ABSTRACT

In this cohesive, dramatic, and highly readable book, the author establishes a roadmap for the diagnosis and psychotherapeutic treatment of psychotic disorders based on finding, understanding and reordering of unbearable affect. He provides concrete clinical advice, vivid examples, and crisp jargon-free descriptions of theoretical concepts and clinical techniques. Most of all, he demonstrates that it is possible for psychotic patients to take control of their conditions, rebuild family relationships, and establish themselves in the viable productive lives that they have long despaired of achieving.

section I|74 pages

Affect Diagnosis

chapter One|12 pages

Introduction: The focal point

chapter Two|15 pages

Forms of introduction: The chief complaint

chapter Three|13 pages

Psychotic themes in the precipitating event

chapter Four|14 pages

Affect and primary process in psychosis

chapter Five|16 pages

Vitality affects and the self in psychosis

section II|87 pages

Affect Therapeutics

chapter Seven|15 pages

The forms and transformations of affect

chapter Eight|20 pages

Shame, pride, and paranoid psychoses

chapter Nine|16 pages

Emotion and self-esteem in psychosis

chapter Ten|15 pages

Bearing unbearable affect

section III|35 pages

A Life's Work: Staying out of Psychosis

chapter Eleven|17 pages

Putting emotion in perspective

chapter Twelve|15 pages

Staying out of psychosis