Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind
Treating Intimacy, Tragedy, Violence, and Evil
By (author) Israel W. Charny Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Foreword by Douglas Sprenkle
Publication date:
19 January 2018Length of book:
400 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
238x158mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498566971
Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind proposes that the optimal goal of psychotherapy lies in cultivating a free mind with integrity that will not seek to do major harm to one’s life or to the lives of others. This book looks at a wide range of psychiatric disorders, including classic conditions of neurosis, personality disorders and psychoses, through a different lens. Rather than simply enumerating symptoms, namely, how a person is addressing the opportunity of his/her life and the lives of others and whether a person is doing harm to themselves and/or others. This book proceeds to grapple with several critical life experiences and styles: tragedy, violence and evil, all of which often have posed insurmountable problems in therapy.
Psychotherapy for a Democratic Mind presents a creative focusing of Israel W. Charny’s general concept of democratic and fascistic minds to a crucial field of application. An unusual blend of material from clinical psychology, personality theory, and political psychology, its core terms symbolize broad personality types. The result is a set of novel and thought-provoking ideas for clinical theory, diagnosis, and treatment.