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.

This book presents the best short introduction to genius to be found. It is a valuable resource for all students of psychology and anyone interested in the field. The book examines the many definitions of “genius”, and the multiple domains in which it appears, including art, science, music, business, literature, and the media. The term genius is peculiar. It can be precisely defined or loosely defined. It can be applied to a diversity of phenomena or confined to just one or two. It all depends on how you use the term. The tremendous range in usage reflects the fact that genius is both a humanistic concept with a long history and a scientific concept with a much shorter history. There are two principal ways to assess degrees of genius. One is historiometric, and the other is psychometric. Whatever the actual association between historiometric and psychometric genius, we have a strong inclination to associate the two concepts. This connection was demonstrated in a recent survey of college students at both U.S. and Canadian universities. The book also examines three alternative positions on the nature of cognitive ability: unified intellect, diverse intellects and hierarchical intellect. Whether intelligence is unified or multiple, all budding geniuses must go through some sort of apprenticeship period in which they acquire the expertise that will enable them to make original and exemplary contributions to their chosen domain of achievement. The book further explains what psychologists have said about problem-solving research in cognitive psychology.

Written by the originators of the Mindfulness-Acceptance-Commitment (MAC) model, this book provides both the necessary theory, empirical background, and a structured step-by-step, easy-to-use protocol for the understanding, assessment, conceptualization, and enhancement of human performance. The MAC approach to performance enhancement is based on an integration of mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches and is specifically tailored for high-performing clientele. The predominant psychological approaches have emphasized the development of self-control of internal states such as thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations and have been commonly referred to as psychological skills training (PST) procedures. The book describes a systematic approach to intervention planning in performance psychology. It presents case formulation method presented for a comprehensive understanding of the client, and an appropriate multilevel classification system for sport psychology (MCS-SP) classification that subsequently either guides the proper delivery of the MAC program or leads to the determination that the performer’s needs are beyond the scope of the MAC program. The MCS-SP categorizes the issues and barriers facing the performer into four classifications: performance development (PD), performance dysfunction (Pdy), performance impairment (PI), and performance termination (PT). Numerous case examples, forms, handouts, in- and out-of-session assignments and activities, and verbatim client instructions are included in the book.

This book is designed to foster interdisciplinary understanding, information sharing, and integrative approaches to athlete assessment, mental training (MT), and outcome research in evidence-based applied sport psychology. Neurocognitive testing (NCT) and quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) are brain assessment procedures that are used to investigate relationships between cortical functioning and context-specific outcome measures to arrive at clinical diagnoses or better informed patient and client evaluations. Research is ongoing to test the premise that NCT and qEEG can serve as reliable criterion-referenced measures for athletes profile primary higher order (AP PHO) constellations, heart rate variability (HRV) responding and eventually macro- and micro-performance outcome. The Polar heart rate variability (HRV)/heart rate deceleration (HRD) paradigm allows for more extensive and time-locked predictive validity statistical analyses so that in-the-moment MT over the course of entire official games/matches/competition can be delineated and quantified in terms of MT’s predictive validity. Behavioral-Motor-Technical (BMT)-based intervention attempts to help support an athlete’s mental game using exposure, confrontation, threshold, and learning principles to improve attention, motor control, and self-confidence, as well as reduce nervousness associated with pressure moments of competition. The goal of BTM-MT is to consolidate optimum technical and motor patterns in long-term procedural memory as well as repetitively attempt to demonstrate peak technical performance under greatest situational pressure, first in training and then during official competition. The book also provides a foundational and fundamental rationale for advancing evidence-based and validated athlete assessment and intervention protocols.

