This book provides the foundations and training that social workers need to master cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). CBT is based on several principles namely cognitions affect behavior and emotion; certain experiences can evoke cognitions, explanation, and attributions about that situation; cognitions may be made aware, monitored, and altered; desired emotional and behavioral change can be achieved through cognitive change. CBT employs a number of distinct and unique therapeutic strategies in its practice. As the human services increasingly develop robust evidence regarding the effectiveness of various psychosocial treatments for various clinical disorders and life problems, it becomes increasingly incumbent upon individual practitioners to become proficient in, and to provide, as first choice treatments, these various forms of evidence-based practice. It is also increasingly evident that CBT and practice represents a strongly supported approach to social work education and practice. The book covers the most common disorders encountered when working with adults, children, families, and couples including: anxiety disorders, depression, personality disorder, sexual and physical abuse, substance misuse, grief and bereavement, and eating disorders. Clinical social workers have an opportunity to position themselves at the forefront of historic, philosophical change in 21st-century medicine. While studies using the most advanced medical technology show the impact of emotional suffering on physical disease, other studies using the same technology are demonstrating CBT’s effectiveness in relieving not just emotional suffering but physical suffering among medically ill patients.

A concise, reader-friendly introduction to an important but often underappreciated topic in modern psychology, this book explains the role of comedy, jokes, and wit in the sciences and discusses why they are so important to understand. The author draws from his personal experiences in stand-up comedy to focus on how humor can regulate emotion, reduce anxiety and defuse tense situations, expose pretensions, build personal relationships, and much more. He irreverently debunks the pseudoscience on the topic of humor and leaves readers not only funnier, but better informed. Chapter 1 provides some ways to classify jokes into categories, discusses some theories about what makes something funny, and gets into the caveats about why this work can be so difficult. Comedy alters mood, thought, stress, and pain. Jokes and laughter may play an important role in health, mental illness, marital bliss, education, and psychotherapy. The second chapter discusses the social psychology of humor, and looks at how the presence of other people can make things seem funnier. Folks in both education and business often turn to humor in an attempt to captivate, inform, and persuade. A close look at the research on immune function, allergies, erectile dysfunction, and longevity reveals some promise for laughter’s health benefits. Research offers more support for humor’s impact on psychological well-being than on physical health. Humor can have direct effects on physical health and psychological well-being; it can buffer folks against the slings and arrows of daily hassles.

Personality psychology concerns the nature of human nature and tells us how a person will act in different situations and why. This book tells the story about the differences and similarities between people, and the causes and consequences of these differences. It commences with a note on the salient psychological theories of personality. During the mid-20th century, behaviorism emerged as a dominant paradigm for understanding human behavior, including personality. Although the social cognitive theory of personality has its origins in the radical behaviorist tradition, it emerged in clear opposition to it. Causal theories of personality deal with the question of why people differ in various ways. Behavioral genetics, an area of psychology concerned with the assessment of the relative contribution of genetic and nongenetic influences on various individual variables of difference, including personality, intelligence, and psychological disorders, is also outlined. Psychologists believe people can measure personality using reliable scientific tools. There has been an increased interest in alternative methods for objectively assessing personality. One compelling example is the Implicit Association Test (IAT). The book also shows how personality influences what is traditionally seen as social and cultural phenomena, such as political attitudes and religious beliefs, and prosocial and antisocial behavior. According to research, the most important personality correlates of prosocial behavior are extraversion and agreeableness. The book concludes with a note on the implications of using personality inventories in the context of identifying bad or problematic traits, such as narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and online personality profiling in the context of consumer behavior.

The purpose of this book is to dispel many of the myths about the gifted, define the term in a nonelitist manner, explore how it manifests in individuals, describe why it is important, consider its origins, examine its psychological implications, and provide guidelines for its recognition, assessment, and development. It provides a cohesive conception of the psychology and development of a group with special needs. This perspective was shaped through 50 years of concentrated study and is informed by the author’s experience as a teacher of gifted elementary students, a counselor of gifted adolescents, a teacher educator of graduate students in gifted education, a psychologist specializing in the assessment of giftedness, a clinician with gifted clients, the creator of a refereed psychological journal on adult giftedness, and a researcher. In humanistic psychology, optimal development has been conceptualized differently. Self-realization can be understood in terms of Maslow’s self-actualization, Dabrowski’s secondary integration, Jung’s individuation, or other theoretical perspectives of human development. Families, educators, and psychologists can support inner development or they can act as agents of socialization, exhorting the gifted to "work harder" to attain external trappings of success.

The book covers both theories and data, and provides a comprehensive grounding in the psychology of love. The basic thesis of the book is that scientific research can help us all in our loving relationships. Consequently, the book talks not only about theory and data, but also about how to apply them to our close relationships. One chapter provides questions and answers about loving relationships, based on scientific research. Another chapter discusses online dating and the issue of just what we can expect when we meet people online. The complete “Triangular Love Scale” is presented in the book and will enable you to analyze in some detail the levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment in your relationships. The scale, based on psychological theory and validated using large numbers of participants, will show you how psychologists not only construct theories, but also translate these theories into measures that can assess scientifically the phenomena they study. The book considers most of the standard topics in the psychology of love, covering research primarily about heterosexual but also about gay couples. It describes different kinds of love, including the kinds that are more likely to lead to relationship success and also the kinds associated with relationship failure. It specifically discusses factors that lead to greater or lesser success, as well as personality variables and their associations with different kinds of love. While the book focuses mainly on romantic love, it also covers other aspects of love, such as parental love and friendship.

