"This book is about dying, not about death. We are always dying a big, always giving things up, always having things taken away. Is there a person alive who isn't really curious about what dying is for them? Is there a person alive who wouldn't like to go to their dying full of excitement, without fear and without morbidity? This books tells you how." -- Front cover.

Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control is a practical, task-oriented, instructional manual designed to help therapists provide effective treatment for survivors of these most extreme forms of child abuse and mental manipulation.

An analysis of why people with knowledge about climate change often fail to translate that knowledge into action. Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? In Living in Denial, sociologist Kari Norgaard searches for answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from her study of "Bygdaby," the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000-2001. In 2000-2001 the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible; and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on use of fossil fuels. Norgaard attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming. Norgaard finds that for the highly educated and politically savvy residents of Bygdaby, global warming was both common knowledge and unimaginable. Norgaard traces this denial through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. Her report from Bygdaby, supplemented by comparisons throughout the book to the United States, tells a larger story behind our paralysis in the face of today's alarming predictions from climate scientists.

Deep disorder pervades medical practice. Disguised in euphemisms like "clinical judgment" and "evidence-based medicine," disorder exists because medical practice lacks a true system of care. The missing system has two core elements: standards of care for managing clinical information, and electronic information tools designed to implement those standards. Electronic information tools are now widely discussed, but the necessary standards of care are still widely ignored. Because these two elements are external to the physician's mind, they address a root cause of disorder: dependence on the internal capacities of autonomous physicians-their personal knowledge, intellect, habits and judgment. In this dependence on the limited, idiosyncratic capacities of individuals, medical practice lags centuries behind the domains of science and commerce. Breaking that dependence is the subject of this book.Going back 400 years to the philosophy of Francis Bacon, and examining parallel ideas from 20th Century thinkers, this book illuminates the origin of medicine's disorder. The analysis is more than theoretical. It grew out of decades of development and clinical experience in finding a new approach to medical practice. Designed to create order and transparency, this new approach involves not only standards and tools but also institutional changes essential to building a true system of care. In the current non-system, physicians bear impossible burdens of performance, other practitioners are barred from sharing those burdens, patients do not participate effectively in their own care, the U.S. spends $2.5 trillion annually without clinical accounting standards, third parties manipulate the situation for their own advantage, and none of the stakeholders are accountable for their own behaviors.This book offers a clear blueprint for building a better system of care, a system that patients, practitioners and third parties could trust. A better system could make health care a source of hope for our economic future, rather than its greatest threat.

Winner of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation's (ISSTD) Pierre Janet Writing Award, 2015. What really happens in dissociation. Dissociative processes have long burdened trauma survivors with the dilemma of longing to feel “real” at the same time as they desperately want to avoid the pain that comes with that healing—a dilemma that often presents particularly acute difficulties for healing professionals. Recent clinical and neurobiological research sheds some light into the dark corners of a mind undergoing persistent dissociation, but its integration into the practice of talking therapy has never, until now, been fully realized. Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes brings readers into the consultation room, and into the minds of both patient and therapist, like no other work on the treatment of trauma and dissociation. Richard A. Chefetz marries neuroscientific sophistication with a wealth of extended case histories, following patients over several years and offering several verbatim session transcripts. His unpacking of the emotionally impactful experience of psychodynamic talking therapy is masterfully written, clearly accessible, and singularly thorough. From neurobiological foundations he builds a working understanding of dissociation and its clinical manifestations. Drawing on theories of self-states and their involvement in dissociative experiences, he demonstrates how to identify persistent dissociation and its related psychodynamic processes, including repetition compulsion and enactment. He then guides readers through the beginning stages of a treatment, with particular attention to the psychodynamics of emotion in both patient and therapist. The second half of the book immerses readers in emotionally challenging clinical processes, offering insight into the neurobiology of fear and depersonalization, as well as case examples detailing struggles with histories of incest, sexual addiction, severe negativity, negative therapeutic reactions, enactment, and object-coercive doubting. The narrative style of Chefetz’s casework is nearly novelistic, bringing to life the clinical setting and the struggles in both patient and therapist. The only mystery in this clinical exposition, as it explores several cases over a number of years, is what will happen next. In the depth of his examples and in continual, self-reflexive analysis of flaws in past treatments, Chefetz is both a generous guide and an expert storyteller. Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Processes is unique in its ability to place readers in the consultation room of psychodynamic therapy. With an evidence-focused approach based in neurobiology and a bold clinical scope, it will be indispensible to new and experienced therapists alike as they grapple with the most intractable clinical obstacles.

