the interpretative key instead. Furthermore, the author shows how the arts can inspire psychoanalysis, helping it to recover its intuitive and poetic roots and providing forms, images and sounds to best represent fleeting introspective moments and pre-verbal insight. To illustrate these pre-symbolic aspects of introspection, the author examines well-known aesthetic masterpieces; the frescoes of the Loggia of Psyche in Rome, Mozart's The Magic Flute, and Six Characters in Search of an Author, by L. Pirandello. Of these, Di Benedetto considers music to be the artistic form best suited to refine the analyst's capacity to listen to the affective component of unconscious communication.

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Infertility has a major impact on the lives of people. This title is written for the many couples who, following diagnosis of infertility, desperately want an account of the problems of infertility and the help and services available. It is also aimed at the many professionals who are looking for an overall view.

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For analysts and therapists, working in intimate clinical settings, ethics is at the foundation of professional life. Yet the various depth psychological models have yet to provide an understanding of the relationship between professional ethics in the clinical setting and the origins and developments of the ethical attitude in the individual. This work seeks to remedy this omission and brings together practising psychoanalytic psychotherapists and Jungian analysts to explore the impact of the ethical dimension on contemporary analytic theory and practice. The book presents a series of indepth studies all written by practising analysts with a particular interest in professional ethical matters. Among the issues discussed are: the ethical implications for the analyst contemplating and negotiating the stages of retirement; the pressures in the analytic relationship that may contribute to unethical enactment's; the ethics involved in the sensitive area of publication and the dissemination of clinical material; and the ethical requirements for analysts working in the wider contexts of society, including mental health provision. In a climate in which analytic and therapeutic practice is highly scrutinised by the public and the media, "The Ethical Attitude in Analytical Practice" makes an important contribution to the place of ethics in analytic theory building and day-to-day clinical practice, and in the psychoanalytic understanding of wider social and cultural ethical issues.

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This title explores the evolutionary history of training in psychotherapy, the institutions they came from, and the main ideas that supported them. It also explores the professionalization of psychotherapy and provides detailed information about each training. It includes all the organizations central to psychoanalytic work, including the Jungian trainings in analytical psychology and Jungian psychotherapy, and the child, group and couple trainings and all trainings inspired by psychoanalysis and analytical psychology. It is designed for those interested in training to become a psychotherapist and provides a focus for debate about the history of the field.

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The author presents 18 of his clinical papers and reveals an orientation based on his "five channel theory of psychoanalytic listening", that involves listening and responding to the patient from different stances or frameworks.

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A sequel to "Stress, Appraisal and Coping", this volume explores the latest findings and trends in research and theory. It focuses on the rationale for a cognitive-mediational approach to stress and the emotions, and distinguishes between social, physiological and psychological stress. Topics include: work and family stress; chronic stress; traumatic stress disorders; crisis theory and management; stress in special groups such as ageing and the aged; children and adolescents; the stress of dislocation and immigration; stress and infections; the role of the nervous system; author's view of the recent changes in psychotherapy. This book is essential for all practitioners in the field of stress, appraisal, and coping, and of value to students of psychology, graduate students, academics, and professionals in related fields.

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Including a biographical chapter on Milton Erickson, this text reveals the many important events of his life that contributed to the development of his ideas and theories on hypnosis.

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This text is concerned with knowledge and how it is generated within complementary therapies: what kind of authority can be accorded to such knowledge; the nature of research agendas; and what ideas and skills are central to training and how they are transmitted.

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When children's emotional needs are not met, they become unhappy. This text reveals their distress both at home and at school through fear, anxiety and often troublesome behaviour which is not easy to comprehend or understand. Three fundamental questions run through this book. What are the situations a child might encounter when growing up that can lead to a threat to his or her emotional well being? What emotional needs are not being met? What can be done to help that child recover a sense of well being and move on? In dealing with these questions the emphasis throughout the text is on the child's feelings but not to the exclusion of the feelings of the parents, since both are inevitably interwoven. The book presents the emotional problems of children in depth, and a variety of ways of dealing with those problems. The text is illustrated throughout with examples of children the author has encountered.

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The Studio is a unique and exciting work, referencing Freud and other psychoanalytic heavy-weights to examine a difficult past - loss, trauma and the complexities of life are addressed and explored. Each chapter takes a painting as its focus, holding it up to the light as the author's engagement with each work is interwoven with memoir and her thoughts on the psychoanalytic processes which inform her life.

