An update to the classic text that links neuroscience and human behavior in the context of therapy. This groundbreaking book explores the recent revolution in psychotherapy that has brought an understanding of the social nature of people’s brains to a therapeutic context.

Louis Cozolino is a master at synthesizing neuroscientific information and demonstrating how it applies to psychotherapy practice. New material on altruism, executive function, trauma, and change round out this essential book.

Treating Self-Destructive Behaviors in Trauma Survivors, 2nd ed, is a comprehensive guide for clinicians dedicated to assisting trauma survivors. Throughout treatment, therapists may encounter clients disclosing self-destructive behaviors, including self-mutilation and other means of deliberately "hurting the body" such as bingeing, purging, starving, substance abuse, and other addictive behaviors.

Renowned clinician Lisa Ferentz introduces viable treatment alternatives, assessment tools, and new ways of understanding self-destructive behavior through a strengths-based approach. This method differentiates between the "experimental" non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) that some teenagers engage in occasionally and the repetitive and chronic self-destructive behaviors.

In this edition, numerous treatment strategies are cross-referenced to a practical workbook, offering therapists and clients concrete methods to integrate theory into practice. Ferentz emphasizes the significance of assessing and enhancing clients' self-compassion, explaining how nurturing this concept cognitively, emotionally, and somatically can become a catalyst for motivation and change.

The book also explores a cycle of behavior that clinicians can personalize and use as a template for treatment. The final sections focus on counter-transferential responses and various ways therapists can work with self-destructive behaviors while avoiding vicarious traumatization by adopting tools and strategies for self-care.

Bringing mindfulness techniques to your psychotherapeutic work with clients.

An integrated state of mindful awareness is crucial to achieving mental health. Daniel J. Siegel, an internationally recognized expert on mindfulness and therapy, reveals practical techniques that enable readers to harness their energies to promote healthy minds within themselves and their clients. He charts the nine integrative functions that emerge from the profoundly interconnecting circuits of the brain, including:

• Bodily regulation
• Attunement
• Emotional balance
• Response flexibility
• Fear extinction
• Insight
• Empathy
• Morality
• Intuition

A practical, direct-immersion, high-emotion, low-techno-speak book, The Mindful Therapist engages readers in a personal and professional journey into the ideas and process of mindful integration that lie at the heart of health and nurturing relationships.

A Handbook of Play Therapy with Aggressive Children is an invaluable resource for both new and seasoned child practitioners. This comprehensive compilation of specific and practical techniques provides child and play therapists with the tools they need to address the challenges of treating aggressive children.

Authored by David A. Crenshaw and John B. Mordock, who together bring over fifty years of experience in the residential treatment of severely aggressive and often traumatized children, this book covers the essential elements of play therapy. Key topics include:

• The therapeutic alliance and aims of play therapy with aggressive children.
• Setting limits on destructive and obtrusive behaviors.
• Typical play themes of aggressive children and developing distancing and displacement through playful action.
• Teaching, modeling, and structuring action play.
• Creating more mature defenses and calming strategies.
• The role of interpretation and the use of spontaneous drawings as a bridge to fantasy play.
• Specific drawing techniques to access the inner world of children.
• Teaching and modeling pro-social skills and the language of feeling.
• Facilitating affect expression and modulation, contained reenactment of trauma, and children's ability to mourn tangible as well as intangible losses.

The authors also introduce the Play Therapy Decision Grid, a tool designed to guide therapists in selecting the most appropriate level of therapy for a child based on their resources and the anxiety provoked by the therapy process.