For Individuals
Strange Situation, by Bethany Saltman
When Bethany Saltman became a mother, she worried about the complex and unsettling mix of feelings that this evoked in her. Was there something wrong with her? Then she discovered the science of attachment—not popularizations of attachment, which tend to be about behavior (co-sleeping, baby-wearing), but the actual science of attachment, which is about relationship. How do parents and their infants feel about and toward each other? How do they hold one another in heart and mind? And what are the implications of early attachments for relationships later in life? As Saltman discovered, the past is real, but it is not destiny.
Secrets and Lies, by Jane Isay
Jane Isay knows from experience the rage and disorientation we experience when we learn a secret that undermines our sense of who we are. She also knows the lengths we may go to in order to keep a secret from others or even from ourselves, and about the work involved in rebuilding identity and relationships when an important secret is revealed. When life-altering secrets emerge, we’re faced with choices, whether we have been the discoverer of a secret or the secret-keeper. Do we pretend that nothing has happened, or do we try to tell—or hear—the whole truth and integrate this into our life story and relationships?
Fault Lines, by Karl Pillemer
Family estrangements run contrary to our ideas about how family life is supposed to be. It’s easy to feel ashamed, like everyone else’s family gets along and ours is the only fractured one. But estrangements are remarkably common, reports sociologist Karl Pillemer, and the phenomenon itself is evenly distributed among ethnicities, social classes, and geographical areas. None of us is immune; it can happen to anyone. Why do these rifts arise? Why are they so distressing? And what are ways that individuals and families affected by estrangement can sort through their feelings and options and develop capacities that can open pathways to reconciliation if that is desired?
The Well-Gardened Mind, by Sue Stuart-Smith
Have you ever gardened, felt better, and wondered why? Psychiatrist and psychotherapist Sue Stuart-Smith has written a book for you. Gardening healed Stuart-Smith’s grandfather from wartime trauma; it has grounded her own life as a wife, mother, and physician; and has functioned similarly for countless others. “When we work with nature outside us, we work with nature inside us.” People feel more fully alive when they spend time in gardens and green space in general. Spending time in nature allows people to feel more connected with self and others, to grow, to heal, to find their place in the world and its complexities and fullness.
The Heart of Addiction, by Lance Dodes
Before addiction is a problem, it is an attempted solution. Like fever, which is not itself a disease but rather the body’s effort to repair something that is physically wrong, addiction is an effort to redress something that is emotionally wrong. So says psychiatrist Lance Dodes, an addictions expert and former faculty member at Harvard Medical School. As Dodes sees it, the compulsive behaviors we call addictions (whether substance-focused, like alcoholism, or procedural, like problem gambling) represent a misdirected effort to reverse an intolerable sense of helplessness. Useful treatment involves figuring out what triggers that intolerable sense of helplessness, and finding direct—rather than displaced—ways to feel better.
“A person can be normal without being alive.”