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Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation Paperback – Illustrated, 19 Oct. 2012
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Psychotherapy that regularly yields liberating, lasting change was, in the last century, a futuristic vision, but it has now become reality, thanks to a convergence of remarkable advances in clinical knowledge and brain science. In Unlocking the Emotional Brain, authors Ecker, Ticic and Hulley equip readers to carry out focused, empathic therapy using the process found by researchers to induce memory reconsolidation, the recently discovered and only known process for actually unlocking emotional memory at the synaptic level. Emotional memory's tenacity is the familiar bane of therapists, and researchers have long believed that emotional memory forms indelible learning. Reconsolidation has overturned these views. It allows new learning to erase, not just suppress, the deep, unconscious, intensely problematic emotional learnings that form during childhood or in later tribulations and generate most of the symptoms that bring people to therapy. Readers will learn methods that precisely eliminate unwanted, ingrained emotional responses―whether moods, behaviors or thought patterns―causing no loss of ordinary narrative memory, while restoring clients' well-being. Numerous case examples show the versatile use of this process in AEDP, Coherence Therapy, EFT, EMDR and IPNB.
- ISBN-100415897173
- ISBN-13978-0415897174
- Edition1st
- Publication date19 Oct. 2012
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions15.24 x 1.52 x 22.86 cm
- Print length264 pages
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"Ecker's, Ticic's, and Hulley's Unlocking the Emotional Brain, like some earlier classics, draws from, adapts, and integrates the very best of the best currently available concepts and techniques into a powerful and accessible psychotherapeutic method. What sets this book apart is how these elements are mixed, matched, and delivered to each individual client. Packaged in a highly engaging read, psychotherapists of all sorts will find many resources which will enhance as well as ease their work."
―Babette Rothschild, MSW, LCSW, author of The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment
"Unlocking the Emotional Brain is one of the most important psychotherapy books of our generation. It brings the recent groundbreaking brain research on memory reconsolidation to the mental health field.... This is the first psychotherapy book to delineate the sequence of experiences the brain requires to heal. This is big, important information that is applicable across many treatment approaches. No matter how good a therapist you already are, reading this book will make you better."
―Ricky Greenwald, PsyD, founder/director, Trauma Institute & Child Trauma Institute, and author of Child Trauma Handbook and EMDR Within a Phase Model of Trauma-Informed Treatment
"Drawing on the latest developments in neuroscience, Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic and Laurel Hulley provide an innovative approach to psychotherapy that is very much of the 21st century. In this book filled with both groundbreaking neuroscience and provocative case examples, they describe how to tap into the reconsolidation process in therapy. If you want to know what's happening that is new in psychotherapy, this is the place to start."
―Jay Lebow, PhD, clinical professor of psychology at Northwestern University and editor of Family Process
"A major contribution to the field and a must read for any therapist interested in the process of transformation and healing. Beautifully written, the authors present an elegant integration of neuroscientific findings and psychotherapy technique, resulting in a step by step method for relieving longstanding symptoms and suffering. Even the most seasoned clinician will be inspired to learn from these masters."
―Patricia Coughlin Della Selva, PhD, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UNM School of Medicine and author of Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: Theory and Technique
"Read this book and you will never do therapy in the same way again! These authors show you how to do effective therapy rooted in the science of the mind."
―Jon Carlson, PsyD, EdD, ABPP, distinguished professor at Governors State University and coauthor of Creative Breakthroughs in Therapy
"A refreshing and audacious book that throws open the doors and blows the dust from the corners of clinical practice…. [O]ffering a 'virtually theory-free' methodology…, the authors…add a startlingly effective process to the repertoire of every clinician [and] build powerful alliances across clinical approaches…"
―Ann Weiser Cornell, PhD, author of Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change
"A transtheoretical, effective and efficient approach, nicely grounded in recent neuroscience, for deep, transformational change in pernicious emotional implicit learnings…. This is a significant 'breakthrough' book…. I recommend it most highly!"