Environmental Health I Health Care Policy I History Of Medicine --

You may not agree with all of the thoughts in The Psychology of Denial, but it will cause you to think about issues that have the potential to change your life in a positive direction. The ideas are developed from the author's experiences with himself, his family, over three decades of experience as a psychotherapist, and the study of Psychological Science since 1953. The overall theme of The Psychology of Denial is that we deny that personal change is possible either from not expecting any change to be available, or by denying that our failed attempts at change needed more understanding. Serious change requires years of effort, and we often don't see that shortcuts to happiness usually just make matters worse. The Psychology of Denial makes it clear that durable happiness comes from making progress with our personal lives, not by meeting certain goals, or finding anything close to perfection. Most of us start our adult lives with serious limitations from our childhoods and need to develop patience and perseverance if we're to overcome them. Psychology has found that it takes a sense of belonging, adequate control over our lives, meaning, and self-esteem if we're to experience general happiness. The Psychology of Denial: The Complexities of a Simple Idea attempts to assists us in understanding how we let denial get in our way of developing these aspects of our happiness. Hopefully the reader of this book will be better able to understand at least the following issues: 1. Why willpower often fails. 2. That many of us just haven't been told how to change. 3. How trying can make a habit worse. 4. That developing self-esteem is critical for effective change. 5. That many of our failures were set up in early childhood. 6. That doing the groundwork presented here can lead to significant changes in our lives and our happiness.

The book recounts day by day how the FBI investigators somehow centered the entire extortion plot around Nelson and another innocent man whose only mistake was to spend fifteen minutes chatting by the lake, and then to stop at a fast food restaurant for a hamburger. Nelson fit the profile that the FBI had in mind - a long pony tail, a cellular phone, and a red Corvette which he liked to drive fast. From this harmless set of facts grew an inconsistent FBI surveillance log, incredibly biased misstatements of the truth, and wholly contrived witness statements, all elaborately tailored to inplicate Nelson. Other evidence of Nelson's innocence and the unreliability of the existing evidence was simply ignored, including an FBI wiretap conversation between the real extortionist and his accomplice discussing the extortion plot in detail. The real extortionist admitted that he had no idea who the FBI had arrested. Nevertheless, Nelson was indeed arrested with his photo plastered all over the Phoenix newspapers. Nelson's life would never be the same.

Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see ... these are all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognize their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments deny their responsibility for atrocities, and plan them to achieve 'maximum deniability'. Truth Commissions try to overcome the suppression and denial of past horrors. Bystander nations deny their responsibility to intervene. Do these phenomena have anything in common? When we deny, are we aware of what we are doing or is this an unconscious defence mechanism to protect us from unwelcome truths? Can there be cultures of denial? How do organizations like Amnesty and Oxfam try to overcome the public's apparent indifference to distant suffering and cruelty? Is denial always so bad - or do we need positive illusions to retain our sanity? States of Denial is the first comprehensive study of both the personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical studies of depression, to media images of suffering, to explanations of the 'passive bystander' and 'compassion fatigue'. The book shows how organized atrocities - the Holocaust and other genocides, torture, and political massacres - are denied by perpetrators and by bystanders, those who stand by and do nothing.

The history of science abounds with momentous theories that disrupted conventional wisdom and yet were eventually proven true. Ajit Varki and Danny Brower's "Mind over Reality" theory is poised to be one such idea-a concept that runs counter to commonly-held notions about human evolution but that may hold the key to understanding why humans evolved as we did, leaving all other related species far behind. At a chance meeting in 2005, Brower, a geneticist, posed an unusual idea to Varki that he believed could explain the origins of human uniqueness among the world's species: Why is there no humanlike elephant or humanlike dolphin, despite millions of years of evolutionary opportunity? Why is it that humans alone can understand the minds of others? Haunted by their encounter, Varki tried years later to contact Brower only to discover that he had died unexpectedly. Inspired by an incomplete manuscript Brower left behind, Denial presents a radical new theory on the origins of our species. It was not, the authors argue, a biological leap that set humanity apart from other species, but a psychological one: namely, the uniquely human ability to deny reality in the face of inarguable evidence-including the willful ignorance of our own inevitable deaths. The awareness of our own mortality could have caused anxieties that resulted in our avoiding the risks of competing to procreate-an evolutionary dead-end. Humans therefore needed to evolve a mechanism for overcoming this hurdle: the denial of reality. As a consequence of this evolutionary quirk we now deny any aspects of reality that are not to our liking-we smoke cigarettes, eat unhealthy foods, and avoid exercise, knowing these habits are a prescription for an early death. And so what has worked to establish our species could be our undoing if we continue to deny the consequences of unrealistic approaches to everything from personal health to financial risk-taking to climate change. On the other hand reality-denial affords us many valuable attributes, such as optimism, confidence, and courage in the face of long odds. Presented in homage to Brower's original thinking, Denial offers a powerful warning about the dangers inherent in our remarkable ability to ignore reality-a gift that will either lead to our downfall, or continue to be our greatest asset.