Luciano L'Abate

This provocative volume updates L' Abate's signature ideas, focusing in particular on the concepts of concreteness and specificity as basic tenets of evaluation and therapy. Noting society's growing familiarity with technology, current concerns about treatment accessibility, and widespread interest in wellness promotion, he argues for remote-writing exercises targeted to specific client issues and monitored by the clinician instead of relying on traditional talk-based therapy. This attention to concreteness and specificity in baseline evaluation, post-treatment evaluation, and follow-up, the author asserts, is central to making treatment replicable, less subject to impasses or missteps, and more professional, with the potential of changing how therapy is conducted as well as how clinicians are trained and practice. The book's framework includes rationales, models, empirical data, and examples of prescriptive remote-writing exercises. Featured in the coverage: Online interventions: here to stay and to grow.Verifiability in clinical psychology practices.Present status and future perspectives for personality and family assessment.Practice without theory/combining theory with practice.Toward a unifying framework of human relationshipsPIPES: Programmed Interactive Practice Exercise and Prescriptions.Concreteness and Specificity in Clinical Psychology will bring a new level of discussion and debate among clinical psychology practitioners and practicing psychotherapists in private practice and the public sector.

This book explores current relational models of psychopathology that undergird a great many conflicts and destructive outcomes in family and intimate relationships. These models have similar features and can be considered as a group. They are all: (1) generational; (2) relational; and (3) fundamentally reactive processes stemming from existing psychopathology.

This provocative volume updates L' Abate's signature ideas, focusing in particular on the concepts of concreteness and specificity as basic tenets of evaluation and therapy. Noting society's growing familiarity with technology, current concerns about treatment accessibility, and widespread interest in wellness promotion, he argues for remote-writing exercises targeted to specific client issues and monitored by the clinician instead of relying on traditional talk-based therapy. This attention to concreteness and specificity in baseline evaluation, post-treatment evaluation, and follow-up, the author asserts, is central to making treatment replicable, less subject to impasses or missteps, and more professional, with the potential of changing how therapy is conducted as well as how clinicians are trained and practice. The book's framework includes rationales, models, empirical data, and examples of prescriptive remote-writing exercises. Featured in the coverage: Online interventions: here to stay and to grow.Verifiability in clinical psychology practices.Present status and future perspectives for personality and family assessment.Practice without theory/combining theory with practice.Toward a unifying framework of human relationshipsPIPES: Programmed Interactive Practice Exercise and Prescriptions.Concreteness and Specificity in Clinical Psychology will bring a new level of discussion and debate among clinical psychology practitioners and practicing psychotherapists in private practice and the public sector.

This is a follow-up to the 2007 review of the literature on online / offline interventions done by Marks, Cavanagh, & Gega (Psychology Press). Consequently, this review includes summaries of research published since 2006 to date. Since publication of that original work, the number of references about online / offline interventions has mushroomed greatly, to the point that many more chapters were added to cover as many references as possible. None are included in the previous literature review. This book covers research summaries with separate chapters ranging from internalisations (anxiety, depression) to addictions, externalisations, and children and their families, physical illnesses, severe mental illnesses, including obsessive compulsive disorders, with one entire chapter dedicated to where most of the research has occurred in the last decade, and that is -- Post-traumatic Stress Disorders. A whole section is dedicated to separate chapters on Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Training. A final chapter covers many controversial issues in online / offline interventions, including cost-effectiveness, extra-channel non-verbal behaviour, the place of theory in online/offline interventions, and the now-predictably positive future of online interventions as the major approach to deal with most mental illnesses in the 21st century.

Relational competence—the set of traits that allow people to interact with each other effectively—enjoys a long history of being recorded, studied, and analyzed. Accordingly, Relational Competence Theory (RCT) complements theories that treat individuals’ personality and functioning individually by placing the individual into full family and social context. The ambitious volume Relational Competence Theory: Research and Mental Health Applications opens out the RCT literature with emphasis on its applicability to interventions, and updates the state of research on RCT, examining what is robust and verifiable both in the lab and the clinic. The authors begin with the conceptual and empirical bases for the theory, and sixteen models demonstrate the range of RCT concerns and their clinical relevance, including: - Socialization settings for relational competence. - The ability to control and regulate the self. - Relationship styles. - Intimacy and negotiation. - The use of practice exercises in prevention and treatment of pathology. - Appendices featuring the Relational Answers Questionnaire and other helpful tools. Relational Competence Theory both challenges and confirms much of what we know about the range of human relationships, and is important reading for researchers, scholars, and students in personality and social psychology, psychotherapy, and couple and family counseling.

