The Shape of the Eye

This book is by George Estreich.  It tells about the first dozen years or so of his journey with Laura.  He makes a very good argument for just thinking of her as Laura, as opposed to a child with Down Syndrome, or a Down Syndrome child, or a child with Down's Syndrome, or anything other than Laura.  It would be worth reading if it only told about their lives, but it also has some good food for thought.  He hopes that it will come that we have no more need or desire to mention how she is different in her number of chromosomes than in her hair color.  I couldn't put the book down ( I assume I'm able to say that if I ate supper between the time when it came in the mail and when I finished it).  There is interesting information about Dr. Down, the Special Education process, and what the extra chromosome does (effect how proteins are manufactured in the body).  There was a short passage on the meeting after the School Psychologist tested her.  Here's a quote: "I knew nothing about Down syndrome except that it was bad, and that it meant Laura was different from me. I no longer believe the first - Down syndrome is simply Laura's way of being human.  As for the second: Laura is different, but the differences are superficial.  This may seem an odd assertion, since the extra chromosome pervades her, and its effects texture our days.  And yet these altered forms, eye and face and word, have come to contain and absorb what I know of love.  Or love learned to alter itself, to accommodate the forms.  She is no less my daughter, no less a person, for having an extra chromosome."

DSM Wheel

DSM-5 is here, and praise is a little hard to find.  I would use one of my favorite cartoon lines, spoken by one Eskimo to another with the Northern Lights in the background, "It's not Broadway, but it's what we've got."  I use the framework in my attempts to understand the factors (internal and external) that are leading to problem behaviors for elementary school students and others.  How the students can be helped to minimize the disruptions which accompany the behaviors is a next step; understanding the behaviors is key.  I use my graphic organizer to remind myself of the important possibilities for diagnoses.  Any condition for which the person meets the criteria can be checked (for the diagnoses on the left) or shaded in according to how strongly the diagnosis applies for the diagnoses that "made" the circle on the right.  All diagnoses are not listed, but all categories of diagnoses should be included.  I'd be happy to hear from anyone that believes that a category has been missed, or that an additional specific condition should be named.  For me, the sections that have been most helpful so far are those on Specific Learning Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Autism Spectrum Disorder.  What I don't see is an example of everything that is needed for a "complete" diagnosis.  It can't be listing the five axes, as they no longer exist!  Can anyone point me to a source that tells what you need for a written diagnosis, which covers all the bases?

Healing Yourself

I've just been asked to comment on a list of self-help books I tweeted about.  I pulled a few I've recommended before off the shelf and discovered that none of them were on the list!  Here they are (Goodreads better come through for me):
How to Meditate by Lawrence LeShan
Destructive Emotions by Goleman and the Dalai Lama
the books for kids by Dawn Huebner
Peg Dawson and Richard Guare's books on executive functioning
The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson
If Only You Would Change by Luciano and Merris
The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
books about how those medicines work
Finding Flow by Csikszentmihalyi
Darkness Visible by William Styron
Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron
Kay Redfield Jamison's books
The Center Cannot Hold by Saks
In Her Wake by Nancy Rappaport
When Someone You Love is Depressed by Rosen and Amador
Mark Vonnegut's memoirs
imagining Robert by Jay Neugeboren
and the classic...
I like the books by individuals who have been through it and relatives because they combine good information and something you want to read.

Healing Relationships

The Spontaneous Gesture is a collection of letters from D.W. Winnicott.  As collections of letters go, it is good but not great.  It is certainly a good enough collection of letters.  Winnicott worked with such ideas as transitional objects and the good enough parent.  He worked with Melanie Klein and Anna Freud.  Along with these letter recipients, there are James Strachy, Edward Glover, Ernest Jones, David Rapaport, Harry Guntrip. Joan Riviere, Jacques Lacan, A.R. Luria and Wilfred Bion.  There aren't letters to Winnicott, which I think makes such a book much more engaging.  Many of the letters are reactions to papers and presentations by the person who got the letter.  There is a little bit of personal information, but not much.  From a letter to B.J. Knopf, who had reacted to a letter of his in the Observer: "Perhaps you will do best to give up trying to work at all this, and just go on naturally enjoying your experiences.  Later you may like to go back over what you experience with a book or two to guide you, but while you are having a child I think you may do best to follow your natural feelings."  Here's a good biography of Winnicott: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/791141.Winnicott

Healing the Self

Constructing The Self, Constructing America: A Cultural History of Psychotherapy deserves to be on your reading list.  In the book, Philip Cushman (on this list of providers) covers a lot of areas.  He advocates a hermeneutic stance in therapy, in which the social/political status quo is given its due.  He gives some examples of his own patients, who he helped to broaden the "clearing" which they could view, and construct their world in ways which were more positive for them.  He also talks about the changing role and nature of healers and healing over time.  Our current situation is seen as one in which consumerism is the response to the empty self.  Several past times and therapies are explained.  One is the social forces present in the 1960s, and the therapies which stemmed from that.  It is, of course, interesting the read history and compare it to what you experienced when you were there (ouch)!  Mesmerism is covered well, as is the controversy surrounding Melanie Klein.  Cushman explains self and object relations theories in ways that help with an overall understanding.  Winnicott and Sullivan are also covered quite extensively.  From the philosophy side, Gadamer gets his say.  This book provides some perspective for anyone who functions as a healer.

A Pre-Healer

Although Wilhelm Dilthey is seen more as a Philosopher than a Psychologist, he stressed interdisciplinary cooperation.  In Wilhelm Dilthey: Pioneer of the Human Studies, H. P. Rickman lists nine ideas on Psychology that were apparent in Dilthey's (early) work.  Many of these are relevant to how we function as helpers.  He anticipated mind-body medicine and psychotherapy, in his understanding of people as psycho-physical beings.  He stressed the expression of mental life through facial expressions, gestures, and postures.  His stress on the importance of analysis of writing and other similar expressions has led to use of journaling, diaries and other such methods in therapies.  Dilthey thought a lot about the ways in which people fit into their social relationships and cultures.  Rickman mentions that he anticipated Freud's idea that factors that are not within our awareness can help to produce our meaningful expressions.  He knew that we, as researchers and therapists, needed to understand behavior and reactions in terms of the meaning that situations have for the person themselves.  All in all, this was an impressive analysis for someone who was born in 1833.

Healing Depression

Incredible as it may seem, I'll share another book that I picked up at the dump Swap Shop.  There was a copy of The Noonday Demon there, and I picked it up.  Rather than reading it, I'm listening on Audible (almost 24 hrs. worth!).   So far, it is a strong combination of literature and science.  The subject of the book is depression.  The first sentence in Chapter I is, "Depression is the flaw in love."  The author is writing a book now (Far From the Tree...) about when children are different from their parents and from other people.  There is a Newsweek article about his nontraditional family.  He is in a program now, according to his Wikipedia page, to learn to be a healer, " working on attachment theory under the supervision of Prof. Juliet Mitchell."  I get the impression that both this book and the upcoming one can be very useful and supportive for people.