Though my formal training is in medicine and psychiatry, my efforts to understand the mind and therapeutic practice span a host of associated disciplines. These 15 books represent thinkers and ideas that I revisit time and time again, texts that have inspired me and helped shape Greywood.

1. A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life by Jack Kornfield

   There are three books on mindfulness in this list, each written by a renowned teacher of meditation. A Path With Heart is perhaps the book that over the years I have returned to moreso than any other for inspiration. The exercises are phenomenal, and the accompanying text is as well. My interest in mindfulness meditation was initially a personal journey. Kornfield, who is also a clinical psychologist, weaves Eastern and Western principles as well as any writer.

2. Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn

   Numerous individuals share in the acclaim for bringing mindfulness and meditation to the United States, but in terms of infusing it into our health professions, no one deserves more credit that Jon Kabat-Zinn. The UMass Stress Reduction clinic that he developed introduced the program of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) which is practiced throughout the country in many of the most well-known medical institutions. This book reflects the beauty in simplicity which he brings to everything he creates.

3. The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Thich Nhat Hanh

   The Miracle of Mindfulness is written by a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who came to the U.S. advocating for peace during the Vietnam War. Eventually, he became so well-regarded that Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and today he stands as perhaps the most famous meditation guru in the world aside from the Dalai Lama. The notion of “engaged” mindfulness, of what it actually means to bring awareness into each moment of waking life, is wonderfully described by Thich Nhat Hanh in this and his many other books.

4. The Intentional Stance by Daniel C. Dennett

   There is no doubt that my way of thinking is more influenced by Dennett than anyone else. I had wanted to be a philosopher and in some ways still see myself as one in psychiatrist’s clothes. The notions of patterns and abstractas elucidated in The Intentional Stance have critical importance to the Greywood Approach. The introduction to this book, like so many others of Dennett’s, offering insights on how to think about conceptual issues, is alone worth the price of admission.

5. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again by Andy Clark

   Being There is written by another philosopher, Andy Clark, who like Dennett is profoundly influenced by cognitive science, by the mechanics of how natural and artificial minds might work. Clark’s characterizations in this book of constructs including emergence, dynamical systems, and stigmergy have informed my understanding of how the mind operates and Greywood’s initiative to advance therapy in anything but a black box.

6. Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

   Philosophy in the Flesh, like Being There, also deals with embodiment and describes conceptual metaphor theory (CMT). It is well known that therapists make ample use of their own acquired therapeutic metaphors. CMT delves into the invisible layer of metaphor application that continuously and exhaustively scaffolds how we all perceive and interact with the world. Applied to the clinical situation, knowledge of implicit metaphors – upon which clients rely in their most dysfunctional or distressing response patterns – can be illuminated by the therapist. Unveiled is a window that can offer an alternative way of looking at things, thereby inspiring a healthier course of action.

7. Emotion and Adaptation by Richard S. Lazarus

   Emotion and Adaptation is written by one of the most important psychologists in history and one who has thought intensely about how the constructs of psychoanalysis can inform and drive forward the modern working model of the mind. So often a divide exists between psychology and psychoanalysis. In this treatise, Lazarus modestly but deftly weaves psychoanalytic conceptualizations through his psychological thinking.

8. Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Second Edition: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process by Nancy McWilliams

   Psychoanalytic Diagnosis is one of three essential books written by arguably the most important teacher of psychodynamic therapy today. All three of these books are worthy additions to any psychotherapist’s library. McWilliams pieces together the psychoanalytic model in a most accessible manner. She is at the forefront of keeping psychoanalysis alive and psychodynamic therapy contemporary.

9. Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics by David H Malan

   Malan is well known in the psychoanalytic world but is more niche relative to many of the other authors on this list. He is perhaps so appreciated in psychoanalytic circles because while he is clearly a brilliant thinker, his writing is crisp and concise. To anyone who has read much in psychoanalysis, such prose can be a breath of fresh air. He is also a representative of the Tavistock Clinic, one of history’s most influential centers of psychotherapeutic evolution and particularly as it relates to Malan, time-limited dynamic therapies.

10. Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide by Jeffrey E. Young, Janet S. Klosko, and Marjorie Weishaar

    The background I most gravitate towards in psychotherapy is psychodynamic. But much moreover, I am transtheoretical in spirit. Jeffrey Young has a similarly integrative approach though his emerges from a different orientation, CBT. His work aims at distilling the durable action-oriented lenses and filters through which we view the world. Following in the CBT tradition, he refers to these developmentally-acquired enduring structures as schemas and sets out revision, or softening, of these as a primary objective of his evidence-backed brand of cognitive therapy.

11. Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Second Edition: Basics and Beyond by Judith S. Beck

    CBT Basics and Beyond by Judith Beck is an up-to-date exposition of psychotherapy’s 900 pound gorilla. Any psychotherapy program developed nowadays, if it wishes to be relevant beyond a select community, needs to understand how it stands relative to cognitive behavioral therapy, to consider deeply where its constructs converge with those of CBT and at which junctures, divergence arises. The landscape of evidence-based approaches continues to become more crowded but CBT persists as the standard of comparison.

12. The Matrix and Meaning of Character: An Archetypal and Developmental Approach by Nancy J. Dougherty and Jacqueline J. West

    This text is a modern take on Jungian analysis. Its stated aim is to translate complex, unwieldy clinical language into a user-friendly format for therapists. It achieves this remarkably well, utilizing archetypes and mythological themes to enliven diagnostic terminology. Furthermore, the emphasis on the “core paradox” of character – being at once a “defensive structure” and “adaptive profile” and as such, entailing that “our woundedness” and “our gifts” are “directly related” – is a powerful and deeply empathic way in which to understand the client.

13. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

    Aside from mindfulness and the psychotherapeutic traditions, flow is perhaps arguably the most important contribution to enhancing psychological well-being ever developed. Its relevance and virtue to psychotherapy is underappreciated. Csikszentmihalyi discovered the concept and this is his seminal text.

14. The Erik Erikson Reader by Erik H. Erikson

    Erikson is best known for his stages of development, but a study of his work offers so much more. Plus, Erikson is an accomplished writer and his books are a pleasure to read. This anthology has a wonderful introduction by Robert Coles, a Pulitzer Prize winning child psychiatrist himself. Childhood and Society is a text of Erikson’s to which I continue to return. An excerpt describing time Erikson spent with the Yurok and Sioux tribes is contained herein this collection.

15. Psychoanalytic Listening: Methods, Limits, and Innovations by Salman Akhtar

    Psychoanalytic Listening is one of many important books by Akhtar. While less recognized than Broken Structures, its relevance to the intervention side of therapy is its reason for inclusion on this list. The Jungian analyst, Jean Knox, refers to the trained and intuitive listening of the psychotherapist as akin to that of an “eighteenth-century sailor [who] ‘could pick out…every strain or creak or squeak of a great ship at sea’.” Akhtar brings his encyclopedic knowledge of psychoanalysis and psychopathology to the core competency of listening. Expertise in listening remains a calling card of the psychoanalyst but following the guidelines of this book could well serve a provider in any psychotherapeutic profession.

Tim Yovankin, MD
Medical Director, Greywood Health Center
www.greywoodhealthcenter.com