Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder, Revised and Expanded

✍ Scribed by Martin Kantor

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 294
• Edition: Rev Exp
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Kantor focuses on a misunderstood but common condition that brings severe and pervasive anxiety about social contacts and relationships. He offers psychotherapists a specific method for helping avoidants overcome their fear of closeness and commitments, and offers a guide for avoidants themselves to use for developing lasting, intimate, anxiety-free relationships.Fear of intimacy and commitment keeps avoidants from forming close, meaningful relationships. Types of avoidants can include confirmed bachelors, femme fatales, and people who form what appear to be solid relationships only to tire of them and leave with little warning, often devastating their partners/victims. Kantor takes us through the history of this disorder, and into clinical treatment rooms, to see and hear how avoidants think, feel, and recover. He offers psychotherapists a specific method for helping avoidants overcome their fear of closeness and commitments, and offers a guide for avoidants themselves to use for developing lasting, intimate, anxiety-free relationships.The avoidance reduction techniques presented in this book recognize that avoidants not only fear criticism and humiliation, but also fear being flooded by their feelings and being depleted if they express them. Acceptance is feared as much as rejection, because avoidants fear compromising their identity and losing personal freedom. Kantor describes the different therapeutic emphasis required for the four types of avoidants, including those who are withdrawn due to shyness and social phobia, such as people who intensely fear public speaking; those who relate easily, widely, and well, but cannot sustain relationships due to fear of closeness; those whose restlessness causes them to leave steady relationships, often without warning; and those who grow dependent on?€”and merge with?€”a single lover or family member and avoid relating to anyone else.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface......Page 10
Part I: Description......Page 16
1 Why Has Avoidant Personality Disorder Received So Little Attention?......Page 18
2 The Literature......Page 26
3 The Mental Status Profile......Page 48
4 Types of Avoidants......Page 66
5 Healthy Avoidance......Page 74
6 Avoidant People......Page 80
7 Sociocultural Manifestations......Page 90
8 Course......Page 92
9 Comorbid Disorders: Comorbidity with Schizotypal, Schizoid, and Affective Disorders......Page 102
10 Comorbid Disorders: Comorbidity with “Neurotic” Spectrum Disorders......Page 116
11 Comorbid Disorders: Comorbidity with Other Personality Disorders......Page 142
12 Cause: An Overview......Page 164
Part II: Therapy......Page 182
13 An Overview of Avoidance Reduction......Page 184
14 Psychodynamically Oriented Psychotherapy......Page 200
15 Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy......Page 210
16 Interpersonal Therapy......Page 222
17 Supportive Therapy......Page 232
18 Pharmacotherapy......Page 252
19 Therapeutic Modifications for Treating Avoidants......Page 254
20 Treating Depressed Avoidants......Page 266
References......Page 282
Index......Page 286