A review of the Handbook of Body Psychotherapy & Somatic Psychology

There’s always this sense of anticipation when I read a book by editors and authors I personally know. My belly churns; there's an involuntarily pause before I exhale and my heart adds a beat to its rhythmic song because a resonance exists that translates from colleague to text. I hear their voice while reading as if we are together, in person, having an amicable chat. When I heard that Halko Weiss, Courtenay Young and Michael Soth were part of The Handbook of Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology, when I heard that many colleagues had contributed chapters, I immediately had to read it and share my thoughts with SPT Magazine’s readers.

Unshame: Healing Trauma-based Shame through Psychotherapy

I follow Carolyn’s blog because her writing fascinates me. She helps people (mainly in the UK) recover from trauma, abuse, and dissociative disorders, heavy stuff. Yet, she writes with a light hand—her use of figurative language, strong nouns and verbs, pacing, structure, and characterization create stories that share the confusion, the pain, the doubt, the suffering, and the dread that come with trauma as well as the desire to surmount it all and be healthy without miring the reader in an abyss of drop-dead emotions. When I learned about her new book, Unshame: Healing Trauma-based Shame through Psychotherapy, I requested a reviewer’s copy.

On the Mystery of Being: Contemporary Insights on The Convergence of Science and Spirituality

What makes us, us? Is our essence of being reflected through the words we put on the blank spaces after the “I AM” statements? Or, are the “I AM” statements already ample enough to give us an answer to the above? On the Mystery of Being offers a collection of insights towards the above question about the essence of beings. In the form of anthology, the authors put forth their main arguments. By bringing spirit with matter, spirituality with science, non-dualistic with dualistic together, we reflect on a more holistic insight into being—to live in the moment. Moreover, in our journey to find the meaning of our beings, the authors advise us to emphasize “I” instead of paying too much attention to the experiences we have been through. Unlike conventional images in which life is a blank canvas awaiting our experiences to paint them colorful, the book informs us that we are not born empty but filled with potentials and completeness.

The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly...

Reviewed by: Lily Wu What is WEIRD? WEIRD is an acronym for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic. Henrich and his colleagues coined it about...

Rethinking Trauma Treatment: Attachment, Memory Reconsolidation, and Resilience

Armstrong’s compassion and astuteness in Rethinking Trauma Treatment sets this scholastic work apart from the current literature on trauma treatment. Armstrong is a stellar writer, both in an academic and a narrative sense, educating the reader while simultaneously arousing feelings of empathy towards the individuals she describes. She presents essential facts in a comprehensive manner; because of her compendious writing style, readers can focus on the book’s content rather than thoughts wandering in their mind.

Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives

“Writing has helped me heal. Writing has changed my life. Writing has saved my life.” These powerful first sentences of Louise DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Stories Transforms Our Lives immediately conveys the author’s strong belief in the curative power of writing. She posits that writing helps people recover from “thorny experiences” and can help heal those suffering from a variety of situations, from dislocation and violence to rape and racism (4). DeSalvo is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Hunter College and is the author of over a half dozen books, so her advice is rooted in her own personal experience using writing as an instrument of healing.

The Feeling Brain: The Biology and Psychology of Emotions

Drs. Elizabeth Johnston and Leah Olson highlight the work of key researchers, describing their text as a “tasting menu that introduces the variety of delicacies available in the vibrant and growing field of emotion research” (xvi). Drawing from researchers dating back to Darwin, Johnston and Olson weave together a myriad of theories that seek to define emotion in various ways. The authors offer comprehensive coverage of what they view as the most profound contributions to affective neuroscience, hoping to engage their audience in a way that goes beyond a mere question-answer approach.

Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

Doctors generally begin their journey as eager medical students determined to change the world one patient at a time. With intelligence, compassion, and a desire to help others, medical students muster up enough drive to fight through medical school and residency, accepting the hours of work, sleepless nights, and giant holes left in their bank account in pursuit of what they believe to be a worthwhile, fulfilling profession both morally and economically. However, in Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician, Sandeep Jauhar suggests that it’s difficult to maintain this view within the current medical climate because it’s dominated by the government and large corporations set out to generate income, even if it’s at patients’ expense. In this powerful and thought-provoking memoir, Jauhar utilizes case studies and anecdotes as he reveals his journey as a doctor facing what he refers to as “the midlife crisis in American medicine” and his attempts to understand why “medicine today is as fraught as it’s ever been” (15).

Streets 1970

For many it can be easy to harshly judge the person sitting on the street corner asking for change. Perhaps we might believe they are taking up too much sidewalk space or too much space in general. So, we step over them without stopping. Psychoanalyst and poet, Merle Molofsky makes us stop before we judge. In this visceral piece of poetry, she asks important questions about psychoanalysis, life, death, sex, love and violence. Her exceptionally engrossing writing style takes us onto the streets and in the presence of her characters. As if we stand face-to-face with the burdens and torments of each person we encounter, we come to realize our own connections to it all. She delves into topics that are still relevant today including topics of greed, drug addiction, heartbreak, loneliness and feelings of hopelessness and depression.

Forming your Aging: Porosity and Poetry, Essays in Formative Psychology

I’ve encountered Stanley Keleman’s work many times during my transition from teacher to therapist. And, I can honestly say I always walk away with a deeper sense of me in my entirety, me as embodied energy in human form, shaped as much by thought and reflection as act and reaction. An awareness lingers beyond the momentary meeting that tugs at the corners of my existence as if saying, come on, wake up now, be present in this body of yours and let it inform you just as you inform it.