Adolescents Books

Jaffe, Wolfe & Wilson provide readers with the necessary information to understand the dynamics of domestic violence & its impact on child witnesses. They provide multi-level assessment and intervention strategies for professionals to address this complex issue & give hope that we can help to end the intergenerational cycle of violence. All of their work is well-researched and clearly written. An excellent, ground-breaking work.

This book was req for my psychology of youth development and culture class, and I enjoyed reading it. Good framework for further reserach on minority children growing up in USA

Both as a pastor who gives this book as the best resource to those involved with helping children through split homes and as a divorced father who's daughter still has emotional scar tisuue, this book provides great advice.

Unique is this book's advice given by sex of the child, by age and then by relationship to the child, i.e. grandparent, spouse who has custody, non-custodial parent, church, school, etc.

So well done, emphasizing the two main thoughts that stay with divorced children and how to help them with these two.

One of the first things that I noticed, after deciding on Psychiatry as my specialty, was how free people felt to tell me that I my children would be nuts. Apparently, the children of psychiatrists are all crazy, and this is a well-known and accepted fact. That was typically the second comment people would make. The first would be some kind of awkward joke either about needing my services or the fear that somehow, by deciding to go into psychiatry, I had suddenly developed the ability to read their minds. It surprised me how uncomfortable it made people. The reaction I get when I tell people what I do is still surprising to me.

I'm as guilty as anyone actually. Until arriving in Boston (where it seems half the population are descendants of therapists), I only knew two people who had Psychiatrists for fathers, and they were both on the odd and/or angry side. Sorry Trav and Geof. But I've since been relieved to meet many Psychiatrists who appear to be wonderful parents, good role-models, and seem to have healthy, thriving children. And, true, I've also seen some kids that do fit the more negative stereotype.

I was happy to stumble upon this book at the library. Though slightly dated, it is interesting to see someone address this perception in a systematic fashion. Thomas Maeder, himself the child of a psychiatrist as well as a psychotherapist, starts with this notion that the children of psychiatrists and other therapists are qualitatively different than children of other professionals, and asks, 'is this even true?' And if so, what is that difference? What accounts for this difference? Rather than merely debate this, he decided to study it, interviewing many therapists and many children of therapists. This is mostly qualitative data, and by its nature, as Maeder admits, it can't be normed. There are no control groups, no double-blinding. One can only describe subjective experiences. No one can accurately assess how they would be different if they had different parents or if their parents had different occupations. It's anecdotal but generates thoughtful discussion.

The conclusions? It is mostly, but not entirely, a myth. Maeder sees it as evolving by extension from the myth that all psychiatrists are actually crazy. (Crazy people would naturally have crazy kids.) Maeder believes this derives from the projected needs of the believer: "People ridicule things that make them uncomfortable. How better can one ridicule psychiatrists than to say that they are crazy and that, far from being frighteningly adept at understanding other people, they can't even raise their own kids."

Yet he acknowledges that within the myth is a kernel of truth. And here is where the discussion gets interesting.

Psychotherapy is not just another job. It is a skill in which the training requires one to unlearn normal ways of interacting and learn to listen and observe people differently. "The psychiatrist must, for example, learn to maintain an unusual degree of objectivity and poise in the face of emotional crises, to elicit deep confessions from relatively casual acquaintances, to refrain from standard socially dictated responses, to visualize people in terms of their family histories and unconscious motivations, to discern the importance of seemingly insignificant verbal or postural clues, and to scrutinize his own feelings while dealing with patients and, perhaps, everyone else." Viewed from this lens, that psychiatric training inescapably permeates all parts of ones life, "it would be surprising if psychiatrists did not exert an unusual influence on their children, whether beneficial or not." The debate on this last point, whether the differences are overall positive or negative, is not resolved, but the breadth of opinions elicited makes for good reading. The crux of the argument seems to rest on whether or not it is healthy for a child to have a parent given to overvaluing the need to enter into their child's emotional life, overvaluing the importance of real empathic intrusion, and probably overestimating their abilities for true understanding.

This raises another issue, also given a thoughtful treatment: how much of this results not from psychiatric training but to the selection bias of the people that are drawn to the profession in the first place? Are people typically drawn to the profession because they themselves are psychologically wounded? Or is it a narcissistic desire to save people?

Along the way, Maeder touches on many related topics, such as the differences between the different professions that practice psychotherapy (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers), the different approaches (psychotherapists vs. psychoanalysts), some forays into more existential and epistemological themes that we all grapple with, and there are segues into relevant historical perspectives on the treatment of mental illness in this country.

But it is the stories we learn directly from the children interviewed that make for the most compelling reading. The permutations include children of therapists who become therapists themselves and children of therapists who are sent to therapists as patients.

Good stuff. Good reading.

But I'm not sure what I can do with this information from a practical point of view. Parenting is already an overwhelming task. You can prepare intellectually, but mostly it is a game of reactions, and the more confounders bouncing around your head the duller your reactions. I don't think I have the shrewdness to parent as a therapist attempting to not think like a therapist.

So it is what it is.
Hope for a happy ending.

I am psychiatrist, not an analyst. Dr Virag is a psychoanalyst. Even so I enjoyed her book and recommend to read it to professionals of various schools. She has an unusual large number of cases of children of Holocaust survivors .Her anamnestic writeups are examplary, her work strictly professional,still infectious with empathy. One may not agree with her interpretations always, still I have a deep respect for her expertise, eruditeness and her therapeutic successes.. Her writing is precise and same time poetic. Outstanding chapters are the historical ones and her self analysis. She gives a clear understanding where Hungarian psychoanalytical thinking stands today.

The book Children of the Enemy was incredibly written. The stories of the amerasians were so well captured that you could almost see their life while you were reading. I am a avid reader and have read many books about the vietnam war and it's aftermath, and this book truly stands out as one of the best.

Reich believed that nothing require our dedication more than an understanding of the impact of the environment on the infant child. In Children of the Future, he shows how disastrous the exclusion of genitality is to the young and how important its influence is on their development. Included here is "The Sexual Rights of Youth" published in a revised form.

This book provides a comprehensive history of child and family welfare policy in Russia post-revolution through the Yeltsin era. It is quite interesting reading and provides a good starting point for anyone seeking information on this topic. The author managed to condense a large amount of information into a very concise, readable and well-referenced book. Anyone within an interest in international child and family welfare will want to read it.

I liked this book a lot. It is a concise, thoughtful, and meticulously researched book that examines the causes and consequences of preteen homicide. It not only looks at traditional psychological factors, but expands the scope of the discussion to include moral reasoning and other sociological considerations. Geared towards a professional audience, though an educated lay person can get a lot from the book as well. A must read for anyone studying juvenile violence.

Whether you know a little or a lot about the impact of exposure to violence on children, this book is a compelling and powerful read. "Children Who See Too Much" is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to recognize and understand how we can help children impacted by violence, whether we are their teachers, social workers, mental health professionals, child welfare workers, other professionals, friends, or family members. Ms. Groves has woven together a compelling tapestry of children's stories, research findings, professional experience working directly with children, and thoughful policy and practice recommendations. The information on how to talk to your children about terrorism and war makes this book particularly relevant in the complex world that children and their parents must now negotiate. Ms. Grove's extensive experience as a pioneer in the field of helping children exposed to violence has provided an invaluable resource and a must-read for those who care about the well-being of children and their families.