―Michael F. Hoyt, PhD, author of Brief Psychotherapies: Principles and Practices
"Imagine the founders of diverse therapy methodologies discussing how they achieve deep, lasting, transformational change and agreeing it's due to one basic process. Building on state-of-the-art neuroscience to identify that core process, the authors develop an approach that is theory-free, nonpathologizing, empathic, experiential, phenomenological, and nonspeculative, and that hones therapy while not cramping the therapist's unique contribution―an integrationist's dream!"
―Hanna Levenson, PhD, author of Brief Dynamic Therapy
"A unique, creative, and insightful book that…fits with recent neuropsychological findings on how the brain can alter and even eliminate old painful memories. This book is on the forefront of books that are using neuropsychological findings to illuminate psychotherapy."
―Arthur C. Bohart, PhD, professor emeritus at California State University and coauthor of How Clients Make Therapy Work
About the Author
Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley are the originators of Coherence Therapy and coauthors of Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How To Be Brief When You Were Trained To Be Deep – and Vice Versa, the Coherence Therapy Practice Manual and Training Guide, and the Manual of Juxtaposition Experiences: How to Create Transformational Change Using Disconfirming Knowledge in Coherence Therapy. Ecker is codirector of the Coherence Psychology Institute, has taught for many years in graduate programs, and has been in private practice near San Francisco since 1986. Hulley is director of education and paradigm development of the Coherence Psychology Institute and co-founder of the Julia Morgan Middle School for Girls in Oakland, California.
Robin Ticic is director of training and development of the Coherence Psychology Institute and is in private practice near Cologne, Germany, specializing in trauma therapy and clinical supervision of trauma therapists. She has served as a psychologist for the Psychotraumatology Institute of the University of Cologne for many years, provides a low-fee counseling service for parents, and is author of the parenting guide How to Connect With Your Child, published in English and German.
Product details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Publication date : 19 Oct. 2012
- Edition : 1st
- Language : English
- Print length : 264 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0415897173
- ISBN-13 : 978-0415897174
- Item weight : 386 g
- Dimensions : 15.24 x 1.52 x 22.86 cm
- Part of series : Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions
- Best Sellers Rank: 178,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,047 in Psychological Counselling (Books)
- 3,360 in Specific Psychological Topics
- 5,311 in Higher Education of Biological Sciences
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Customers appreciate the book's substantial introduction to the methods of Coherence Therapy and consider it a must-read for therapists. The neuroscience content receives positive feedback, with one customer noting how it makes good sense of clients' emotional discoveries. The science aspect receives mixed reactions.
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Customers appreciate the book's neuroscience content, particularly its substantial introduction to Coherence Therapy methods, and one customer notes how it makes good sense of clients' emotional discoveries.
"This book contains some useful new neuroscience as the background and justification for the Coherence Therapy approach of working at depth in a..." Read more
"...There are undoubtedly potential clinical applications, but I feel Ecker's enthusiasm is a little premature." Read more
"...the greatest strengths of this 'approach' is that it's not a dedicated prescriptive therapy in itself...." Read more
"...' previous book 'Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy' builds on recent neuroscience research findings...." Read more
Customers find the book highly readable, with several noting it is a must-read for therapists, and one mentioning it is well worth the time to read.
"Excellent book and good service" Read more
"This book is not an easy read, but is in depth and interesting. I found myself reading short sections at a time. Well worth taking time to read." Read more
"For me this is the best book to hit my profession in years...." Read more
"A must read for therapists..." Read more
Customers have mixed reactions to the book's scientific content, with one customer describing it as a game changer, while another notes that the science of memory reconsolidation is complex.
"...Their proposition is that it is this process which underlies all transformative change, whether inside or outside of therapy, and regardless of..." Read more
"...The science of memory reconsolidation is complex and subtle. Its application to clinical work with real patients remains predominantly hypothetical...." Read more
"Game changer - a must read for experienced therapists..." Read more
Top reviews from United Kingdom
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 December 2012Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis is a book for which I have been waiting a number of years now, perhaps before the authors even thought of writing it. At its core is Memory Reconsolidation, the process by which a memory can be changed.
