Book Reviews

Despite the obvious benefits the world of psychotherapy has brought into both individual and communal lives, many cultures still consider therapy taboo. The action of attending therapy is misunderstood and often maligned: going to a shrink is for the crazies, seeking out professional help signifies inability for self-sufficiency, deviating from a biopsychosocial norm from translates as if you are broken. Surpassing the taboo of therapy itself is that of sexuality. Sexuality alone is a taboo subject—the exploration of one’s sexuality, the preferences and expression of such are hushed, driven into the darkness by a societal dictum that preaches uniformity and singular experience. Discussing one’s sexuality in terms of therapy and biopsychosocial healing can be difficult under the effect of the taboo nature. It is precisely this attitude—the one of taboo avoidance—that Shelley Green and Douglas Flemons ­combat with a smile in their edited anthology entitled, Quickies: The Handbook of Brief Sex Therapy. Therapists can and do feel uncomfortable and unqualified to handle sexual discussions with their clients. They often refer clients to a ‘sex’ therapist or a like-focused clinician to have these sorts of conversations. Green and Flemons, however, suggest that therapists encourage active discussions (maintained with professionality and a clinical lens) about sexuality; it is, after all, part of the patient’s development and understanding of their relationships. Quickies reflects just that attitude— encouraging open and integrated discussion throughout the entries.

I don’t think it’s ever been easier to be a gay person. This perspective comes from a queer-identifying, twenty-one-year-old, living in New York City who also grew up in Chicago. Despite the news of the decimations of queer men around the world (Chechnya, for example) and strings of phobia and hate- filled rhetoric that stream from our Commander-in-Chief’s Twitter, queer youth, now more than ever, are finding opportunity to not only explore and question sexuality but to discuss and reckon with it. While it is still remarkably difficult to navigate today’s world as a queer person, apps like Grindr and Scruff link gay men to peers just down the block and across the country. Homosexual marriage has been legalized in the United States and non-monogamous partnerships are on the rise. I lived the first few years of my life in fear, ashamed of expressing the queer person that I am, but this cultural shift and increased discussion of non-heteronormative experience has allowed me to explore, question, discuss and reckon with my sexuality to the point where I have shed any associated taboos and am in full embrace and proud of my identity.

Reflecting on their place in the world and how that world effects them, these women set the tone for each contributor by sharing raw, honest, and impassioned presentations of self. Editors Caldwell and Leighton begin the book with an aptly named preface “Who We Are and Why We’re Here,” discussing their experiences in life and the embodied oppressions they have taken on by simply existing as themselves.

by Nancy Eichhorn I’m a self-help junkie. I know, the word junkie might connote that I still need help, but the reality is I’ve read...

Ann Todhunter Brode has focused on the body, mind, spirit relationship as it shapes our physical relationship for more than 40 years. “Your history determines your shape and eventually your shape determines your history,” she writes (pg. 105). Brode is a teacher, therapist, healer, and writer—her articles have been published in Health Source Magazine, Santa Barbara Independent, Huffington Post and our own SPT magazine.

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!).

Written by Rae Johnson Reviewed by Nancy Eichhorn A story to start, to illustrate potent nuances that, without awareness, perpetuate inequality outside our conscious intentions. And...

I am a big fan of Rothschild. Her earlier book (2000) elevated awareness of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), the substrate of all health, in the psychotherapy world, and taught us to look for and precisely recognize ANS signals in order to appropriately support recovery from trauma. Her new book adds excellent additional detail, including a “six-categories-of-ANS” poster that can now be viewed on the wall of our classroom at CSES. The bulk of the book is about therapy insights, which I found to be excellent; my concerns were just in a few pages of her Chapter Two. The problem for me starts with Rothschild’s description of Polyvagal Theory (PVT), which occupies two pages in the chapter. She summarizes PVT as being the discovery of the “ventral vagus” function as distinct from the previously-known “dorsal vagus” function, which is the foundation of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Both down-regulate the heart, but in different ways. She states that calm states arise from the ventral branch, and that collapse states arise from the dorsal branch. This is not all wrong, but for a person of Rothschild’s immense professional stature, I was really hoping for more.

I am, admittedly and unabashedly, enthusiastic about Stephen Porges’ work. I’ve attended his workshops, learned his process for measuring heart rate variability as an indicator of vagal tone, interviewed him for several articles published in this magazine, and have read his books and articles. This review is clearly biased. And with that said, I will offer my honest opinions and not side step points that for some may or may not be considered 100 percent positive. For those new to Porges’ work, he is noted as the originator of the Polyvagal Theory (PVT), which is his perspective of how our autonomic nervous system, dependent on phylogenetic transitions/shifts that occurred between reptiles and mammals, resulted in specific adaptations in vagal pathways regulating the heart, which in turn impact our lives.

Positive psychology is rooted in the idea that human beings want to thrive and engage in things that enrich their experiences and cultivate a meaningful life. In his 2014 book, Mindfulness and Character Strengths: A Practical Guide to Flourishing, author Ryan M. Niemiec discusses how practicing mindfulness can help individuals identify, understand, and apply their character strengths and create a pathway to a fulfilling life. He takes readers through Drs. Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman’s program Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP), relays inspiring success stories about finding meaning via MBSP, provides useful handouts to guide readers through MBSP, and gives tips for practitioners such as how to apply MBSP to different settings and situations. Mindfulness and Character Traits received praise for its revolutionary perspective. It reads like a self-help book, perfect for individuals who want to learn how to personally achieve mindfulness and discover their character strengths; however, it wasn’t written with the goal of teaching practitioners how to implement MBSP in their practice with their clients. With that in mind, Niemiec (2018) wrote his recently published book, Character Strength Interventions: A Field Guide for Practitioners for Practitioners. Additionally, he focuses more on the core of positive psychology, character strengths and less on how to achieve mindfulness. He educates the reader on the foundations of character strength interventions, relays evidence to support his claims about the usefulness of character strength interventions, and explains countless interventions step-by-step providing practitioners with a useful handbook.