Jefferson A. Singer

"This first full-length psychobiographical analysis of Stevenson examines his life story, providing new insights into how his most significant memories and conflicts shaped the narrative structure and themes of his most celebrated works, Treasure Island; A Child's Garden of Verses; Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and Kidnapped."--

Robert Louis Stevenson's Quest for Identity

The Proper Pirate

Peter Salovey

A theory for psychologists on the role of memory in personality psychology. In The Remembered Self, Jefferson A. Singer and Peter Salovey persuasively argue that memories are an important window into one's life story, revealing characteristic moods, motives, and thinking patterns. Through experimental evidence, clinical case material, and examples from literature, the authors offer a fresh perspective on the role of memory in personality and clinical psychology. Unlike the conventional psychoanalytic approach to memory, which concentrates on what is forgotten, Singer and Salovey treat memory in a new and different way with an emphasis on what is remembered. Theirs is a bold new theory of memory and self that is both comprehensive and accessible.

Emotion and Memory in Personality

Remembered Self

Exploring the life and times of author Robert Louis Stevenson, The Proper Pirate takes readers on a psychological journey from the writer's religious and constricted upbringing to a life of imagination and wonder culminating in the South Seas island of Samoa. Drawing on contemporary theories of identity development, Jefferson A. Singer traces how Stevenson overcame Victorian dualities of piety versus passion in both his personal life and artistic works, gradually edging toward a more Modernist and complicated moral vision. This first full-length psychobiographical study of Stevenson follows the trajectory of his life, all while highlighting how key memories and conflicts within his personality shaped the narrative structure and themes of some of his most celebrated works, including: Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses, and Kidnapped. Stevenson's relationships to his parents, his wife Fanny, and circle of intimate friends also play a prominent role in this investigation of his emerging identity and artistic body of work.

Karen Skerrett

Positive Couple Therapy: Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience is a significant step forward in the couple literature. Utilizing a strengths-based approach, it teaches therapists and couples a unique method for uncovering positive potential within a relationship. The authors demonstrate how “We stories”–created, recovered and made anew–provide essential elements of connection. With vivid imagery, these stories capture the couple’s sense of “We-ness,” highlighting memorable moments of compassion, acceptance, and respect. A shared commitment to the “We” simultaneously builds the relationship and enables each individual in the partnership to feel a greater degree of both accountability and autonomy. Couples that can find their stories, share them with each other, and then carry them forward to family, friends, and a larger community are likely to preserve a sense of mutuality that will thrive over a lifetime of partnership. Positive Couple Therapy provides simple and practical instruction for reclaiming positive stories that can catalyze hope in relationships that have become stressed and strained. The authors weave together cutting edge thinking and research in attachment theory, narrative therapy, neuroscience, and adult development, as well as their own research and clinical experience to present vivid case histories, step-by-step strategies, exercises, questionnaires, and interview techniques. They cover a range of contemporary couple experiences: couples in conflict, LGBT partnerships, deployed and discharged military couples, and couples at various points across the life span. The authors’ unique Me (to US) Scale, a 10-item tool that assesses the degree of mutuality a couple possesses at the start of treatment, gives therapists of any theoretical orientation the ability to put this intervention to immediate use.

Using We-Stories to Enhance Resilience

Positive Couple Therapy

Jefferson Singer

This series of intimate and penetrating portraits of male addicts provides a unique window onto how men relate to drugs and alcohol--and why so many are drawn to these substances. Poignant and deeply moving, "Message in a Bottle" brings readers to a fuller understanding of these men and the world in which they live.

Jefferson A. Singer

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