This book demonstrates how clinical psychology and psychotherapy practices may reach a scientific level provided they change the three basic paradigms that have controlled those practices in the last century. These three, now outdated, paradigms, are: (1) one-on-one (2) personal contacts (3) through talk. These paradigms have served well in the past but they are no less helpful in the current digitally focused world.

First published in 1982. Paradoxical psychotherapy has rapidly become one of the most· important approaches to family therapy and psychotherapy during the past few years. The aim of this book is to present an overview of paradoxical therapy. Paradoxical Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice with Individuals, Couples, and Families Is designed for all clinical psychologists. Applications are offered for the individual, marital, and family therapist.

This book explores current relational models of psychopathology that undergird a great many conflicts and destructive outcomes in family and intimate relationships. These models have similar features and can be considered as a group. They are all: (1) generational; (2) relational; and (3) fundamentally reactive processes stemming from existing psychopathology.

?This monograph owes its origins to the decades-old proposal by David Bakan (1968) about the duality of human experience. He proposed that community and agency would be two necessary and sufficient constructs to classify and to encompass most human relationships. This dichotomy has been found to be valid by a variety of contributions over the last half a century (L’Abate, 2009; L’Abate, Cusinato, Maino, Colesso, & Scilletta, 2010). Additionally, the purpose of this book is to argue and assert that two important fields of psychology, family and personality psychologies, if not already dead are conceptually, empirically, and practically moribund. They are being superseded respectively by perhaps more appropriate, perhaps more specific, and more likely verifiable concepts and constructs, such as intimacy and identity. The traditional family still conceived as composed by two parents and two children of different gender is esponsible for only one fourth of all domiciles in USA. Singles, same-sex couples, and completely different family organization complete the remaining 100%. Difficulties in defining what is personality require a change in perspective and advance toward a comprehensive theory of human relationships that can and should fulfill requirements necessary to achieve an undoubtedly grandiose and ambitious universal status.?

This book demonstrates how clinical psychology and psychotherapy practices may reach a scientific level provided they change the three basic paradigms that have controlled those practices in the last century. These three, now outdated, paradigms, are: (1) one-on-one (2) personal contacts (3) through talk. These paradigms have served well in the past but they are no less helpful in the current digitally focused world.

Hurt feelings are universal and are present in human beings as well as in animals. These feelings are usually avoided by human beings and overlooked by the scientific and professional mental health communities. Yet, if unresolved and not shared with loved ones and professionals, they tend to fester in our bodies and effect our functioning. If not expressed and shared with caring others, anger, sadness and fear are at the bottom of mental illness. Developmentally, each of these feelings respectively gives rise to antisocial acts, depression and severe mental illness. This book suggests that instead of traditional one-on-one, face-to-face, conversation-based interventions, distance writing will allow mental health professionals to assign interactive practice exercises specifically focused on hurt feelings.

Hurt feelings are universal and are present in human beings as well as in animals. These feelings are usually avoided by human beings and overlooked by the scientific and professional mental health communities. Yet, if unresolved and not shared with loved ones and professionals, they tend to fester in our bodies and effect our functioning. If not expressed and shared with caring others, anger, sadness and fear are at the bottom of mental illness. Developmentally, each of these feelings respectively gives rise to antisocial acts, depression and severe mental illness. This book suggests that instead of traditional one-on-one, face-to-face, conversation-based interventions, distance writing will allow mental health professionals to assign interactive practice exercises specifically focused on hurt feelings.

