An insightful approach to the far-reaching effects of climate shifts and their impact on the human psyche; likely to become...
A book explores the psychological implications of climate change.
With all of the literature surrounding climate shifts, it is a rare work that addresses their often profound emotional impact on humans. Medical practitioner and educator Davenport (Transformative Imagery, 2016, etc.) views weather cycles through a different lens, offering both an overview of climate change psychology and pertinent tactics for clinicians to apply in caring for their clients. The first part of the book examines specific “clinical themes.” “The Psychology of Climate Change Denial,” for example, touches on current beliefs and explains how the typical stress responses, “fight, flight, and freeze,” relate to the global disruptions. “Mindful Disaster Response,” a chapter that moves out of the clinician’s office into the field, discusses how to deal on-site with individuals going through the three stages of climate catastrophe recovery. These two chapters and the other four in Part I provide a solid overview of climate change’s impact, accompanied by additional resources and a worksheet tailored to each chapter’s content. The text and worksheets deliver specific “practices” the therapist can employ with clients, including thorough, step-by-step instructions. Part II is a uniquely structured resource comprised of 12 practices geared toward developing an “ecoharmonious life.” Every practice includes three sections—“Body Wise,” “Heart/Mind Wise,” and “World Wise”—each designed to sensitize a client to different transformative areas. The practices themselves are simple yet compelling: “Garden State,” for example, is designed to create an appreciation of one’s natural environment, particularly flora and the physical earth, so the client can become “an active steward of life.” An appendix features an exercise for “progressive relaxation,” and extensive references are included. Davenport demonstrates a deep knowledge of clinical practices but, more important, relates these directly to ecological issues and outcomes. Consistently positive and encouraging, she writes with an understanding of a therapist’s challenges and a sense of empathy for clients.
An insightful approach to the far-reaching effects of climate shifts and their impact on the human psyche; likely to become a valuable, targeted resource facilitating clinicians’ treatment in this specialized area.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78592-719-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A mixed bag of 11 pieces, previously unpublished in English, by the noted German-Jewish-American social psychologist. Fromm (The Art of Loving, Escape from Freedom, etc.) is at his most interesting in writing about the complementary nature of the positive ``selfishness'' of a healthy self-love and the capacity to love another, a theme whose expression in modern Western philosophy and in human relationships he explores in the book's longest essay. He also contributes to intellectual history in elaborating on the pioneering proto-feminist 19th-century writings of Swiss legal scholar J.J. Bachofen, who articulated the position, advanced for its time, that while on the whole there are certain basic and deep biological differences between the sexes, characterological differences among individuals are far more significant. Regrettably, these pieces contain some tired perspectives on such issues as homosexuality (in an essay apparently written around 1940, he refers to it as ``usually an expression of grave personality disorder''). Fromm also is not above stating unverifiable psycho-historical points of view. For example, speaking of the capacity to hate as manifest in Weimar and Nazi Germany, he claims, ``Latent hostility was peculiarly the lot of members of [the German lower middle class] long before it was actualized by Nazi propaganda.'' It remains unclear what is, or how one measures or even perceives, such latent hostility. As these essays show, Fromm was a wide-ranging thinker whose writings sometimes manifested brilliant insights or practical wisdom. Yet, as this volume also shows, he will not be remembered as belonging to the first rank of the century's great social scientists and philosophers, especially those from Germany and Austria. That may be because of the diffuseness of Fromm's thought, his often unsatisfying attempts to synthesize the insights of anthropology, philosophy, and history, as well as depth, interpersonal, social, and even his own ``pop'' psychology.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-88064-186-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bulimic since she was 9 years old, anorexic since she was about 15, the author reveals how and why women with these eating disorders can be helped and, most of all, how long it takes for that help to take hold. Hornbacher, a freelance editor and writer, is now 23 years old and, if not well (``it's never over, not really''), at least ingesting and keeping down enough food to sustain life and begin the repairs of the heart and other organs that were ravaged by over a decade of vomiting and starvation. Not yet convinced that she will survive, she struggles each morning over her bowl of ``goddamn Cheerios'' to let go of the urge to be thinner and of ``the bitch in your head'' who says, ``You're fat.'' With the help of journals and thousands of pages of her own medical records, Hornbacher explores why she began trying to make herself disappear. Although in many ways she fit the profile of a person with an eating disorder—her family life was emotionally chaotic, she was a perfectionist—Hornbacher feels there is more to it, including society's dictate that ``you can't be too rich or too thin.'' In and out of eating-disorder clinics and mental institutions for many years, she also encountered general practitioners who accepted her extremely low weight—she bottomed out at 52 pounds—as normal. Descriptions of both the desperate need to binge and purge and the grip of the addiction to not- eating are vivid. Along the way, Hornbacher was involved with drugs and promiscuous sex but managed to keep her habits and her lifestyle a secret. Hornbacher's message is a warning about the complexity of eating disorders—that they are not simply about food or parental missteps or even ``thin is in,'' but about a tapestry of dysfunction that gives rejection of nourishment a terrible potency of its own. (First serial to New Woman; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 14, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-018739-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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