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Main description:
With a Foreword by Nancy McWilliams
The purpose of Meaning-Fullness: Developmental Psychotherapy and the Pursuit of Mental Health is to show why current mental health practices are falling short in the ever-growing need for effective responses to the epidemic of mental unwellness. Jan Resnick begins by taking a critical look at psychiatry and psychology, especially the misuse and corruption of research that undergirds these practices. He goes on to offer an alternative perspective, understanding, and approach to issues of mental disorders. Resnik focuses upon the existential vacuum, a term originating in Viktor Frankl's classic text Man's Search for Meaning, which refers to feelings of emptiness, purposelessness, and meaninglessness. Feelings that are increasingly prevalent in our contemporary world. The existential vacuum points to a domain of experience not well described by the DSM or treated with a bio-medical approach.
A radically different therapeutic approach emerges through elaborating Winnicott's ideas in Playing and Reality, his last published work. Resnick shows how the capacity for meaning-making originates in early childhood development, and how this understanding can be applied to adult experience, thereby making psychotherapy a developmental process. Developmental psychotherapy aims to cultivate a greater capacity for play, creativity, relationship, and meaningful living. In addition, therapy must work toward relief of mental suffering, recovery from trauma, and mitigation, if not resolution, of psychological disorders. The theory is richly supported with clinical examples throughout the book, culminating in a long case study that integrates the ideas with clinical practice, which forms the final part of the book.
Dr Jan Resnick has created a must-read work for mental health practitioners the world over. His easy-to-read prose makes it accessible and of value to anyone concerned with issues of mental health and well-being, personal development and creating a meaning-full way of living.
Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: Meaning and Meaninglessness
Chapter 1. The epidemic crisis of mental health
Chapter 2. Current practices and corrupt science
Chapter 3. The existential vacuum: meaninglessness and filling the void
Chapter 4. The origin of the capacity for meaning-making
Chapter 5. Language and the body
PART II: Play and Creativity in Child and Adult Development
Chapter 6. The value of illusion
Chapter 7. Play and work
Chapter 8. Creativity: living falsely or authentically
Chapter 9. The object of desire and how to destroy it
PART III: Towards Meaning-Fullness
Chapter 10. Meaning's emergence in potential space
Chapter 11. Beyond Winnicott: I play therefore I am
Chapter 12. Play and symbolisation in the professional relationship
PART IV. Luke: Finding Meaning through Developmental Psychotherapy
Chapter 13. Working with Luke: a full-length case study
Unscientific Postscript
References
About the author
Index
PRODUCT DETAILS
Publisher: Phoenix Publishing House
Publication date: February, 2023
Pages: 264
Weight: 652g
Availability: Available
Subcategories: Psychotherapy