This book examines a seemingly simple and absolutely essential topic: learning how to enjoy every aspect of your life on a daily basis.All of us look for happiness, well-being, and positivity throughout our lives, but for most people these goals are abstract and the processes established to achieve them ambiguous. The Seven Sources of Pleasure in Life: Making Way for the Upside in the Midst of Modern Demands focuses attention upon the concrete, specific, and everyday sources of pleasure that are within the grasp of almost everyone.Prolific author Luciano L'Abate, PhD, ABEPP, examines at all kinds of pleasures, investigating where we find them, why they appeal to us, and what benefits they provide in terms of both mental and physical health. He explains how to increase our sensitivity to everyday opportunities for pleasure, and then gives tangible techniques to focus upon these moments in order to fully experience them. The author employs personal memories from his childhood in Italy, more recent stories from his travels abroad, and the findings of most recent scientific research on the benefits of pleasure-seeking to further illustrate his points.

As a primary or an adjunct mental health therapy, written practice exercises have proven an effective, low-cost way for clients to transfer gains made in therapy to the challenges of daily life and relationships. These interactive workbooks expand on earlier self-help and distance writing methods along a continuum of healing approaches, from the proactive and preventive to the therapeutic and rehabilitative. But despite their appeal, large-scale access to high-quality materials hasn’t always been readily available—until now.The Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health gives professionals a library of replicable, evidence-based, clinically robust protocols and workbooks for a broad range of clinical and non-clinical conditions, suitable for individuals, couples, and families. Luciano L’Abate places practice exercises in the context of current mental health and technological advances, offering guidelines for administration, helpful case studies, and caveats for those new to this type of intervention, and features a wealth of complete protocols in these major areas: psychological disorders from the DSM-IV, including depression, anxiety, phobias, and PTSD, couple and family concerns, from intimacy to domestic violence to children’s adjustment to divorce, lifelong learning: assertiveness, emotional competence, social skills, and more, family support skills: preparation for marriage, parenthood, and adoption´, plus exercises derived from widely-used psychological tests (e.g., the Beck Depression Inventory, the MMPI), behavior lists, and others.Clinical psychologists, mental health professionals, and psychotherapists will find the Sourcebook of Interactive Practice Exercises in Mental Health a therapeutic treasure chest filled with new approaches to intractable issues or unreachable clients, new means of viewing typical problems, even new ways for talk therapy to work withwords.

Self-help is big business, but alas not a scienti c business. The estimated 10 billion—that’s with a “b”—spent each year on self-help in the United States is rarely guided by research or monitored by mental health professionals. Instead, marketing and metaphysics triumph. The more outrageous the “miraculous cure” and the “r- olutionary secret,” the better the sales. Of the 3,000 plus self-help books published each year, only a dozen contain controlled research documenting their effectiveness as stand-alone self-help. Of the 20,000 plus psychological and relationship web sites available on the Internet, only a couple hundred meet professional standards for accuracy and balance. Most, in fact, sell a commercial product. Pity the layperson, or for that matter, the practitioner, trying to navigate the self-help morass. We are bombarded with thousands of potential resources and c- tradictory advice. Should we seek wisdom in a self-help book, an online site, a 12-step group, an engaging autobiography, a treatment manual, an inspiring movie, or distance writing? Should we just do it, or just say no? Work toward change or accept what is? Love your inner child or grow out of your Peter Pan? I become confused and discouraged just contemplating the choices.

Four decades of contributions to personality theory and family practice have earned Luciano L’Abate a worldwide reputation for therapeutic insights. Now he expands on his pathbreaking relational theory of personality to apply it to the twenty-first-century family in all its configurations. Personality in Intimate Relationships showcases L’Abate’s trademark elegant style and provocative ideas in his most accessible work to date.Based on Axes I and II of the DSM-IV, the book describes relationships along a readily identifiable continuum ranging from optimal functionality to severe pathology, linking the author’s conceptual framework to specific diagnostic strategies, therapeutic interventions, and prevention programs. L’Abate’s theory not only integrates individual and family theories and seemingly disparate schools of thought, but is also inclusive of nontraditional relationships—grandparent/grandchild dyads, adoptive families, same-sex couples, and others—that are often left out of the family literature.Among the key areas explored in the book:• Selfhood and self-differentiation• Confrontation and sharing of hurt feelings• Negotiating, bargaining, and problem-solving• Dealing with distance and closeness• Intimacy and the ability to love In addition, the reader is referred to complementary online appendices that supply helpful questionnaires, workbooks, and ideas for further applications.Personality in Intimate Relationships offers fresh perspective to all frontline practitioners as well as investigators in this area. It is also ideal for graduate courses in abnormal psychology and personal development.