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Government ministers, social work managers and university academics all strive to shape social work education and training. But what do social work students themselves think about their education, their courses and practical training? This book uniquely focuses on the student experience. The author has experience of teaching social work at numerous universities and, merging his own observations with those of his interviewees, he concludes with radical proposals: "social work clients do not tend to be found on the playing fields of Eton, rather they emerge from the poor and disadvantaged classes of society. Instead of focusing on social workers and their training, it is to this iniquitous class structure that we should turn for solutions to the many social problems we encounter daily." A student opinion: "I spend about 75 per cent of my time on the computer. I currently have to update two databases. It's all duplicated nonsense. The amount of money wasted on IT is absolutely incredible. I'm just about to get my fourth computer in three years. We had one computer set up 18 months ago with a scanner that sits on its own desk collecting dust. We were told we were going to have to scan all our files, one page at a time, and go paperless but no one mentions it any more and no one's ever turned the scanner on! They took away our desk phones a year ago and now we have these shitty mobiles. The future of social work? It'll be to train up unqualified staff to do the job cheaper and take the can if anything goes wrong. Our team has been cut by 60 per cent and we're being integrated into the voluntary sector, which will be shit."

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McDougall looks at people who react to psychological distress through somatic manifestations, and at the psychosomatic potential of individuals in those moments when habitual psychological ways of coping are overwhelmed, and the body pantomimes the mind's distress.

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Isabel Menzies Lyth has formulated a way of thinking about social structures as forms of defence - as ways of avoiding experiences of anxiety, guilt, doubt and uncertainty - that is as challenging as it is persuasive. She believes that the individual is engaged in a lifelong struggle against primitive anxiety. A psychoanalyst writing in the tradition of Klein and Bion, her writings span more than thirty years of research in applied psychoanalysis and are here collected in the first of two volumes. In her classical paper on nursing, she writes: "By the nature of her profession the nurse is at considerable risk of being flooded by intense and unmanageable anxiety." The organisation and bureaucracy of the nursing profession have failed to contain the high levels of anxiety and stress that nurses experience, attempting instead to take practical steps to enhance recruitment and stem job wastage. The 'real nature' of the problem remains untouched. This is a controversial collection, which makes available to a wider public an important part of the research tradition of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. The author extends her analytic range to cover themes of children in long-stay hospitals and day-care institutions, and the maternal role today. All the essays combine her two main professional interests: the dynamics of the individual in his or her own right and the psychodynamics of the social world.

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By turns informative and irreverent this book takes a new approach to tackling gender inequality in the home and at work, focusing on dads being entitled to a bigger role in parenting. It presents the barriers men face to being active dads - from sexist security guards to Tory MPs and even Homer Simpson - and, crucially, it outlines how to tackle them for the good of men, women and children. In Dads Don't Babysit two dads outline some of the biggest problems facing families that want dad to get his turn at raising the kids, and offer a range of solutions in a manifesto for parents and policy makers to consider and hopefully adopt. The book tackles topics such as the gender pay gap, lack of a strong parental leave system in the UK, the financial penalties of taking time off to look after children and the limiting expectations parents find colleagues, relatives and the media have on mums and dads. The authors draw on their own experience of parenting and that of others. Interviews are backed up by extensive research so that the book presents these important issues in an accessible, personal and at times light-hearted way that the apolitical reader will be able to relate to. There is a lively and growing argument about men's role in the 21st century and this book offers a unique perspective, giving a feminist argument by men offering solutions to benefit everyone.

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Re-released with a new introduction, and to coincide with a film of the same title (directed by the author), Mad To Be Normal is the memoir R. D. Laing never lived to write. In the last two years of Laing's life, he recorded hundreds of hours of conversation with Robert Mullan in which he was determined to be as frank and open as possible, and equally determined to 'put the record straight'. R. D. Laing wrote a number of books during the 1960s which rocked the foundations of conventional psychiatry and galvanized the imagination of millions of ordinary readers. His views were against the grain of conventional psychiatry - his existential approach to madness was controversial, and his work brought into focus matters of individual liberty and the importance of the social context of 'illness'. The greatest accusation he suffered was that he idealised mental misery - something he consistently denied. Mad to be Normal presents Laing's own words, about his work and about his life. It is the most complete record on Laing, by Laing.Entertaining, maddening, surprising, impressive, occasionally scurrilous, and evoking a compelling portrait of the heady and sometimes self-regarding mood of the 1960s and early l970s, this books necessitates a reassessment of Laing and his work; work which is part of a lengthier and on-going process concerned with the routine care of those disturbed in mind.

