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The Self-Healing Mind

Harnessing the Active Ingredients of Psychotherapy

Brian J. McVeigh (Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Albany NY)

$171.95

Hardback

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English
Oxford University Press Inc
29 September 2022
"Evolutionary psychology explains why some mental illnesses developed, but to answer questions about how to improve our mental well-being in the face of these challenges--how the mind works to heal itself-we should look to more recent changes in mentality.

In The Self-Healing Mind, mental health counsellor and anthropologist Brian J. McVeigh postulates that around 1000 BCE, population expansion and social complexity forced people to learn ""conscious interiority""--a package of cognitive capabilities that culturally upgraded mentality. He argues that the mental processes that help us get through the day are the same ones that can heal our psyches. Adopting a common factors and positive psychology perspective, McVeigh enumerates and defines these active ingredients of the self-healing mind: mental space, introception, self-observing and observed, self-narratization, excerption, consilience, concentration, suppression, self-authorization, self-autonomy, and self-reflexivity. McVeigh shows how these capabilities underlie the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic techniques and interventions. Though meta-framing effects of psyche's recuperative properties correct distorted cognition and grant us remarkable adaptive abilities, they sometimes spiral out of control, resulting in runaway consciousness and certain mental disorders. This book also addresses how maladaptive processes snowball and come to need restraint themselves.

With insights from counseling, psychotherapy, anthropology, and history, The Self-Healing Mind will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and anyone interested in neurocultural plasticity and how therapeutically-directed consciousness repairs the mind."

By:  
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 161mm,  Width: 237mm,  Spine: 27mm
Weight:   653g
ISBN:   9780197647868
ISBN 10:   0197647863
Pages:   344
Publication Date:  
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Notes to reader Prologue: Searching for the Active Ingredients of the Self-Healing Mind PART 1: The Adaptive Mind, Consciousness, and Implications for Therapy Chapter 1: Purposes and Premises: The Therapeutic Properties of Subjectivity Chapter 2: What is Consciousness? Clarifying the Stuff of Mind PART 2: The Benefits and Costs of Conscious Interiority Chapter 3: The Advantages of Conscious Interiority Chapter 4: Runaway Consciousness: The Price of Scaled-up Cognition Chapter 5: A Brief History of the Interiorization of Psychotherapy PART 3: The Meaning of Mental Health and How the Psyche Adjusts Chapter 6: Treating Mental Illness and Facilitating Mental Wellbeing Chapter 7: The Nature of Self: Systemized, Serialized, Dramatized Chapter 8: The Self-Organizing Mind: Rhythms, Routines, Rituals PART 4: Applications, Approaches, and Interventions Chapter 9: Using Conscious Interiority as a Therapeutic Tool Chapter 10: Key Therapeutic Skills and Conscious Interiority Chapter 11: Groups and Families as Therapeutic Systems Chapter 12: Emotions and Conscious Interiority Chapter 13: Hypnosis and Meditation: Suspending and Modulating Conscious Interiority Chapter 14: Human Diversity, Social Adaptation, and Psychotherapy Epilogue: Final Thoughts Appendices A: Synopsis of Positive Psychology B: Synopsis of Common Factors C: The Historical Birth of Conscious Interiority D: What Conscious Interiority is Not E: Psyche-Biological Hardware or Cultural Software? F: Examples of Metaphoric Creativity G: Five Perspectives on Conscious Interiority: A Summary H: Developmental Stages of the Lifespan and FOCI Glossary: A Jaynesian Therapeutic Perspective on Techniques and Interventions References Index About the author

Brian J. McVeigh has an MA in anthropology, an MS in counseling, and a PhD in anthropology. He is a licensed mental health counselor in private practice and a scholar of Japan and China where he lived and taught for 16 years. For ten years he taught in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. The author of 16 books, he has an interest in how humans adapt, both through history and therapeutically. His current projects include The Psychology of Ancient Egypt: Reconstructing a Lost Mentality.

Reviews for The Self-Healing Mind: Harnessing the Active Ingredients of Psychotherapy

Brian McVeigh has taken the insights of the unsung genius of 20th Century Psychology, Julian Jaynes, and brilliantly applied them to improving our mental well-being. Conscious interiority is the deep mechanism of self-healing and the secret of successful therapy. A must read for clinical therapists and positive psychologists. * Martin E. P. Seligman, Director, Positive Psychology Center, and Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania * I have never read anything quite like this. Brian J. McVeigh takes on the daunting task of integrating a vast treasure trove of resources drawn from positive psychotherapy, common factors of therapeutic change, and a Jaynesian theoretical paradigm. He provides a guide to psychotherapists and their patients to help them explore, understand, and manage real life concerns as they navigate an even murkier internal landscape. * Al Pfadt, PhD, Retired Research Scientist, New York State Institute for Basic Research * The Self-Healing Mind coherently joins elements of healing and well-being that have long been considered disparate. By integrating the evolution of consciousness with an expansive and multicultural range of psychotherapeutic strategies, McVeigh has created a refreshingly accessible, comprehensive, and practical model for helping people help themselves. * Laurence Irwin Sugarman, M.D., F.A.A.P., A.B.M.H., Rochester, New York *


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