Families And How To Survive Them

What makes a family happy? Why do some marriages 'succeed' and others end in divorce? How can we free ourselves from the legacy of past mistakes and bring about positive change? Love, sex and marriage and parenthood, depression and sadness, independence and experience are just a few of the many issues explored in conversation by family therapist Robin Skynner and his former patient and comedian, John Cleese. Guiding us through the daily issues that confront us all, FAMILIES AND HOW TO SURVIVE THEM offers vital advice in helping each of us to maintain a happy, healthy family life. Looking candidly at everything from our relationships with our parents to why and how we choose our partners, no emotional stone is left unturned: jealousy, rage, fear, envy, love, obsession, hope and despair - all are featured-with practical advice on how to turn round a negative situation and bring about change for the better.

'It achieves what it set out to do- explaining in ordinary language to ordinary people just how relationships work.' -Sun

Most people have emotions they can't handle, so they hide them. By choosing partners with the same inhibitions, the problem is often passed on to their children. This book, using modern experiences of family therapy, shows how understanding relationships in families can be made.

Brilliantly entertaining, enlightening and inspiring, Robin Skynner and John Cleese take on the big issue: life, and the challenge of living, in all its myriad forms. This book is an essential guide to surviving life's ups and downs - at home or in the workplace, as a member of a family or society. Presented in the same lively style as the best-selling Families and How to Survive Them, Life extends Skynner's and Cleese's study beyond the family to relationships and group interaction in life outside it. The book deals with such pithy issues as: -Why life gives you all the lessons you need -How grief can be good for you -Why work is essential to our psychological health -What mid-life crisis means for you We are all searching for healthier, happier, more satisfying lives, but it's the journey that matters, not the destination. Skynner and Cleese are the perfect travelling companions.

Do your relationships tend to follow the same destructive pattern? Do you feel trapped by your family's expectations of you? Does your life seem overwhelmingly governed by jealousy or competitiveness or lack of confidence? In this ground-breaking book, clinical psychologist Oliver James shows that it is the way we were cared for in the first six years of life that has a crucial effect on who we are and how we behave. Nurture, in effect, shapes our very nature. James combines the latest scientific research with fascinating interviews to show that understanding your past is the first step to controlling your present.

Is there a silver lining to growing up in a dysfunctional family? Twenty-four survivors recount their stories—and the strengths forged in the chaos. Living in a dysfunctional family isn’t easy. But while you can’t choose where you come from, you can choose the lessons you take away. Bestselling recovery author Karen Casey looks at stories of people who grew up in dysfunctional families and “the good stuff” that can, ironically, come from the experience. She interviews survivors who emerged from the fires of turbulent households affected by abuse, addiction, or other problems, and reveals how they came to process their often-harrowing personal trials and, against the odds, triumph over their difficulties—using skills they honed in response to their childhoods. In The Good Stuff from Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family, Casey reveals the stories and the skills they developed to live more creative and fulfilling lives, and not just survive but thrive. “Using her interviews as groundwork, she explores the benefits that result from surviving in a dysfunctional family, including resiliency, perseverance, a sense of humor, forgiveness, kindness, and the ability to discern real love.” —Publishers Weekly “You just can’t go wrong with Karen Casey.” —Earnie Larson, author of Stage II Recovery

The bestselling author of Catholics turns his witty attention to this hilarious satire of modern Italian family life. Black-and-white illustrations.

Winner of the 2014 John Collier Jr. Award Winner of the Jo Anne Stolaroff Cotsen Prize Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century cross-cuts the ranks of important books on social history, consumerism, contemporary culture, the meaning of material culture, domestic architecture, and household ethnoarchaeology. It is a distant cousin of Material World and Hungry Planet in content and style, but represents a blend of rigorous science and photography that these books can claim. Using archaeological approaches to human material culture, this volume offers unprecedented access to the middle-class American home through the kaleidoscopic lens of no-limits photography and many kinds of never-before acquired data about how people actually live their lives at home. Based on a rigorous, nine-year project at UCLA, this book has appeal not only to scientists but also to all people who share intense curiosity about what goes on at home in their neighborhoods. Many who read the book will see their own lives mirrored in these pages and can reflect on how other people cope with their mountains of possessions and other daily challenges. Readers abroad will be equally fascinated by the contrasts between their own kinds of materialism and the typical American experience. The book will interest a range of designers, builders, and architects as well as scholars and students who research various facets of U.S. and global consumerism, cultural history, and economic history.