Book Reviews

The reading specialist in me refused to wait. Meghan Cox Gurdon’s essay in The Wall Street Journal (January 19-20, 2019), adapted from her new book, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction, inspired me.

Infidelity can cause problems in any monogamous relationship, and couples often approach psychotherapists with these issues. With this book, Josephs aims to offer a practicable, evidence-based treatment plan that, in his view, is currently lacking in the field. Based on his experiences with patients, Josephs found that the available research was insufficient for the purposes of providing patients with holistic treatment that truly addressed the variable roots of infidelity. Geared towards psychotherapists and other mental health professionals, this book presents an thoroughly-researched, multifaceted treatment for infidelity.

As part of the “Theories of Psychotherapy Series” from the American Psychological Association (APA), this book focuses the components and benefits of brief therapy. Intended for clinicians, Levenson’s book is informative and instructive as it is paired with a companion video that demonstrates the treatment. The brevity and organization make this book helpfully simple and user-friendly. Levenson utilizes tables, bulleted lists, and other visuals alongside her well-researched writing to clearly present this treatment as a viable tool for therapists.

Jaime Lowe’s memoir chronicles her struggles with bipolar disorder and explores lithium: the medication that saved her life but also caused her body irreparable harm. A story full of progress and setbacks, stability and mania, and hope and desolation, Lowe’s book is emotionally tumultuous. Written colloquially and free of highly scientific content, this book can cater to a wide audience. Though it is specifically useful and relevant for people who are bipolar and/or utilizing lithium medication, it’s also helpful for anyone who wants to understand these two things better. Lowe’s book offers both a raw and honest account of what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder and important information about lithium to provide a holistic understanding of her journey. 

Alexandra Katehakis’ book dives into the foundations of sex addiction and the best possible treatment of it through a neurobiological lense. Informed by her own experiences and therapeutic journey as well as her work as a psychotherapist, Katehakis offers her own conception of an approach to treatment called Psychobiological Approach to Sex Addiction Treatment (PASAT). PASAT combines “cognitive-behavioral containment of addiction, transpersonal psychology expanding the self beyond the individual, and emotionally regulating, intuitive, and relation-based psychotherapy informed by affective neuroscience” (4). The target audience is mainly psychotherapists as the book hones in on PASAT and how to utilize it, but it can also be appreciated by those dealing with sex addiction, whether they’re in recovery or not. Through Katehakis’ detailed examination of sex addiction as a legitimate disorder and her resulting treatment plan, it is clear that she is deeply passionate and knowledgeable about the subject. The book opens with a foreword by Allan N. Schore followed by Katehakis’s introduction where she touches on her journey to becoming a psychotherapist and provides an overview of the book. She describes a deeply traumatic experience of her own that drew me in. My attention was captured by her explanation of her personal connection to psychotherapy; it humanizes her and serves as a way to broach the topic of psychotherapeutic treatment.

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.

In the Second Edition of her book, Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg revisits her 10 techniques for dealing with anxiety. She also revisits the companion workbook that provides activities to guide implementation of the techniques. These books are very accessible, even with the dispersed neuroscience throughout; they also have the advantage of catering to a wide audience including, but not limited to, those who are participating in psychotherapy. Her 10 techniques offer various ways to manage three arenas in which anxiety manifests itself: the body, the mind, and behavior. The workbook offers several, different ways to make the managing of anxiety actionable and consistent. By taking this two-pronged approach, Dr. Wehrenberg captures a large swath of information and applies it thus making her books a potential one-stop-shop for anxiety management. To fully appreciate the workbook, one must first read the technique book that serves to explain, in depth, what they are, why they work, and how to use them. Utilizing developments in neuroscience, Dr. Wehrenberg updates her 10 techniques by refining those at the forefront, providing new research-based evidence for them, and clarifying how they should be used (I).

What happens when a question sparks a search? When a curious mind latches onto a quest to find answers that make sense, not just...

William Ferraiolo’s newest book is written in the style of philosophical approach based on the Stoics. While the word ‘stoic’ means to endure pain and suffering without complaining or showing your feelings, a Stoic, with a capital S, dates back to 300 B.C. when someone named Zeno founded Stoicism, a systematic philosophy that taught people that they should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and that they should submit to unavoidable situations in life without complaint.

If we put blinders on, if we ignore the entirety of a person’s experience, including the impact of our own background, our own sense of have and have not, we are setting up yet another dysfunctional experience.