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Advocating a call to the return to the spiritual in psychoanalysis, the author of this text illustrates his writing with the work of Bion, Milner and Winnicott. He expands on his call to celebrate and explore the meaning of mystical experience within psychoanalysis and considers how both patient and analyst to be immersed in each other. In the text he explores how this immersion restores and enriches, and drains.

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This book explains the ideas to be found in the interface between psychoanalysis, psychiatry and other disciplines.

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This introduction to object relations presents the work of the main theorists chronologically, enabling the reader to gain a sense of how the subject developed. The different concepts are explained and examined through the eyes of each theorist. A brief biography of each theorist is included.

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Intended for those who are troubled by their lives and want to make changes, but don't know where to begin, this is a book about relationships. It is not intended as a self-help book, but as one which will encourage the reader to really think about themselves and the way they act - how their behaviour is driven by thoughts, feelings, and impulses of which they may not have any conscious awareness. Jukes examines his 'Mad Hypothesis' - so called because it seems, at first glance, to be 'mad.' He has used it successfully in therapeutic work to refer to everything that is wrong in a patient's relationship and even their life: "You are responsible for everything that is wrong with your relationship including any behaviour of your partner which you use to justify, excuse, or in any other way account for yo own behaviour towards him/her, or the world in general." The author draws on his vast clinical experience to explore this fascinating idea and looks at other related issues such as anxiety, sulking, masochism, and attachment. He also includes many illuminating case-studies which perfectly illustrate his theories and make the text accessible to both clinicians and non-professionals.

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Once the ego-ideal is distinguished from the super-ego, it becomes possible to make sense of much that formerly remained obscure in psychoanalytic theory. Chasseguet-Smirgel illuminates not only the psychology of narcissism in individuals but many of the connections between psychic life and society.

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This text examines the emerging concerns about the export of trauma experts and counsellors to war-torn areas of the world. The contributors are all professionals who are involved in helping adults and children rebuild their lives after witnessing the destruction of their families and communities. Based on their own experience of working internationally, this book presents an analysis of present, misconceived attempts to give help, but also an agenda for future, more appropriate ways of responding to those affected by wars and conflicts.

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Conceived as a manual, this book introduces the reader directly to the concepts and fundamental contributions of the work of the Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget. The terms of 'adaptation', 'accommodation' and 'intelligence', structured together with the 'periods' and 'stages' of cognitive development, are explained with an explicit pedagogical objective for students. The author works on the stages of the first period or 'sensory motor period', and on the transformations that children's play undergoes, the imitation and the notion of object throughout the next stage or 'pre-operational period'. It analyses the period of 'concrete operations' and their sub-periods, and then concludes with the next level, that of the 'formal operations' of the representative intelligence, when abstraction and logical resolution of operations, are possible. Lopez-Corvo tries with this book, as he puts it: "to summarise Piaget's contributions within evolutionary psychology, in such a way as to facilitate the reader -above all students- the understanding of the theory and at the same time appreciate its logic and style".

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This book is about the joys and horrors of our old age. It will show you the uncensored reality of my experience and that of women who confided in me. You will find humour, despair, and some gritty bits but absolutely no euphemisms.

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From Grenades to Griddles tells the true story of Chamberlin and Hill Ltd, now Chamberlin Plc, a Group of companies in the West Midlands. Starting a year before their first foundry opened, the author follows the development of the business right from the beginning to the present day. The book takes the reader on a fascinating journey of how a traditional enterprise has managed not only to survive, but to thrive in a modern Britain. With original photos from the company archives, along with personal memories of key players in the business, From Grenades to Griddles offers a unique exploration of the 130 years of the foundry’s operation in the wider context of the cultural, political and economic life of the United Kingdom.

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This book explores the importance of the philosophical dimension of emotions, turning the traditional relationship between emotions and philosophy upside down: instead of being one of many objects of philosophical thought, an emotion contains an inherent philosophical truth. For this thesis, the author refers to Kierkegaard’s groundbreaking discovery of ‘anxiety’ as an emotional experience that is totally different from fear. This allows a deeper understanding of the emotions, and reveals the philosophical primacy of emotions over thoughts, which always convey a meaning. Part I explores the three aspects of anxiety (anxiety about ‘nothing’, guilt-anxiety, shame-anxiety) that are distinguished by their capacity to disclose the human condition in its naked thatness, which is generally for most of us too hard to bear. Parts II and III then discuss the basic human need for protection from being overwhelmed by the ontological-emotional experience of anxiety. Part II examines the protection given by negation of this intolerable truth in its direct emotional repudiation in nausea, envy and despair. Part III addresses the protection by the two positive feelings of love and trust, which claim to be stronger than anxiety and therefore to be able to overcome it. Only sympathy cannot be categorised here. It belongs in a psychoanalytic therapy guided by existential perspectives, where the analyst listens with a philosophical ear and recognises his patients as ’reluctant philosophers’ who are especially sensitive to the ontological truth disclosed in anxiety and therefore suffer not only ‘from reminiscences’ (Freud), but also from their own being.