This book offers practical guidance and strategies to avoid the common pitfalls of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) practice through the 8-phase protocol. It proposes to guide those therapists into a safer way of working while encouraging them to access accredited training and supervision for their practice. The scope of the book is limited to EMDR practice with adults. Phase 1 of the standard EMDR protocol is history taking. It is important to determine whether the client is appropriate for EMDR selection. The therapist needs to help the client to identify and practice appropriate coping strategies that will support the client throughout the therapy. Therapists need to address any fears that the client (or therapist) may have about the later desensitization. Failing to do this can result in problems later. Many of the clients that come for EMDR will have a history of complex trauma or a chaotic childhood. The treatment plan needs to identify specific targets for reprocessing. This will be a three-pronged approach that includes the past memories that appeared to have set the pathology in process, the present situations that, and people who, exacerbate this dysfunction, and the desired future response, emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. Clients and therapists need to understand the rationale for selecting a particular target utilizing prioritization and clustering techniques as illustrated with the case study. Choosing the correct target can involve some detective work, but this will be time well spent. The book guides practitioners on how to identify the components of a memory network for reprocessing. It then focuses on the assessment phase and the importance of negative cognitions (NCs) drawing heavily on illustrative case vignettes.

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.

This book was conceived out of the authors' shared vision to synthesize key neurobiological developments with effective developments in clinical practice to offer both understanding and practical guidance for the many practitioners working to heal people burdened with traumatic sequelae. It is unique in bringing in all levels of the brain from the brainstem, through the thalamus and basal ganglia, to the limbic structures, including the older forms of cortex, to the neocortex. The book looks at the neurochemistry of peritraumatic dissociation (PD) and explores the effects on neuroplasticity and the eventual structural dissociation. Individual chapters focus on the definition of PD and tonic immobility (TI) and their associations with posttraumatic psychopathology, and review disturbances in self-referential processing and social cognition in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to early-life trauma. Separate chapters focus on the modulatory role of the neuropetides in attachment as well as autonomic regulation, and highlight mesolimbic dopamine (ML-DA) system as central to the experiences of affiliation, attachment urge when under threat, attachment urge during experience of safety, and to the distress of isolation and/or submission. The book while increasing awareness of different parts of the self and ultimately creating a more stable sense of self, also incorporates psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioral, and hypnotic methods, as well as specific ego state, somatic/sensorimotor therapies, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and variations of EMDR suitable for working with trauma in the attachment period. The latter methods are explicitly information-processing methods that address affective and somatic modes of processing.

This book focuses on the practice of child psychotherapy, the theories and treatment practice. The book is divided into three parts. The first part dwells on the need for developmentally grounded child psychotherapy. It explores theories of human development, also referred to as developmental psychology and educational theory in order to understand how children are challenged to learn, and reviews theories that speculate how love and our earliest relationships impact health and well-being. Part II assimilates the developmental theory into the pragmatics of child psychotherapy. It discusses the pragmatics of providing child psychotherapy with considerations for therapists, focuses on the legal and ethical challenges that arise when providing child psychotherapy, and reviews the types of assessment tools that cover all phases of development, including emotional, social, developmental, educational, and psychological. The third part presents the best practices in child psychotherapy. Here, models of evidence-based practice in child psychotherapy are reviewed with examples of what each model offers to the treatment process. These theories also describe what the therapist brings to psychotherapy based on the therapist’s belief of what therapy looks like and the therapist’s role in the relationship with the client. One of the chapters guides the therapist through case conceptualization that integrates the most efficacious treatment interventions into the eight-phase template of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Basic issues such as sleeping, feeding, emotional dysregulation, and learning issues are also discussed with common responses and references to provide to parents through a developmentally grounded practice.

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.

Obesity research has recently shifted from focusing purely on individual causes to viewing individuals within their “obesogenic” or living environments. This book combines current research from multiple perspectives to provide an introductory-level, reader-friendly overview of the history, causes, prevalence, consequences, treatments, and future trends in the prevention of obesity. It integrates research from a vast range of disciplines in the biological and social sciences, as well as education and economics. It explores the gamut of current treatments for obesity, in addition to prevention programs in schools, the workplace, the community, and the arena of public policy, and offers an assessment of their efficacy. Since obesity is a burgeoning problem in the developing world, as well as having already reached epidemic proportions in many developed nations, the book also discusses international trends. By far, the most common definition of obesity uses the body mass index (BMI) to determine who is overweight or obese. The genetic causes of obesity are often separated into to two types: monogenic and polygenic. After discussing the psychosocial and medical correlates and consequences of obesity, the book looks at the current treatments for obesity such as self-initiated diets, lifestyle modification and medical treatment including surgery. Positive effects on physical activity are encouraging because developing good habits early may help prevent obesity later in life.