Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 130
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-0-7657-0873-1 • Hardback • November 2012 • $107.00 • (£82.00)
978-1-4422-3820-6 • Paperback • June 2014 • $58.00 • (£45.00)
978-0-7657-0874-8 • eBook • November 2012 • $55.00 • (£42.00)
Mary Davis, MD, is a board certified psychiatrist and child/adolescent psychiatrist, as well as a graduate psychoanalyst for both children and adults. She has been in practice since 1980, working in inpatient, outpatient, and residential treatment settings. She has been interested in the ways in which language facilitates and interferes with our social functioning since her days in training.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Language of Color and Hope
Chapter 2: Bringing Meaning to Words in Psychotherapy
Chapter 3: Function Follows Form
Chapter 4: Bridging the Gap: Language and Relational Distance
Chapter 5: Normal Language Development
Chapter 6: Interferences with Normal Language Development
Chapter 7: Speaking the Unspeakable: Language and Trauma
Chapter 8: Saying the Unsayable: How We Say What There Are No Words For
Chapter 9: Why (and How) Do Words Matter?
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
From the perspective of the brain, mental ideas are always expressed in the ‘language’ of the BODY, and sometimes they are also expressed in the ‘language’ of WORDS. Dr. Mary Davis weaves together a series of clear, sensitive, and fully alive clinical stories to illustrate how the analyst must become fluent in both ‘languages’ in order to fully understand and communicate with the patient. This book makes it obvious that Dr. Davis exhibits the rare capacity to hone to the analytic task, while remaining fully engaged and fluid in how she connects with patients.
— Regina Pally, MD, Center for Reflective Parenting
Davis is a child/adolescent psychiatrist and "graduate psychoanalyst" for children and adults. She has been in practice since 1980. In this brief volume, she shares her understanding of how communication occurs in her therapeutic work with a wide range of patients. The volume is well written, and the jargon is scant. The author does not specify an intended audience; rather, she says that her intention is to share what she has come to understand about her work. She reveals her presence across a range of actual patients. She clearly has reflected, through her professional work, across major theorists, but this is not a scholarly volume per se. Davis writes of translating patients to oneself and then to them, of helping them see how others misunderstand their intent, and how they misunderstand the intentions of others. Chapters include easy-to-grasp case examples. This volume will be appreciated by undergraduates in developmental psychology courses and by beginning therapists in the helping professions. Davis conveys care, openness, readiness to regroup, and discipline without rigidity. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; professionals.
— Choice Reviews