The possibility of being able to change memories has an obvious relevance to psychotherapy. The beginnings of human research on this aspect of memory inspired many media misrepresentations, as in the film 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', where you get to consign your ex to the it-never-happened dimension. This book tells you how it really works.
Our experience becomes memory, but it isn't just filed away on cerebral shelves, dusty and inactive. It informs what we do (and what we think and feel) in the present. Our memories hold all that we know about anything, whether that be about ourselves, about other people, about how things work in the world or about how to ride a bicycle. This is as true of things we are aware of as it is of things we aren't. We know that we know how to ride a bicycle, but we don't consciously know enough about how we do it to provide an accurate verbal description. Most 'psychological issues' derive from things we have learnt but aren't aware we have learnt. We might be aware of the experience from which we learnt, but still not be aware of what it was we learnt through that experience, nor of how that learning is affecting us today.
In that sense, memory is not our past but our present. You find yourself in a familiar context and you know what to do, even if you don't know you know what to do, and even if what you do isn't what you would intentionally prefer to be doing. Memory runs the show. From that perspective, memory is the platform on which psychotherapy operates. Consequently, it is useful to know how memory works - and this book brings you up to date.
Having said that, until recently, memory science had little to offer the project of personal change. The way memory was thought to work appeared to severely limit all efforts at change. The mainstream view was that when experience moved from short-term memory to long-term memory it was 'consolidated' through the mechanism of protein synthesis locking the synapses together. And that was pretty much that. 'Memories are forever' was the message.
That's not the most hopeful foundation for change when those memories hold the very patterns (of thought, feeling and behaviour) which trouble and perturb our present. Only within the last dozen years has neuroscience recognized the existence of a process which brings a memory out of the consolidated (fixed) state and renders it open to updating and to being reconsolidated - differently. This is the way out.
The book's authors call this the 'therapeutic reconsolidation process' (TRP). Their proposition is that it is this process which underlies all transformative change, whether inside or outside of therapy, and regardless of whether the process, itself, is recognized (as, of course, it wasn't by memory science until 2000). In other words, they claim that all therapies, all change methods, in so far as they occasionally accomplish transformative change (as opposed to helping people to cope better with their psychological problems) do so through the TRP process - regardless of the very different, even competing, theories and methods held by each of the psychotherapy schools. On that basis, they see theTRP as being a unifying foundation on which the whole psychotherapy field could be integrated.
There is some serendipity here (or synchronicity, if you are feeling mystical) in that two of the authors, Ecker and Hulley, when developing their Coherence Therapy model, almost twenty years ago, found much the same process, on the basis of clinical empiricism, as did neuroscientists on the basis of research experiment. The synergy of this convergence has, in this book, enabled the authors both to take the reader through the science underlying reconsolidation and to provide an explication of the process which is far better than any I came across in the scientific literature. A brilliant exposition.
At the heart of the book, though, is how the science can be applied to psychotherapy. Here the authors furnish a great deal of detail through case histories, both as a way of illustrating the process and, in part two of the book, by including four extensive cases in which colleagues report on their use of the therapeutic reconsolidation process. In all, the kinds of problems addressed in the book cover a wide range, including: low self-esteem, love obsession, chronic underachieving, stage fright (which turns out to be an example of PTSD), attachment issues, depression, panic attacks, withdrawing from emotional intimacy, guilt, compulsive drinking, compulsive eating and auditory hallucinations.
We also gain a substantial introduction to the methods of Coherence Therapy. As its name suggests, the concept of coherence is central, and it proves to be a very fruitful one. Essentially, it is that people's experience makes sense. It might not feel that way when, as an adult, we feel 'disempowered' by authority figures, or every romantic relationship seems to sluice down the same drain, or when any particular pattern of thought, feeling or behaviour feels out of our control. We cannot understand why we are plagued by such things. But, according to Coherence Therapy, the symptom of which we complain makes sense. Either it is an unconscious strategy to prevent something worse happening (or, more precisely, something we once, unconsciously, decided would be worse) or it is the unfortunate consequence (i.e., side-effect) of such a protective strategy. We make perfect sense; it's just that we don't know half of the sense that we make. That's why we can feel we (our thoughts, feelings or behaviour) are out of control. This coherence viewpoint constitutes a high-level reframing of the psychotherapy enterprise.
