The Heart of Being Helpful: Empathy and the Creation of a Healing Presence / Edition 1

by Peter R. Breggin MD

Overview

Based on more than 30 years of clinical experience as a psychiatrist and a therapist, Dr. Breggin's book, now available in an affordable paperback, illustrates the importance of developing a therapeutic bond--or healing presence--between helping professionals and their clients. The author provides useful vignettes, case studies, and personal insights to help both beginning and experienced therapists develop more empathy in therapeutic relationships. He asserts that the first step toward effective treatment is empathic self-transformation in the therapist. It is empathy and self-transformation that lie at the heart of being helpful. Topics include vulnerability, nurturing, helplessness, forgiveness, and spirituality, as well as tips for working with clients in extreme emotional crises, children and families, and patients of culturally diverse backgrounds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826102744
Publisher:	Springer Publishing Company
Publication date:	04/28/2006
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.42(w) x 8.88(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Peter R. Breggin, MD, is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at NIMH. He is in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty books.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
• Creation of Healing Presence
• Being in Someone Else's Presence
• Acceptance of Our Own Personal Inadequacy
• Nurturing of Human Nature
• Does Empathy Hurt Too Much?
• Does Empathy Make Us Too Vulnerable?
• Beyond the Quick and Easy Cure
• From Fear and Helplessness to Love
• How to Help in Extreme Emotional Crises
• Creation of Healing Aura in Families
• Helping People Who Seem Very Different from Us
• Empathy and the Reform Spirit
• Finding Ourselves Through Principled Living
• Empathy and Forgiveness for Grievous Misdeeds
• Empathy for Children and Childhood
• Importance of Empathy for Ourselves
• Grateful Healer
• Is Love Enough?
Index

What People are Saying About This

Fred Bemak

Transcends scientific jargon to make a critical contribution to the helping professions. (Fred Bemak, PhD, Chair, The John Hopkins Department of Counseling)

From the Publisher

"[A] pleasant, upbeat, well-written, and thought-provoking discussion of the importance of developing a therapeutic bond--what the author calls "healing presence"--between helping professionals and their clients. … Very client centered … I see two audiences benefiting from this brief but meaty book: One--salty, chronologically gifted practitioners like myself--with many years and clients behind us, and hopefully many more ahead--who can profit from the periodic review of the basics and the frequent self-evaluation we were taught to conduct. The essays in this book facilitate that. The second audience is therapists-in-training, those who may not have read On Becoming a Person (Rogers, 1961)."
-Alan Cheney, reviewed in PsychCRITIQUES, Volume 51, Issue 47

"After years of detailing the myths and abuses of biopsychiatry, Peter Breggin comes full circle. With this profound and often poignant work from his own heart, he puts soul back into psychotherapy."

-Kevin McCready, PhD, Clinical Director, San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center

"Dr. Breggin passionately captures the heart of psychotherapeutic healing. A prolific and provocative writer, his thoughts are powerful, imaginative, inspirational, and wise. Not only would I recommend this book to professional psychotherapists, but also to the lay reader who will learn the meaning and intricacies of living and loving."

-Clemmont E. Vontress, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Counseling, George Washington University,
Counselor of the Year, American Mental Health Counselor's Association

"Brings passion and spirit to the art of counseling and psychotherapy. His insights into 'induced suffering' are a major contribution to the psychology of self."

-Joseph Tarantolo, MD, Psychiatrist, Washington, DC

"Transcends scientific jargon to make a critical contribution to the helping professions."

-Fred Bemak, EdD, Chair, Department of Counseling, Johns Hopkins University