Since the original publication of this seminal work, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) has come into its own as a widely practiced approach to helping people change. This book provides the definitive statement of ACT--from conceptual and empirical foundations to clinical techniques--written by its originators. ACT is based on the idea that psychological rigidity is a root cause of a wide range of clinical problems. The authors describe effective, innovative ways to cultivate psychological flexibility by detecting and targeting six key processes: defusion, acceptance, attention to the present moment, self-awareness, values, and committed action. Sample therapeutic exercises and patient-therapist dialogues are integrated throughout. New to This Edition *Reflects tremendous advances in ACT clinical applications, theory building, and research. *Psychological flexibility is now the central organizing focus. *Expanded coverage of mindfulness, the therapeutic relationship, relational learning, and case formulation. *Restructured to be more clinician friendly and accessible; focuses on the moment-by-moment process of therapy.
· 2024
Americans are addicted to happiness. When we're not popping pills, we leaf through scientific studies that take for granted our quest for happiness, or read self-help books by everyone from armchair philosophers and clinical psychologists to the Dalai Lama on how to achieve a trouble-free life: Stumbling on Happiness; Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment; The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living. The titles themselves draw a stark portrait of the war on melancholy. More than any other generation, Americans of today believe in the transformative power of positive thinking. But who says we're supposed to be happy? Where does it say that in the Bible, or in the Constitution? In Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation—and that it is the force underlying original insights. Francisco Goya, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, and Abraham Lincoln were all confirmed melancholics. So enough Prozac-ing of our brains. Let's embrace our depressive sides as the wellspring of creativity. What most people take for contentment, Wilson argues, is living death, and what the majority takes for depression is a vital force. In Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, Wilson suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.
The prevailing view among therapists as well as clients is that a more vital life can be attained by overcoming negative thoughts and feelings. Yet despite efforts to achieve this goal, many individuals continue to suffer with behavior disorders, adjustment difficulties, and low life satisfaction. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique psychotherapeutic approach that addresses this issue by altering the very ground on which rational change strategies rest. Within a coherent theoretical and philosophical framework, ACT illuminates the ways clients understand and perpetuate their difficulties through language. The book shows how interventions based on metaphor, paradox, and experiential exercises can enable clients to break free of language traps and make contact with thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations that have been feared and avoided. Detailed guidelines are presented for helping clients recontextualize and accept these private events, develop greater clarity about personal values, and commit to needed behavior change. Providing in one volume a scientifically sound theory of psychopathology and a practical treatment model, and illustrated by a wealth of clinical examples, this is an important resource for practitioners and students in the full range of behavioral health care fields.
· 2012
Why can't we look away? Whether we admit it or not, we're fascinated by evil. Dark fantasies, morbid curiosities, Schadenfreude: As conventional wisdom has it, these are the symptoms of our wicked side, and we succumb to them at our own peril. But we're still compelled to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway, and there's no slaking our thirst for gory entertainments like horror movies and police procedurals. What makes these spectacles so irresistible? In Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the scholar Eric G. Wilson sets out to discover the source of our attraction to the caustic, drawing on the findings of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and artists. A professor of English literature and a lifelong student of the macabre, Wilson believes there's something nourishing in darkness. "To repress death is to lose the feeling of life," he writes. "A closeness to death discloses our most fertile energies." His examples are legion, and startling in their diversity. Citing everything from elephant graveyards and Susan Sontag's On Photography to the Tiger Woods sex scandal and Steel Magnolias, Wilson finds heartening truths wherever he confronts death. In Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the perverse is never far from the sublime. The result is a powerful and delightfully provocative defense of what it means to be human—for better and for worse.
· 2009
In Mindfulness for Two, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) cofounder Kelly Wilson shows clinicians how to connect with the present moment in therapy and provides exercises they can use to teach their clients this critical skill. The DVD-ROM packaged with this book features exclusive footage of Wilson demonstrating these techniques in therapy sessions.
· 2020
Originally published in 1930, this classic of modern Shakespeare criticism proves both enlightening and innovative. Standing head and shoulders above all other Shakespearean interpretations, this is the masterwork of the brilliant English scholar, G. Wilson Knight. Founding a new and influential school of Shakespearean criticism, Wheel of Fire was Knight's first venture in the field - his writing sparkles with insight and wit, and his analyses are key to contemporary understandings of Shakespeare.
The long-term success of periodontal therapy is dependent on proper diagnosis and removal of subgingival tooth-borne accretions in the form of calculus and bacteria. From a clinical perspective, better visualization during the diagnostic and therapeutic phases has been shown to yield better results compared to traditional approaches. Minimally Invasive Periodontal Therapy evaluates the advantages of using minimal invasive techniques, the technologies available for enhancing visualization during minimally invasive therapy, and step-by-step illustrates the clinical use of each technique. Each chapter addresses the advantages and disadvantages of minimally invasive therapies, rationale for the approach, and the advantages and limitations of each of the current methods of improving visualization. The chapters then provide an evidence-based review of the technologies and procedures, and end with case studies for each visualization procedure, featuring clinical photographs.
Designed for the serious graphic communications student, this text examines both the traditional and cutting-edge technologies of lithography. Technology, business and career topics are discussed in depth as the text assists the reader in making the transition from traditional lithography to the high technology printing, processes of the present and the future.
· 2015
Shoot straight from the hip. Tell it like it is. Keep it real. We love these commands, especially in America, because they appeal to what we want to believe: that there's an authentic self to which we can be true. But while we mock Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, we're inventing identities on Facebook, paying thousands for plastic surgeries, and tuning in to news that simply verifies our opinions. Reality bites, after all, and becoming disillusioned is a downer. In his new book Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life, Eric G. Wilson investigates this phenomenon. Hedraws on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, philosophy, art, film, literature, and his own life to explore the possibility that there's no such thing as unwavering reality. Whether our left brains are shaping the raw data of our right into fabulous stories or we're so saturated by society's conventions that we're always acting out prefab scripts, we can't help but be phony. But is that really so bad? We're used to being scolded for being fake, but Wilson doesn't scold--because he doesn't think we need to be reprimanded. Our ability to remake ourselves into the people we want to be, or at least remake ourselves to look like the people we want to be, is in fact a magical process that can be liberating in its own way. Because if we're all a bunch of fakes, shouldn't we embrace that? And if everything really is fake, then doesn't the fake become real--really? In lively prose--honest, provocative, witty, wide-ranging (as likely to riff on Bill Murray as to contemplate Plato)--Keep It Fake answers these questions, uncovering bracing truths about what it means to be human and helping us turn our necessary lying into artful living.