Dr. Pat Allen's Library A to D

Dr. Pat Allen's
Recommended Reading List:
Titles A to D

Pat often recommends books and reference works in her lectures, shows and therapy sessions, citing scientific researchers and other relationship experts as the sources behind her communication theories, and as recommended further reading for clients. When Pat suggests a particular book on a topic that examines a problem in your own particular relationship, here's the place to check it out. You can even order the books direct from Amazon.com with one-click ordering. Think of this as your personal "Study Hall" for learning how to improve your relationships and personal success in life....

[ A—D ] [ E—H ] [ I—L ] [ M—Q ] [ R—Z ]

Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride
— A Psychological Study
(Marion Woodman)
Through case studies, dreams and myths, a Jungian analyst explores the hidden causes of compulsion in the lives of men and women and shows that freedom from addiction can be achieved.

Advice to a Young Wife from an Old Mistress
(Michael Drury)
"A remarkably thoughtful and philosophical little treatise" published in the Sixties, it originally sold over 100,000 copies. It examines love — and love affairs — with understated eloquence. The value of romantic exclusivity, the influence of money as power over sex, and other critical issues are addressed in this extraordinary book soon to be a TV movie starring Anne Bancroft.

The Albert Ellis Reader: A Guide to Well-Being Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
(Shawn Blau & Albert Ellis)
A collection of 30 of the most popular and controversial articles by Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Topics include sex, love, marriage, anger, rational living, and more.

The Alchemy of Love and Lust
(Theresa L. Crenshaw)
Have you ever wondered what causes you to love another person, what helps the relationship continue or why you are uninterested in sex? After reading Theresa Crenshaw's book, you'll never again see your free will as being all that free. The book functions as both an encyclopedia of our attachment-related hormones and pheromones, telling us exactly what they are and exactly what modern science thinks they do, and a guide to what we can do to get them to keep functioning the way we want them to.

Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
(Helen Fisher)
Love at first sight...the copulatory gaze...dinner dates...jealousy... intimacy... homesexuality...infidelity...all those puzzling questions that caused your mother (or priest or guidance counselor or gym teacher) to blame God and/or hormones. Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willfull or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you. Her prediction of a more open and egalitarian order provides a compelling &mdsh; and hopeful — vision for the future.

Answer to Job
(Carl G. Jung)
Perhaps Jung's most controversial work, this is not an essay in theology as much as it is an examination of the symbolic role that theological concepts play in a person's psychic life.

Aspects of the Feminine
(Carl G. Jung)
Offers a range of articles and extracts from Jung's writings on marriage, Eros, the mother, the maiden, and the anima/animus concept. In the absence of any single formal statement by Jung on the psychology of women, this work conveys his views on the feminine and on topics that are intrinsic or related.

Aspects of the Masculine
(Carl G. Jung)
A collection from the Bollingen series of Carl Jung's most important contributions to the psychological understanding of masculinity, not only the psychology of men, but also the essence of masculinity in both sexes.

The Betrayal of the Body
(Alexander Lowen)
Eating disorders and body image problems have become prevalent over the past 20 years. Lowen writes one of the first books on this topic of distorted body image. He emphasizes that one must stop betraying one's body. The body has its own wisdom, and one must learn to respect it. One must learn to listen to one's body and its signals. He also discusses topics such as the relationship between eating and sexuality and gives examples of exercises to help one become more aware and present in one's body.

The Biology Of Love
(Arthur Janov)
Janov presents the first unified theory of psychology and brain chemistry, explaining how love significantly affects not only psychological well-being but physical health and personality traits as well.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
(Malcolm Gladwell)
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking — the decisive glance that knows in an instant. Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, campaigns for snap judgments and mind reading with a gift for translating research into splendid storytelling. Building his case with scenes from a marriage, heart attack triage, speed dating, choking on the golf course, selling cars, and military maneuvers, he persuades readers to think small and focus on the meaning of "thin slices" of behavior. The key is to rely on our "adaptive unconscious" — a 24/7 mental valet — that provides us with instant and sophisticated information to warn of danger, read a stranger, or react to a new idea.

Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives
(Frank J. Sulloway)
This groundbreaking book takes on the influence of birth order in personalities and offers some surprising conclusions. First-born children are more likely to be conformists while later-borns tend to be more creative and more likely to reject the status quo. A person tends to have more in common with any randomly chosen person of their own age than with a sibling. The book offers new insights into the determining factors of who we are and who our children will be.

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
(Norman Doidge)
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Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
(Daniel G. Amen)
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Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
(Melody Beattie)
Is someone else's problem your problem? If, like so many others, you've lost sight of your own life in the drama of tending to someone else's, you may be codependent — and you may find yourself in this book. The healing touchstone of millions, this modern classic by one of America's best-loved and most inspirational authors holds the key to understanding codependency and to unlocking its stultifying hold on your life. With instructive life stories, personal reflections, exercises, and self-tests, Codependent No More is a simple, straightforward, readable map of the perplexing world of codependency-charting the path to freedom and a lifetime of healing, hope, and happiness.

Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders
(Aaron Beck)
One of the founders of cognitive therapy writes a clear, comprehensive guide to the basis of emotional disturbance and highlights such important concepts as learning the meaning of hidden messages, listening to automatic thoughts, the role of sadness, anger and anxiety, understanding and overcoming phobias and depression, and applying the cognitive system of therapy to specific problems.

Compelled to Control: Recovering Intimacy in Broken Relationships
(J. Keith Miller)
Breaks new ground in identifying the major cause of relationship failure as the need to control — in marriages and families, with friends and within organizations. "When a controller has the sense of life being out of control," he says, "he or she reacts with an even stronger need to 'get things under control' usually with the negative result of alienating the people who matter the most." Miller tackles this deeply denied, seemingly universal phenomenon with compassion and offers a way out of the dilemma. He tells how to approach broken relationships in new ways, leaving behind destructive patterns of perfectionism and self-justification.

The Cortisol Connection: Why Stress Makes You Fat and Ruins Your Health — And What You Can Do About It
(Shawn M. Talbott, William Kraemer)
The hormone cortisol, activated by the fight-or-flight (stress) response, is emerging as a major culprit in a variety of health problems. The Cortisol Connection explores the documented relationship between elevated levels of this hormone, chronic stress, and such health conditions as obesity, depression, suppressed immune system, osteoporosis, and hypertension.

The Craving Brain: The Biobalance Approach to Controlling Addiction
(Ronald A. Ruden)
The roots of addiction most definitely do not lie in our character. Rather, they lie in a complex chain reaction that originates in an ancient survival mechanism in the brain. When this system is inappropriately activated, it drives the body to crave, sometimes with addictive behavior as the end result.

The Cult of the Black Virgin (Arkana)
(Ean C. M. Begg)
Why do some of the most famous statues of the Madonna in Western Europe and more than 450 images around the world have faces and hands that are black? And why is such a surprising phenomenon so little known? Ean Begg's groundbreaking investigation of the subject is now updated with a comprehensive directory to help readers locate sites where black Virgins can be found.

Dirty Words: Psychoanalytic Insights
(Ariel C. Arango)
Using clinical expressions to describe anatomy, copulatory or excretory functions as they occur in dreams, memory and fantasy is simply another form of repression. Citing our most common three- and four-letter words, Arango ranges far and wide over Western cultural, religious and psychological history, finding in Plato, Dante, De Sade, St. Augustine, D. H. Lawrence, Schopenhauer, Freud and Ferenczi, among others, support for his position that free acknowledgment of our animal instincts liberates us from their control.

Drama of the Gifted Child
(Alice Miller)
This poignant and thought-provoking book shows how narcissistic parents form and deform the lives of their children. The Drama of the Gifted Child is the first step toward helping readers reclaim their lives by discovering their own needs and their own truth.

Driven To Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood
(Edward M. Hallowell & John J. Ratey)
Dispels a variety of myths about attention deficit disorder (ADD). Since both authors have ADD themselves, and both are successful medical professionals, perhaps there's no surprise that the two myths they attack most persistently are: (a) that ADD is an issue only for children; and (b) that ADD corresponds simply to limited intelligence or limited self-discipline.

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