This volume intergrates one contextual, developmental, and relational theory of personality socialization in the family and other settings with a complementary model of relational styles. Both the theory and the model share complementary characteristics of replicable operations in laboratory evaluation and in preventative and psychotherapeutic interventions in problems with intimate relationships. Further, both the theory and the model are linked to two major models of personality and intimate relationships, the circumplex and attachment, respectively. The theory's 15 models are derived...

Directed to mental health professionals and graduate students in the mental health disciplines, we present a new way to augment the cost-effectiveness of current face-to-face (f2f) mental health based on talk, and, offer an alternative in primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention approaches. Distance writing (DW) and computer-assisted interventions (CAI) through the Internet opens up new vistas to those unable to be reached using traditional talk-based f2f approaches, i.e., living abroad, handicapped, the military, missionary families, Peace Corps volunteers, English speaking respondents...

The field of psychotherapy is beset by a variety of problems including relative ineffectiveness, relatively high cost, and low availability. Hence, a more cost-effective, efficient and mass-producible method is needed that the current talk-based approach lacks. This volume explains that programmed distance writing - workbooks - can fill that need. Workbooks are inexpensive, specific, controllable, verifiable, and can be transmitted via the Internet to be used in clinical treatment, prevention, rehabilitation and research, all at a cost saving over talk therapy.

The rationale behind...

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...

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...

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...

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...