That would be more than enough, in any book. However, it should be mentioned that, for those in the psychotherapy field, the authors also bring conceptual clarity to two of its current debates: the attachment debate and the common factors debate. But that is icing on an already estimable cake.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 January 2022Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseFor me this is the best book to hit my profession in years. Not only did it make perfect sense to me when i read it, it stands the test of time in real practice. I have been applying it successfully for the last 2 years to overturn implicit emotional learnings with my clients. As any experienced therapist will know, the ability to overturn IELs makes this a game changer. One of the greatest strengths of this 'approach' is that it's not a dedicated prescriptive therapy in itself. It's more the understanding of what it takes to change an IEL, so it can therefore be applied inside many different forms of existing therapy. As a highly experienced therapist myself, in my opinion this a 'must read' for any experienced therapist.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 February 2014This exciting development of the authors' previous book 'Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy' builds on recent neuroscience research findings.
Online video and audio talks by Bruce Ecker as well as pre-viewing an excerpt from the book here on Amazon led me to conclude that I had to read the book.
Important healing concepts such as coherence, juxtaposition, and memory re-consolidation are explored extensively via clinical vignettes.
If you are a therapist, counsellor or coach working with people experiencing traumatic stress or self-sabotaging behaviours, this is recommended for you.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 November 2012Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis book contains some useful new neuroscience as the background and justification for the Coherence Therapy approach of working at depth in a practical and results-orientated way. Emotional memories or constructs are targeted for dissolution where they are causing symptoms.
Although a bit self-congratulatory, the book makes good sense of client's emotional discoveries, which can often leave therapists in the dark.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 April 2013Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis book is not an easy read, but is in depth and interesting. I found myself reading short sections at a time.
Well worth taking time to read.
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 June 2014Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThe clinical field needs theories who can stand in front of the even deeper results from neurosciences.
Here constructivism meets the evolutiomary psychology far beyond the Attachment Theory.
The meta theoretical approach lets us clinicians go over our parochiality.
I recommend it to all the clinicians "tranformative-oriented".
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2015Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseExcellent book and good service
Top reviews from other countries
Susan CanalReviewed in Australia on 19 November 20155.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Excellently written with many examples to illustrate application in practice.
E.LReviewed in Brazil on 3 April 20172.0 out of 5 stars LETTERS SIZE IS VERY SMALL, PLEASE BE AWARE - O tamanho das letras são super pequenas
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseMy review about the book will be done when I get the refund and buy it through kindle-usa. It appears interesting. But my review here is basically to alert anyone that buys the PHYSICAL copy of this book. THE LETTERS ARE SMALL. If you usually don't need glasses to read paperback books, you will for the size of the letters in this one. Get the kindle version.
PORTUGUÊS: aconselho a comprar a versão em kindle, pois a copia fisica é dificil de ler. Ficou evidente que o editor quiz economizar no papel, mas o preço por este livro é realmente elevado independentemente do formato.
de Gandt jenniferReviewed in France on 28 December 20125.0 out of 5 stars jennifer de Gandt, Therapist, Coach, Trainer.
This book is ground breaking for Therapists. the research into the neurology of Implicit and Explicit memory reveals the Brain's rules for change no matter what techniques a therapist may use. It should be seriously taken into consideration by any therapist open to the meeting of psychology and neurology. There is a full review of this new book on Amazon.uk written by Graham Dawes. Excellent reading and exciting finds.
L. DanielsReviewed in the United States on 9 October 20125.0 out of 5 stars The Science of Emotional Change
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseI've purchased 100s of books from Amazon.com over the years and while I frequently read the customer reviews prior to a purchase decision, I've never before had the inclination or urge to write a review myself. This is my first.
