The Body Speaks: Theraputic Dialogues for Mind-Body Problems

by Melissa Elliott Griffith and James L. Griffith

Book Overview

For decades, health care providers have worked as though there were a monolithic wall dividing the ailments of the mind from those of the body. Theorists on either side developed separate languages and philosophies to explain symptoms. This distinction has left many clinicians unable to treat successfully patients whose symptoms--such as headaches, conversion paralysis, and seizures--arise from the place where mind and body meet. In this book, the authors describe a powerful narrative therapy, one that relies on the wisdom and everyday language of patients' real-life stories instead of the expert knowledge and professional language of the clinician. This approach can be used across all categories of somatic symptoms, from factitious ones to medical illnesses such as asthma or migraine headaches.The authors show how somatic symptoms are often related to unspeakable dilemmas, as in the case of a child who, after discovering a parent's marital infidelity, is afraid to disclose the secret and begins having blackout spells for which a neurologist can find no physiological basis. These dilemmas can be understood only if a clinician creates the kind of relationship in which privately held stories of fear, shame, and threat can be told safely. Detailed case studies and numerous brief examples vividly illustrate techniques for helping patients escape the dilemmas that bind their bodies by finding new language and stories that can free them.In an innovative section, the authors rethink the current ideas and practices of psychopharmacology. Rather than "treating" a brain disease, a clinician uses medications to recalibrate brain systems that register alarm, thereby opening new possibilities for therapeutic change through speaking, listening, reflecting, and relating.This book offers all clinicians--psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists, nurses, physicians, and family therapists--a way to use language to help patients resolve bodily symptoms. It avoids the stigmatization that patients and families so often experience--and the frustration clinicians feel--when struggling to find answers for mind-body problems.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465007163
• ISBN13: 9780465007165
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.27 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Had to buy again

I read this book as an undergraduate for the fun of it. As a PhD student in psychology, I realized I had to add it back into my library after loaning it out. This is a definite must have to any conscious therapists bookshelves!

Absolutely the best book I have ever read.

Beutifully written and thought provoking. I've read this book three times, learning new things and new understandings of myself everytime. I recommend this to anyone who has been diagnosed with a mind-body problem or anyone who works with such problems. It is simple to understand yet profound. Afbsolutely fantastic! I truly hope I can someday meet these wonderful people that have helped me so much. If the authors are reading this please let me know at qmorgue@hotmail.com

very ineresting

This book points out some very important conection in a very understandable way, both for professionals and non - professionals. It takes out some very common symptoms and illnesses and points out possible connections between body and mind which should indeed be common knowledge among all health professionals