Peter Fraenkel

Strategies and skills for therapists working with couples about to dissolve. Therapy with couples on the brink of relationship dissolution involves unique challenges. Partners present with high levels of conflict, low levels of intimate connection, disdain and discouragement, and limited patience or hope. These couples have often tried therapy without lasting success, and announce that “this is our last chance.” Partners want to see evidence in the first session that the therapist can offer something new and that change is possible. Peter Fraenkel presents a practical, creative, integrative approach that combines action- and insight-oriented techniques to help last-chance couples manage conflict, modulate intense negative emotions, address power struggles, develop mutual compassion, and restore emotional intimacy and pleasurable connection. Special attention is paid to developing a collaborative therapeutic alliance when partners have little motivation for therapy or faith that it can be effective. Through engaging in “nonbinding experiments in possibility,” partners can then better evaluate whether to “stay or go.”

Bringing Relationships Back from the Brink

Last Chance Couple Therapy

In this memoir, Fraenkel writes as a member of an enclosed minority: German Jew within a predominantly Lithuanian Jewish community which was part of a white settler community, itself a minority in a predominantly black African territory. A young settler reprimanded him for stepping out of the way of an African family on a narrow bush path: “Walk straight on. They must know who is the master in the land.” Fraenkel found himself whistling the Nazis’ anthem “Clear the streets for the brown battalions. The storm troopers are marching.” He was coming to learn the importance of not conforming. “A vivid account of a childhood in a middleclass, non-observant Jewish family in Nazi Germany, forced to emigrate to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1939.” — Trevor Gundry, Jewish Chronicle “Peter Fraenkel... and his family emigrated in 1939 from Breslau to Northern Rhodesia, where he forged a successful career... in the Central African Broadcasting Service. Fraenkel was thus given the opportunity of using his undoubted skills as a broadcaster to help in the education of black people, using new methods of mass education... his sojourn in Northern Rhodesia came to an end in 1957, a few years after the country was refashioned by the British government as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland — a big mistake, Fraenkel thinks, and one that wasn’t undone until much later when the independent state of Zambia was created. His love affair with Africa came to an end, and he felt impelled to leave, because of his ‘dislike of racist politics in this bastion of white privilege’... Peter Fraenkel’s account of the 20 years in Northern Rhodesia is absorbing... there are riveting chapters on his activities as a somewhat subversive broadcaster, working together with like-minded whites and Blacks... The book is written in a very lively manner and there are countless anecdotes, many of them in direct speech... I recommend it strongly.” — Leslie Baruch Brent, Association of Jewish Refugees “The book bursts with life. Countries like these Central African territories are... far more exciting than countries with a settled structure. Here a new society is emerging. This excitement is lost in official reports and academic studies and one of Fraenkel’s achievements is that he conveys it in full measure. I know of no book which more vividly describes the variety and throb of a modern African township.” — Max Gluckman, The Observer “He brings out the formation of the new African metropolitan and rural societies... I know of no book which describes this surging varied vitality so well.” — Africa

No Fixed Abode: A Jewish Odyssey to Africa

Marcia Sheinberg

Presents an innovative approach to the confusions and dilemmas experienced by families in which incest has occurred. While not all incestuously abused children have the classic diagnostic symptoms of trauma, virtually all experience "relational trauma". Integrating social constructionist, feminist, and systems thinking, this treatment model focuses on strengthening the child's protective relationships, mobilizing families to help resolve the child's emotional and behavioral symptoms, and building resiliency.

A Family-based Approach to Treatment

The Relational Trauma of Incest

Roger Manvell

There are no better biographies of Goering, Goebbels and Himmler in existence New York Review of Books** Heinrich Himmler was the commander of the SS, and as founder and officer-in-charge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads, he was responsible for implementing the extermination of millions of people. By the time he died he was the second-most powerful man in Germany and regarded himself as Hitler's natural successor, going so far as to attempt to negotiate independent peace with the Allies. Based on US documents handed over to the German Federal Archives and the testimonies of Himmler's family and staff, this book examines how a seemingly ordinary boy grew into an obsessive and superstitious man who ventured into herbalism and astrology before finally turning to the science of racial purity and the belief in the superiority of the Aryan race. Filled with insights into Himmlers private life, activities and beliefs, this is an important study of one of the most sinister figures of World War II.

Peter Fraenkel

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