Steve Peters’s A Path Through the Jungle is a unique and valuable guide to self-understanding and self-regulation. The book is presented in seven “Stages,” each of which is comprised of “Units” that build on each other sequentially. The core set of ideas is what Peters calls the “Chimp Model,” summarized in this image from Unit […]
Summary: Scott Barry Kaufman’s Rise Above is about the perils of victim mindset and how we can avoid them. In Part One, Kaufman explores the dynamics of victim mindset, including how people get stuck ruminating about their pasts, how we indulge irrational emotions and cognitive distortions, and how we become overly concerned with self-esteem and […]
Summary: Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese? is an allegorical tale about how to think about and respond to change. It tells the story of four characters who live in a large Maze and must explore the Maze to find cheese. There are two mice, Sniff and Scurry, and two littlepeople, Hem and Haw. They […]
Summary: Robert Masters’s To Be a Man is a passionate text that challenges men to grow and heal in ways that will generate what Masters calls “true masculine power.” Focusing on the topics of shame, anger, aggression, relational intimacy, and sex, Masters explores the dysfunctional patterns that pervade modern models of masculinity, offering alternative frameworks […]
Summary: Laura van Dernoot Lipsky’s Trauma Stewardship seeks to support helping professionals in their efforts to address and cope with the effects of “secondary” or “vicarious” trauma. Lipsky argues that the “trauma exposure response” often experienced by helping professionals is neither well understood nor properly dealt with by many individuals and organizations. As a result, the helping […]
Summary: Richard C. Schwartz’s You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For is a guide for applying Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy to intimate relationships. IFS posits that all people have a multiplicity of subpersonalities called “parts,” each of which has its own perspectives, beliefs, needs, goals, and special place in a person’s “internal family […]
Summary: Bruce D. Perry and Maia Szalavitz’s The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog is a harrowing yet hopeful examination of childhood trauma and its consequences. Presented as a series of real-life clinical narratives backed by scientific research, Perry and Szalavitz tell the story of how Perry learned to care for some of the least fortunate […]
Summary: Lisa Damour’s The Emotional Lives of Teenagers provides a handy crash course for parents and mental health professionals who are seeking to understand and support the teenagers in their lives. Drawing from her career in clinical psychology and contemporary research, Damour lays out the reasons why adolescence is a particularly challenging and special time in a young […]
Summary: William R. Miller and Theresa B. Moyers’s Effective Psychotherapists is a concise and instructive introduction to the particular skills and attitudes that make some therapists more effective than others. In Part One, Miller and Moyers argue that “therapist effects” or “relational factors” that shape the foundational working alliance between therapist and client are at least as […]
Summary: Irvin D. Yalom’s The Gift of Therapy is a guidebook written for people entering the psychotherapy profession. The text’s many concise and enlightening chapters cover a range of topics that unveil Yalom’s therapeutic theory and practice, focusing on his experiences with individual therapy, group therapy, and existential therapy. Written with tremendous spirit, deep compassion, and candid […]