I’m not clear on the goal of your post—it doesn’t seem to make a statement or ask a specific question, either—but if you are asking for practical advice for your friend, I would highly recommend the book “Recovering From Co-Dependency: It’s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood,” by Weiss and Weiss. I’ve personally found it to be an invaluable resource, and IME it’s just the thing for an analytical person interested in psychology to get an initial grip on actually doing something about their issues.
The book is written primarily as a bridge between theory and practice for therapists doing individual and group therapy for those issues; for a practical follow-up, I would suggest the two books by Pamela Levin that are cited by Weiss & Weiss: Becoming Who We Are, and Cycles of Power. Both of these latter books have things that one can do as an individual, without a therapist, but I personally found them more understandable and useful after seeing the larger framework in the first book I mentioned.
If you would personally like to help your friend, I would suggest reading the books yourself, but not necessarily before she does. One downside to studying these books at length, is that it may become incredibly obvious when interacting with people what developmental defects are likely the cause of their present problems… but much more obvious to you than to them. ;-)
Sorry about that; the subtitle on the back cover of Weiss&Weiss actually reads “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood”, even though the front is different.
Also—strangely, the word amazon had a real problem with was “recovering” instead of “recovery”.… I think I’ve grown too dependent on google’s smart search-words! ;)
I’m not clear on the goal of your post—it doesn’t seem to make a statement or ask a specific question, either—but if you are asking for practical advice for your friend, I would highly recommend the book “Recovering From Co-Dependency: It’s Never Too Late To Have A Happy Childhood,” by Weiss and Weiss. I’ve personally found it to be an invaluable resource, and IME it’s just the thing for an analytical person interested in psychology to get an initial grip on actually doing something about their issues.
The book is written primarily as a bridge between theory and practice for therapists doing individual and group therapy for those issues; for a practical follow-up, I would suggest the two books by Pamela Levin that are cited by Weiss & Weiss: Becoming Who We Are, and Cycles of Power. Both of these latter books have things that one can do as an individual, without a therapist, but I personally found them more understandable and useful after seeing the larger framework in the first book I mentioned.
If you would personally like to help your friend, I would suggest reading the books yourself, but not necessarily before she does. One downside to studying these books at length, is that it may become incredibly obvious when interacting with people what developmental defects are likely the cause of their present problems… but much more obvious to you than to them. ;-)
For anybody having difficulty finding that on amazon, it’s actually:
Recovery from Co-Dependency: It’s Never Too Late to Reclaim Your Childhood
and
Becoming the Way We Are
(took me a little bit of fiddling to find).
The two Pamela Levin books seem to be out of print now, but the co-dependancy one is available.
BTW—looks interesting, thanks :)
I got my (used) copies via Amazon:
Cycles of Power
Becoming The Way We Are
Sorry about that; the subtitle on the back cover of Weiss&Weiss actually reads “it’s never too late to have a happy childhood”, even though the front is different.
Thanks for the new links :)
Also—strangely, the word amazon had a real problem with was “recovering” instead of “recovery”.… I think I’ve grown too dependent on google’s smart search-words! ;)