Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls

Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before? According to Dr. Mary Pipher, a clinical psychologist who has treated girls for more than twenty years, we live in a look-obsessed, media-saturated, “girl-poisoning” culture. Despite the advances of feminism, escalating levels of sexism and violence–from undervalued intelligence to sexual harassment in elementary school–cause girls to stifle their creative spirit and natural impulses, which, ultimately, destroys their self-esteem. Yet girls often blame themselves or their families for this “problem with no name” instead of looking at the world around them.

Here, for the first time, are girls’ unmuted voices from the front lines of adolescence, personal and painfully honest. By laying bare their harsh day-to-day reality, Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias’ lost sense of self.

Windows to Our Children: A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Children and Adolescents

The Drama of Being a Child : The Search for the True Self

The first publication of Drama of Being a Child and of this 1997 edition are separated by fifteen years of experience – the author’s experience with her own self-therapy and with other recent therapy methods, and finally her knowledge of the life histories of the several thousand readers who have written to her. The research into childhood she has undertaken in this period has led to further fine-tuning of her earlier findings, as is ocumented and illustrated here with an abundance of examples. The author examines the consequences of repression at personal and social levels, the causes of the physical and psychological harm done to children and how this can be prevented, and finally the new methods at our disposal for dealing with the consequences of infant traumas.

For Your Own Good: Roots of Violence in Child-rearing

Alice Miller explores the sources of violence within ourselves and the way these are encouraged by orthodox childrearing practices. Challenging the way in which we rationalise punishment and coercion as being for the child’s ‘own good’, she illuminates the cost in compassion and humanity in later life, both in the private and public domain. Her message is clear: ‘people whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood; will feel no need to harm another person or themselves.

The Children We Deserve: Love and Hate in the Making of the Family

“Raising children”, writes the author, “is the most important work in the world, the task at which we dare not fail.” But it seems clear that people have failed, that society has lost its way, and that the betrayal of childhood is taking place on a global scale. From both sides of the Atlantic, evidence seems to be mounting that children are more and more deviant, more delinquent, more out of hand. If they grow up confused and ignorant, destructive and self-destructive, then the society that produces them must be so too. How has it come to this? Where are people going wrong – and where and how are they getting it right? This study tells the story of childhood, through time and across many cultures, from the birth of the child to the death of innocence that is called maturity. Rosalind Miles is the author of “The Women’s History of the World”.

Why Women Talk and Men Walk: How to Improve Your Relationship Without Discussing It

You know how it can get when a relationship turns sour. Women want to talk things through. Men want to walk away and ignore the problem. It’s an uncomfortable scenario that we’ve all witnessed or experienced, and one that we’d like to avoid. By explaining that it is the fundamental differences between men and women that can make relationships so hard, authors Patricia Love and Steven Stosny reveal that the key to a great relationship is not communication but rediscovering and maintaining the connection a couple felt when they first met. Their groundbreaking techniques show how to engage with a partner and reignite the feelings that made that partnership so special to begin with.

How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking about It

Men are right. The “relationship talk” “does not” help. Dr. Patricia Love’s and Dr. Steven Stosny’s “How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It” reveals the stunning truth about marital happiness: Love is “not” about better communication. It’s about connection. You’ll never get a closer relationship with your man by talking to him like you talk to one of your girlfriends. Male emotions are like women’s sexuality: you can’t be too direct too quickly. There are four ways to connect with a man: touch, activity, sex, routines. Men want closer marriages just as much as women do, but not if they has to act like a woman. Talking makes women move closer; it makes men move away. The secret of the silent male is this: his wife supplies the meaning in his life. The stunning truth about love is that talking doesn’t help. Have you ever had this conversation with your spouse? Wife: “Honey, we need to talk about us.” Husband: “Do we have to?” Drs. Patricia Love and Steven Stosny have studied this all-too-familiar dynamic between men and women and have reached a truly shocking conclusion. Even with the best of intentions, talking about your relationship doesn’t bring you together, and it will eventually drive you apart. The reason for this is that underneath most couples’ fights, there is a biological difference at work. A woman’s vulnerability to fear and anxiety makes her draw closer, while a man’s subtle sensitivity to shame makes him pull away in response. This is why so many married couples fall into the archetypal roles of nagging wife/stonewalling husband, and why improving a marriage can’t happenthrough words. “How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It” teaches couples how to get closer in ways that don’t require “trying to turn a man into a woman.” Rich in stories of couples who have turned their marriages around, and full of practical advice about the behaviors that make and break marriages, this essential guide will help couples find love beyond words.

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma – The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences

Waking the Tiger offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually immune to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.

Waking the Tiger normalizes the symptoms of trauma and the steps needed to heal them. People are often traumatized by seemingly ordinary experiences. The reader is taken on a guided tour of the subtle, yet powerful impulses that govern our responses to overwhelming life events. To do this, it employs a series of exercises that help us focus on bodily sensations. Through heightened awareness of these sensations trauma can be healed.