Meaning-Fullness: Developmental Psychotherapy and the Pursuit of Mental Health

Reviews and Endorsements

This passionate book – written in an insistent first-person voice – is an inspiring call to arms for those in the mental health professions to discard quick-fix solutions to the challenges of being human. We must delve into time to understand how we are profound reservoirs of meaning. To quickly fix that – to remedy our dilemmas – is to engage in a fix. This work argues for and indicates how all of us can find meaning in our pain and our failures if we have the patience to do so. This book is a brilliant act of liberation on the author’s part – as it liberates the reader from overly worn prose and intellection – and becomes a beacon for all of us in our times.
Christopher Bollas, author of The Shadow of the Object

This book is a much-needed antidote for the troubled times that psychotherapy finds itself in. Jan Resnick draws on John Heaton, R. D. Laing, D. W. Winnicott, and a host of others to argue (convincingly and cogently) that the blight that humanity suffers from is not that of mental illness, but meaninglessness. Resnick deftly pulls together theory, discussion, and case study, and shows us that, ultimately, it is the heart that is central to the project of psychotherapy.
Farhad Dalal, psychotherapist and group analyst, author of CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Manage-rialism, Politics, and the Corruptions of Science

Open-minded, independent thinkers will certainly embrace Dr Jan Resnick’s nearly half-century of clinical wisdom. Drawing upon such thinkers as Donald Winnicott, Ronald Laing, and Viktor Frankl, the author provides us with a critique of contemporary mental health as well as a very inspiring plan to improve our profession and our minds in the future.
Professor Brett Kahr, Senior Fellow, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, London, and Honorary Director of Research, Freud Museum London

Dr Resnik does well to criticise the false economy of short treatments that are increasingly popular. He describes a model of relational therapy that highlights childhood experience, dream work, transference, and the therapist’s reverie. One can imagine that if Donald Winnicott were alive today, he would be practising in this way. The clinical illustrations will be especially useful in teaching.
Deborah A. Luepnitz, PhD, author, Schopenhauer’s Porcupines: 5 Stories of Psychotherapy

At a time when so many experience life as hurried and empty (“There is a feeling of running a race but not knowing why or where the finish line is”) – and therapy too is increasingly hurried, rote, and occupied with superficial metrics and “efficiency” – Dr Resnick reminds us what meaningful psychotherapy is about. In lucid, unpretentious prose, he walks us into and through the questions at the heart of real psychotherapy: What makes life meaningful? Why does it so often feel meaningless for so many? How can that change? Dr Resnick has written a book for our time that will speak to beginning clinicians and experts both.
Jonathan Shedler, Clinical Professor, University of California San Francisco, and author of The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

… you will learn a lot from this book and, even better, you can expect to enjoy reading it. Written without jargon, self-inflation, or pretension, it explores – in accessible and even entertaining language – ideas that often come across as dense and complicated. Clinical vignettes, offered candidly and with the author’s description of his own emotional involvement in the patient’s story as it unfolds in each session, illuminate the developmental concepts that have inspired the book.
Nancy McWilliams, from the Foreword

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

PART I: Meaning and Meaninglessness
Chapter 1. The epidemic crisis of mental health
Chapter 2. Current practices and corrupt science
Chapter 3. The existential vacuum: meaninglessness and filling the void
Chapter 4. The origin of the capacity for meaning-making
Chapter 5. Language and the body

PART II: Play and Creativity in Child and Adult Development
Chapter 6. The value of illusion
Chapter 7. Play and work
Chapter 8. Creativity: living falsely or authentically
Chapter 9. The object of desire and how to destroy it

PART III: Towards Meaning-Fullness
Chapter 10. Meaning’s emergence in potential space
Chapter 11. Beyond Winnicott: I play therefore I am
Chapter 12. Play and symbolisation in the professional relationship

PART IV. Luke: Finding Meaning through Developmental Psychotherapy
Chapter 13. Working with Luke: a full-length case study

Unscientific Postscript
References
About the author
Index

Customer Reviews

Our customers have given this title an average rating of 5 out of 5 from 3 review(s), add your own review for this title.

Mischa R on 06/10/2024 10:51:57

(5 out of 5)

Jan Resnick writes eloquently about this important subject, giving rich clinical examples and setting out in accessible language, his views on mental health today. He brings a wealth of experience from over four decades of practice to this book which is just a pleasure to read. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in mental health.

Natasa Starcevich on 19/09/2024 11:45:27

(5 out of 5)

This is one of the most important psychotherapy books I’ve ever read. Jan Resnick has a talent for explaining things in a way that really resonate and can be understood. As a psychotherapist, I have been able to apply many ideas in this book to the patients I work with, particularly the importance of play as a way to cultivate a meaningful life. Play, the absence of it, and how it relates to meaning always hits home, not only with my patients, but in my personal life too. This book will always be one that I return to.

Natasa Starcevich on 18/09/2024 06:37:57

(5 out of 5)

This is one of the most important psychotherapy books I’ve ever read. Jan Resnick has a talent for explaining things in way that really resonate and can be understood. As a psychotherapist, I have been able to apply many ideas in this book to the patients I work with, particularly the importance of play as a way to cultivate a meaningful life. Play, the absence of it, and how it relates to meaning always hits home, not only with my patients, but in my personal life too. This book will always be one that I return to.