As a little background and context, in my 2nd stage in life, I made a career change and am currently a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern nearing completion of my experiential hours required to take the licensing exams. A Masters Degree and 3000+ hours of experience does not qualify me as an expert in psychotherapy though it does give me a lot of face time with people suffering from mild to severe psychological issues. The training and supervision process has also shown me that almost all therapists struggle with how best to help our clients and what specific tools, theoretical modalities or other techniques to use to ease this suffering. Along the way, therapists, including myself, adopt theories that fit with our own philosophical beliefs and life experiences. Personally, I've found myself relating best to the 3rd Wave Cognitive/Behavioral Therapies (ACT, DBT, etc.) though Interpersonal Neurobiology (INPB) and attachment theory have heavily informed the therapeutic path I currently follow. Brief Therapies haven't been my focus, but I've occasionally come across things that feel relevant and helpful.
A few years back, I came across Ecker and Hulley's book, Depth Oriented Brief Psychotherapy, and it fascinated and moved me to consider the most logical notion that psychological "symptoms" are functional. Other paths caught my attention, but I've occasionally come back to this book and was very interested when I saw that Ecker, Hulley, (and Ticic) had a new book coming out. I immediately pre-ordered it. When it arrived last week, I picked it up, started reading it, and had finished it within a few days. Very few psychological theory books get me past a few chapters, but I read "Unlocking the Emotional Brain" as if it were a favorite author's novel that could not be put down.
I can't speak to the science behind "memory reconsolidation," but having uttered the phrase that "we don't get an eraser for our past" more than a few times, I was more than a little excited to read that it might actually be possible to erase and re-write implicit learnings/memory from our past. Attachment related issues are so common in this field, yet most methods of dealing with them are aimed at the therapist/client having an almost "reparenting" experience to provide the secure attachment the client didn't get early in life. "Unlocking the Emotional Brain" provides a very specific, detailed methodology for actually elimiminating those implicit, generally unconscious learnings we pick up from our life experiences from an early age and onward, thus reducing the need for the symptoms that support those learnings. I assumed the book would be a Coherence Therapy manual (and it is to a certain extent), but I was gratified to see it written as a trans-theoretical model of how psychological change actually happens and how a variety of types of therapy achieve this change. I can think of no other book in my library of psychology books that is more clear on the why, what and how of working with clients. I've already started using this new knowledge with clients and it's already produced results where there was stuckness prior.
I believe this book should be read by all levels of therapists, but especially students, interns, and those still struggling to find their theoretical home base from which to ground their therapeutic work... Cannot recommend highly enough.
Sieran LaneReviewed in Canada on 19 October 20185.0 out of 5 stars One of my favorite books on psychotherapy so far
Phenomenal! This is one of my favorite therapy books that I have read so far. There were many examples to explain their theory, and the authors cited so many supporting studies. I love that different modalities can use coherence therapy , and I appreciate the online resource for more case studies.
It’s wonderful to hear that even if a belief seems “irrational,” the belief does make its own kind of sense. (E.g. “If I deliberately fail at everything, I can prove to my father what a terrible parent he was, and take revenge on him.”) I find it validating that our stubborn thought patterns serve some logical purpose—they’re not just random idiosyncrasies in your mind.
Despite how simple coherence therapy sounds, I was glad that the book showed us cases where therapeutic progress was slow and difficult. We may indeed take a long time to discover the core negative beliefs, and even longer to unearth the other related core beliefs, as well as to seek out their contradictory evidence.
I liked the distinction between counteractive vs transformative therapies, and the caveats on when counteractive methods would be more appropriate. CBT is deemed counteractive, but it still works for many clients, perhaps because, during the thought challenge process, you can expose yourself to the emotional experiencing of two contradictory beliefs at the same time. CBT isn’t always intellectual and cognitive; there are ways to enhance the emotional power of “cognitive thoughts” too, such as asking the client to visualize a specific incident or person in their life, imagine the sensory details, and make the image as vivid and real as possible.
In fact, I think it would be beneficial to avoid using labels for the different therapeutic modalities, and just focus on what you are actually doing. It seems that a lot of people have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the term CBT; but CBT shares similarities with some other modalities. For instance, EFT (emotion-focused therapy), CBT, existential, and narrative therapy all involve questioning our core, maladaptive beliefs, and developing more helpful and empowering beliefs.