This book serves as a practice resource for social workers by making accessible the vast territory covered by the social, cognitive, and affective neurosciences over the past 20 years, helping the reader actively apply scientific findings to practice settings, populations, and cases. It features contributions from social work experts in four key areas of practice: generalist social work practice; social work in the schools and the child welfare system; in health and mental health; and in the criminal justice system. Each of the chapters is organized around practice, policy, and research implications, and includes case studies to enhance practice application. The impact the environment has on neural mechanisms and human life course trajectories is of particular focus. It is divided into four sections. Section A includes chapters devoted to social-cognitive neuroscience conceptualization of empathy, mirror neurons, complex childhood trauma, the impact of trauma and its treatment through discussion of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Section B covers child maltreatment and brain development, transition of youth from foster care, social work practices in schools for children with disabilities, and managing violence and aggression in school settings. Section C deals with several issues such as substance abuse, toxic stress and brain development in young homeless children and traumatic brain injuries. Neuroscientific implications for the juvenile justice and adult criminal justice systems are explained in Section D.

Contemporary research has found that memory is much more than the process for recalling information that has been learned and retained. Memory is central to all human endeavors. Memory is the sine qua non of human psychology. How humans process, store, retrieve, and use memory is intrinsically interesting. This book is about human memory: how it works, how it sometimes does not work, why it is important, and why it is interesting. It describes the major structural and functional theories that guide our understanding of memory. The modal model has three memory buffers: sensory information store, short-term memory and long-term memory. The book focuses on everyday functions of memory, including memorizing things, remembering to do things (prospective memory), and recalling how to do things, such as skills, procedures, and navigation. Disorders of memory including Alzheimer’s and amnesia are examined along with exceptional memory skills, such as the phenomenon of individuals with highly superior autobiographical memory. The book also addresses the intriguing and controversial topics of repressed and recovered memories, the validity of memory in courtroom testimony, and the effects of remembering traumatic events.

This book draws on in-depth research of couples in different situations and cultures to identify educational and therapeutic interventions that will help couples become conscious of and move beyond gendered power in their relationships so they can expand their options and well-being. Sharing family and outside work more equitably is a part of the gender-equality story. The book is divided into five parts. Part I of the book lays out the theoretical and methodological issues of gender equality that frame the book’s research projects and practice concerns. Chapters in this section frame the concept of gender equality and its role in promoting mutually supportive relationships. The second part examines the relational processes involved in equality between intimate partners. Traditional couples need help in defining the meaning of relational equality for themselves within external definitions of male and female roles. A chapter in this section is about same-sex couples and explores what happens when gender does not organize relationships. In Part III, two chapters look at how gender legacies and power influence mothering and fathering among parents of young children with a third showing how idealized notions of motherhood heighten and maintain postpartum depression after childbirth. The fourth part shows both similarities and cultural variation in power issues in different cultural settings. While one chapter considers how racial experience increases the complexities of gender and power in couple life, another discovers the considerable diversity in Iran by showing how couples work within a male-dominant legal and social structure that also includes a long cultural tradition of respect for and equality of women. Part V draws on the previous chapters to offer a guide for mental health professionals.

This book provides a guided curriculum that introduces school psychology graduate students to a range of professional issues that may be faced within the context of supervised field-based experiences. Topics addressed in the book span entry-level practica through advanced clinical applications, the culminating internship year, and transitioning to professional practice. The book focuses on providing recommendations on developing curriculum vitae (CV), interviewing, writing personal statements, considerations for certification and licensure, and applying to jobs tasks often beyond the scope of what a program may offer through formal course work or seminars. It also addresses other core competencies essential to developing professionals in the context of field supervision. The book offers faculty a ready resource and text for use across a range of practicum and internship seminars. Graduate preparation programs in school psychology offer such seminars and formal university-based supervision to provide guidance to students as they traverse these experiences. Practica and internships remain among the most ubiquitous components of every school psychology program in the United States. To assist programs working to further develop their own processes, the book includes various tools and templates that represent actual forms utilized by National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)-approved and American Psychological Association (APA)-accredited programs across the country. The book serves as a guide to both faculty and students to support growth during field-based experiences and reviews the basic components of psychological evaluation and intervention report writing.

This book provides a highly accessible introduction to the many facets of human intelligence, with careful presentation of the wide range of theories and perspectives. Written by a team of renowned scholars, it discusses the long history of the study of intelligence, which in many ways parallels the founding and growth of psychology itself. Structure of Intellect (SOI) model represents a very different approach to theories of intelligence. Recent technological advances have encouraged explorations into the relationship between brain function and specific types of cognitive functioning. The book differentiates intelligence and related constructs such as creativity and intellectual giftedness, which helps people to better understand each construct. Sternberg proposed a way to classify the various approaches to studying the intelligence-creativity relationship. The exponentially increasing development of technology will continue to influence both research and interventions involving intelligence. Neurological studies of intelligence that were in the realm of science fiction only a generation ago have become commonplace. Brain imaging studies are also becoming more relevant to intelligence research. Improvements in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology, which uses superconducting magnets and radio waves to create 3-D images of the brain, will help future researchers look at the morphology of distinct brain regions and systems, and possibly come to firm conclusions about the relationship between the size or function of distinct brain regions and differences in intelligent human behavior.