Relational competence—the set of traits that allow people to interact with each other effectively—enjoys a long history of being recorded, studied, and analyzed. Accordingly, Relational Competence Theory (RCT) complements theories that treat individuals’ personality and functioning individually by placing the individual into full family and social context. The ambitious volume Relational Competence Theory: Research and Mental Health Applications opens out the RCT literature with emphasis on its applicability to interventions, and updates the state of research on RCT, examining what is robust and verifiable both in the lab and the clinic. The authors begin with the conceptual and empirical bases for the theory, and sixteen models demonstrate the range of RCT concerns and their clinical relevance, including: - Socialization settings for relational competence. - The ability to control and regulate the self. - Relationship styles. - Intimacy and negotiation. - The use of practice exercises in prevention and treatment of pathology. - Appendices featuring the Relational Answers Questionnaire and other helpful tools. Relational Competence Theory both challenges and confirms much of what we know about the range of human relationships, and is important reading for researchers, scholars, and students in personality and social psychology, psychotherapy, and couple and family counseling.

Self-help is big business, but alas not a scienti c business. The estimated 10 billion—that’s with a “b”—spent each year on self-help in the United States is rarely guided by research or monitored by mental health professionals. Instead, marketing and metaphysics triumph. The more outrageous the “miraculous cure” and the “r- olutionary secret,” the better the sales. Of the 3,000 plus self-help books published each year, only a dozen contain controlled research documenting their effectiveness as stand-alone self-help. Of the 20,000 plus psychological and relationship web sites available on the Internet, only a couple hundred meet professional standards for accuracy and balance. Most, in fact, sell a commercial product. Pity the layperson, or for that matter, the practitioner, trying to navigate the self-help morass. We are bombarded with thousands of potential resources and c- tradictory advice. Should we seek wisdom in a self-help book, an online site, a 12-step group, an engaging autobiography, a treatment manual, an inspiring movie, or distance writing? Should we just do it, or just say no? Work toward change or accept what is? Love your inner child or grow out of your Peter Pan? I become confused and discouraged just contemplating the choices.

This volume shows how we play at various ages and stages, and why play is so vital to our wellbeing.Most American adults have little respect for play, for themselves or, increasingly, for their children. Are we losing anything with this attitude? Yes, says longtime clinical psychologist Luciano L'Abate. In a book that has a message for us all, L'Abate presents research showing that play, as one scholar put it, "is not a luxury, but rather a crucial dynamic of healthy physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development at all age levels." The Praeger Handbook of Play across the Life Cycle: Fun from Infancy to Old Age, shows how play and playful activities have developed and changed across recent history, and how their necessity has been the subject of changing cultural and educational views and controversies. The book overviews the history of play, summarizes current research and theory, shows how we play at various ages and stages, and explains why that helps us develop into healthy people—physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Four decades of contributions to personality theory and family practice have earned Luciano L’Abate a worldwide reputation for therapeutic insights. Now he expands on his pathbreaking relational theory of personality to apply it to the twenty-first-century family in all its configurations. Personality in Intimate Relationships showcases L’Abate’s trademark elegant style and provocative ideas in his most accessible work to date.Based on Axes I and II of the DSM-IV, the book describes relationships along a readily identifiable continuum ranging from optimal functionality to severe pathology, linking the author’s conceptual framework to specific diagnostic strategies, therapeutic interventions, and prevention programs. L’Abate’s theory not only integrates individual and family theories and seemingly disparate schools of thought, but is also inclusive of nontraditional relationships—grandparent/grandchild dyads, adoptive families, same-sex couples, and others—that are often left out of the family literature.Among the key areas explored in the book:• Selfhood and self-differentiation• Confrontation and sharing of hurt feelings• Negotiating, bargaining, and problem-solving• Dealing with distance and closeness• Intimacy and the ability to love In addition, the reader is referred to complementary online appendices that supply helpful questionnaires, workbooks, and ideas for further applications.Personality in Intimate Relationships offers fresh perspective to all frontline practitioners as well as investigators in this area. It is also ideal for graduate courses in abnormal psychology and personal development.