There is a significant overlap between EFT and coherence therapy too, where both posit that our emotions are informative and adaptive (though some are overlearned responses), rather than nonsensical and arbitrary. Rational-emotive-behavioral therapy (REBT) also talks about appropriate negative emotions, so REBT doesn’t see all negative feelings as unreasonable either.
Realistically, I believe that most therapists wouldn’t rigidly adhere to any one belief system. One could specialize in CBT, but still agree with things in other modalities that are seen as contradictory to CBT. A CBT therapist could believe that “irrational thoughts” all have a rational basis. For example, a hypothetical person, Xavier, feels like they are a complete failure, which is not factually true, but they feel this way because they just encountered a setback in a domain that they care deeply about; and as Xavier’s self-esteem is tied to their accomplishments in this field, of course they would be miserable and think in a devastating way. Or, a different hypothetical person, Reuben, may also feel like a total failure, because they are surrounded by friends and family who have high-wage, prestigious jobs, and so when Reuben doesn’t get accepted into med school, it’s understandable that they would feel unworthy, due to social comparison, and perhaps because of a belief in their family and peer circle that career prestige and achievement are everything.
Everybody’s story is different, but Reuben and Xavier’s cases are examples of how a person’s belief, though factually untrue, can still make logical sense when you examine its background context. In fact, this situation reminds me of the difference between taking a sentence literally versus taking it metaphorically or hyperbolically. People often make absolute statements, e.g. “No one writes physical letters nowadays,” but of course, on a literal level, some folks still write paper letters to each other. We simply need to listen to the person’s statement as reflecting an emotional truth, rather than some objective fact. For instance, the person could just be expressing sorrow for the “lost art of letter writing.”
It was helpful to read the cases in the book where the therapist turned an intellectual exercise into an emotional, experiential one, such as by asking the client to hone in on what they are feeling in their body, asking them how they are feeling in the moment, encouraging them to vividly imagine an important scene, etc. I do believe that the intellectual and the emotional are not an either-or, all-or-nothing question, though. You could be partially intellectual but also partially emotional in the session. Or, you could be feeling some emotion, but at a lower intensity, where you display more subtle bodily cues. (So instead of crying visibly, a client might look a bit tense around the shoulders, and stare at the floor more often than usual.)
In addition, I don’t agree with some therapists that intellectual insights are completely useless. These cognitive insights may be less powerful than insights gained during more emotional moments, but intellectual/ cognitive discoveries still kick-start a journey of change for the better. (I’m not saying that the authors of this book think intellectual discoveries are completely useless; I was just referring to some therapists I met personally.) I understand that sometimes, we know something rationally and intellectually, but we believe something else emotionally, which can be frustrating. However, I argue that knowing something on a rational level, is still much better than not knowing it at all. The cognitive, rational side can be a brake to restrain us from doing unwise behaviors. And a weak brake is better than no brake.
Another part of the book I loved, was when the authors addressed attachment theory, explaining that not all problematic beliefs stem from attachment insecurities, and that securely attached people could develop unhelpful beliefs too. This is a much more complex, multi-faceted, and believable view of human behavior.
One thing I didn’t like that much about the book, is that it’s written in relatively dense language, where sentences are longer and filled with more academic words than necessary. I get that this book is for therapists rather than for the lay audience, but they could still write in a simpler, more accessible style. Even experts in the field would have an easier time reading the text if the sentences were shorter and the language simpler.
Furthermore, it would be great if the authors wrote “they,” “their,” “them,” instead of “he or she,” “his or her,” “him or her,” since not everyone uses he or she pronouns, and nonbinary people do exist. (I get that this book was published a number of years ago, where social awareness of nonbinary folks and gender neutral pronouns was even more lacking than it is than today. But still, it's frustrating.)
On the other hand, I was glad to see a same-gender romantic relationship in one of the cases. It can be alienating for a gay person (such as myself) to read a therapy book where all romantic relationships in the text are between opposite gender partners. So this inclusion of a non-heterosexual couple was a relief to see.
All in all, a marvelous, inspiring book!


