Depression
UK £3.99,Canada $6.95,USA $7.95,
UK Publication November 2002
ISBN 9781840463798
Paperback
Buy: | Waterstones| Book Depository
Most of the time most of us feel mostly OK. Yet depression is now recognised as the commonest cause of disability and death of any disease. How can we understand this epidemic of human misery, and in what ways can psychotherapy contribute to our knowledge of its causes and treatment?
This essay looks at a range of psychotherapies - cognitive, systemic and psychoanalytic - and their contributions to the debate. According to Holmes, the key variable in understanding depression is 'loss' - whether through bereavement, or a loss of status, connectedness or community. Freud saw vulnerability to loss as intrinsic to the human condition. Yet Klein described how the capacity to become depressed may also indicate a realisation that attachment and loss are two sides of the same coin. Examining the interplay of such themes as guilt, misery, despair, anger and reparation, the later part of the book considers a range of treatment methods, with the ultimate goal of finding ways for sufferers to overcome depression - and regain a deepened sense of the meaning of life.
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Jeremy Holmes is Consultant Psychiatrist/Psychotherapist in North Devon and Senior Clinical Lecturer in Psychotherapy in the Peninsula Medical School.
See more books by: Jeremy Holmes
