1st Edition

Coping and Complaining Attachment and the Language of Disease

By Simon R. Wilkinson Copyright 2003
    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    336 Pages
    by Routledge

    Good clinical practice is impossible without an understanding of the ways in which patients present their complaints. Patients have their own styles of coping and of expressing their concerns, and without a clear understanding of these the clinician may find successful and swift diagnosis and treatment much harder to achieve. Coping and Complaining provides essential guidance for clinicians on how to identify various coping styles, and how to improve the quality of discourse with people of different backgrounds and ages.
    Drawing on a diverse range of evidence from such areas as developmental psychology, and theories on learning and memory, Coping and Complaining provides essential information on identification of patients' coping styles, focusing on such areas as:
    · The latest developments in attachment theory
    · The neurobiology of emotional development, and the biology of language development
    · Primary processes in early development
    · Communication, role play, the moral order of the consultation, and emotional first aid
    · Consequences for preventive medicine
    Coping and Complaining presents stimulating new approaches to consultations with patients and creative new ways of looking at health promotion.

    Illness, Sickness and Disease. Genes, Brains and the Internal Milieu. Learning and Memory: A Basis for Understanding Development and Change in the Face of Threat and Danger. The Ideal Patient. The 'Balanced' Type B Attachment Strategies. The 'Dismissing' Type A Attachment Strategies. The 'Pre-occupied' Type C Attachment Strategies, and Other Classifications. Ambiguous Symptoms and the Attachment Strategies of Health Professionals. Goal Corrected Partnerships for Health.

    Biography

    Simon R. Wilkinson

    This book makes an important contribution to the way disease is conceptualised... I will value having this book in my shelf and will come back to it both to improve my understanding of difficult patients, to reflect on the need for a supporting environment, and to be more aware of what I myself do as a clinician. - Carmen Pinto, European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2004

    Strengths of this book include the broad range of well referenced topics that are covered, together with the refreshingly personal style of writing. This is an author who really wants to enrich and transform the clinical reasoning of his readers... the book is highly recommended for anyone interested in new and creative ways of looking at interpersonal patterns in medicine from a psychotherapeutically informed point of view. - P Henningsen, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 2004