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“There is so much that we can learn from the client/counsellor relationship that would help us understand what it is to be a child in a world full of adults and so enrich our parent/child relationships and all our child/adult relationships. Most importantly the counsellor can provide what was unavailable in early relationships. Key words in the relationship with the counsellor are: trust, closeness, intimacy, flexibility, encouragement, warmth, safety, mutuality, caring, compassion, kindness. These are words parents can incorporate into their relationships with their children as well.” Jane Teverson expertly explains how counselling theory can be used by parents throughout the child’s life, from infancy to adolescence, and makes a case for compassionate parenting. With helpful summaries at the end of each chapter and an accessible writing style, this book has a wide appeal. With real, usable advice and examples for parents, Born Beautiful is an essential addition to any parent’s library.

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The common, existing distance between children and adults is the basis of this work, which has been addressed in many literary and cultural works throughout history. Not being able to remember how we, now adults, thought as children -like their spontaneity or magic and omnipotent form of thinking- would leave children completely isolated, like a helpless immigrant in a foreign land. This book attempts to comprehend, how parents' misunderstanding, can induce loneliness and helplessness in children, that with time will become traumatic, and will remain unconsciously present in all of us forever. It will continue to repeat using infantile emotions, children form of thinking, and experiencing as well, loneliness, anxiety, depression, fears and the chronic need of finding a 'rescuer', in the form of power, fame, drugs, money, religion, and so on. This very innovative approach to the understanding of children's segregation and its repercussion on adult's emotional life, will be of invaluable interest to all practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and parents included.

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We all share identical properties that mark us out as human beings. Even so, every person is unique: we are not clones. It’s the same with depression - or perhaps more properly the depressions (plural) – because they manifest in so many different ways and under different circumstances yet in essence remain the same. This is a simple enough observation, yet there appears to be little understanding of the condition – or conditions - among the general public, who tend to lump together all states of ‘feeling miserable’ into something to be snapped out of, a disease category to be treated medically, or a feebleness of personality to be disapproved of and dismissed. In this new title from Wyn Bramley, many different views on causation and treatment are explored. The emphasis is on real people’s experiences from all aspects of the depressions – sufferers, helpers, family and friends – not a self-help work but an all-encompassing aid to understanding this common condition.

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Written by the founder of `Street Talk' - a charity which takes therapy to women in street prostitution, this unique title sheds light on this marginalised and forgotten group. Pip Hockton defines the clinical model which has emerged in order to support the practice within Street Talk, to ensure that those carrying out the work, as well as those who might carry it forward, have a clear understanding of the model. The author has worked with this group of women for more than thirteen years and has learnt a vast amount from them - she is still learning to this day. Street Talk's therapists are all highly trained and have discovered ways of engaging with these women by applying principles of object relations theory. A central guiding principle is to help the women encounter their own humanity, to make human contact, to listen and hear their stories. This is not an easy task, we hear of the barriers to engagement and how they can be overcome by patience, compassion, courage and faith that listening, hearing and bearing witness can help release deep wounds. The voices of the women come across vividly as the therapeutic approach pioneered by the authors is told through their stories.

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Fathom, an experimental memoir, explores the hinterland of the narrator’s mind. The narrative of Fathom focuses on a tantalising fragment from the past. `I think I saw a lot of blood’ and other odd surfacings from memory are explored through the work of psychoanalysis. Much like a kind of detective work to begin with, the narrative unravels the depths that appear in psychotic breakdown. Identity is evoked through three personas of the self: the puppet, the puppet-master and She-who-knows. Poetic in style, though something of a detective story, the first-person narrative is richly layered — Plath, Shakespeare, Sophocles and pop songs all have their place. Highly concentrated, structured in three parts, non-linear in chronology and highly metaphoric, Fathom appeals to those with a deep interest in mental health and all types of therapy.

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