Book Reviews

Everyday Evils is fascinating for its breadth of analysis across several different schools of thought in psychology and for the grasp of understanding of history, ethics, and the intersections of various fields of study.

Mindfulness is trending. It’s been on the forefront of conversations in terms of Western therapeutic methodologies since Jon Kabat Zinn integrated it into his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program (MBSR) in the early 1980s. Today, mindfulness practices are at the heart of many psychotherapeutic approaches such as: mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT); acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT); dialectical behavior therapy (DBT); mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP); mindfulness-based trauma therapy (MBTT); and mindfulness-based eating awareness training (MB-EAT). The word itself, however, is often confused. Its meaning subjectively associated with who or what entity is promoting its use. There’s clearly a difference between Eastern approaches to meditation and mindfulness and the current Western emphasis. With the proliferation of modalities integrating components of meditation and mindfulness practice, this book is a welcome addition to Hogrefe’s Advances in Psychotherapy: Evidence Based Practice Series—noted as Volume 37.

In 2006, Louis Cozolino, a therapist and professor of psychology at the Pepperdine University, published the first edition of his book, The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. Since then, the field of neuroscience has expanded immensely. As a result, Cozolino has published a second edition, which contains much of the same content and more. It follows the same format as the first edition while integrating contemporary research with existing knowledge of the social brain.

The book represents a step toward more effective standards and practices and it might prove it to be, even for those professionals who feel they don’t need overt tools for self-diagnosis, an important entry in the contemporary discourse about psychotherapeutic practice.

In Into the Darkest Places: Early Relational Trauma and Borderline States of Mind, Jungian Marcus West re-declares early relational trauma as the root of psychological distress and analytic thinking. West ultimately works to develop an integrative approach to trauma analysis and therapy incorporating ideas from theorists like Freud and Jung who prioritize internal reactions to trauma and Ferenczi and Bowlby who emphasize real-world experiences. He suggests that our analytic approaches to trauma cannot be divorced from the experience itself or the individual and internal responses. Subsequently, using his integrative approach West offers a nuanced understanding of borderline states of mind.

With support from current empirical literature on exercise, Dr. Christina G. Hibbert makes a compelling argument for how and why exercise is medicinal for mental health. This knowledge is often not enough to motivate us to change, yet Dr. Hibbert works through the process of change with an array of exercises and reflection questions that ease even the most ambivalent reader into the process.

Touch is essential to human life. From the earliest writings by Ashley Montaqu (1971) who discussed the importance of nurturing touch to help babies thrive physiologically and emotionally to a recent study lead by Nathalie Maitre at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio that demonstrated the significance of sensory experiences in early life on brain development— physical attention during a baby’s development, during our entire lives in fact, is important—the more you hug and cuddle your babies, the more their brains grow. According to Maitre, our sensory system supporting touch and bodily sensation is the earliest to develop in human beings; further, it forms the basis for other sensory development as well as our cognitive and social development. Maitre’s study established that nurturing touch is essential for infant development with study outcome demonstrating that positive proper touch increased brain activity while negative touch (pin pricks, tube insertions) decreased brain activity. As human beings, we crave touch. There’s an instinctive need to feel another—be it a lover’s hand, a mother’s breast. The soft fuzz of an animal’s fur, even the gristle of a father’s beard can create pleasurable sensations when contact is loving and supportive. As body psychotherapists, many of us acknowledge the value of appropriate touch in the therapeutic setting—of course within proper boundaries and acceptable containment and with the client’s permission. As therapists, we must be clear about why we want to integrate touch, discuss what kind of touch, and for whose purpose the touch is occuring (certainty not to make the therapist feel better!).

Healing Body, Self and Soul is a statement of a therapeutic process Dr. Perlmutter developed by integrating Reichian character structures, psychoanalysis, touch, breath, awareness and more. ISP is an amalgam of numerous concepts and interventions (e.g., inner child work, expressive movement, psychotherapy, hypnotherapy) that focuses on bodily events and processes necessary to shape the client’s mind and soul in an oscillatory process moving from body experiences to verbal reflection in order to cognitively integrate “new awareness, new experience of the deeper self and to foster behavior that is congruent with the deeper self”

Adreanna Limbach’s new book Tea and Cake with Demons relies on Buddhist teachings to improve our self-worth and explore our insecurities. Limbach believes that the Buddha represents our capacity to be present in our own lives and come to know the “fundamentally whole” versions of ourselves. The book explores this mindset through the lens of Buddhist teachings and the Four Noble Truths. Limbach has divided the book into three parts: Waking Up to Worthiness, The Four Noble Truths, and The Eightfold Path.

In 2018, one block away from my university dorm, a student committed suicide. His head was in a plastic bag when his roommate walked in and found him dead. Rumors were flying around: victim was an Indian. No, he was an African. Wasn’t he Chinese? Rumors guessed about potential death causes, and one important factor was loneliness. Loneliness has become a crucial problem in contemporary societies, and human connection in social settings help us heal both physically and mentally. Such is the theme of the book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.