The culmination of several years of collaborative effort among eating disorders investigators from around the world, Developing an Evidence-Based Classification of Eating Disorders: Scientific Findings for DSM-5 provides summaries of the research presentations and discussions of the conceptual and methodological issues involved in diagnosing and classifying eating disorders. The mission of the DSM-5 Eating Disorder Work Group was to improve the clinical utility of eating disorder diagnoses by recommending revisions based on sound empirical evidence. Although the objective was to provide empirical information to the DSM-5 Eating Disorders Work Group, the research presented in this book should be invaluable to the eating disorders research and clinical community at large and, by extension, to their patients.

Eating disorders are serious, difficult to treat, and often lead to multiple medical complications, high rates of psychiatric comorbidity, and mortality. It is critical, then, that clinicians be aware of the most current research, as well as understand the foundation of the soon-to-be-released DSM-5.

Improving the definition of symptoms and syndromes is one of the critical challenges the authors tacklein particular the validity of the eating disorders not otherwise specified category, into which 60% of patients diagnosed with an eating disorder now fall. In addition, other mental disorders, particularly mood disorders and anxiety disorders, co-occur at a higher rate than would be expected. These findings indicate the need for greater specificity in the nosology, an issue which the investigators address. Other topics addressed include:

? Eating disorders in children and adolescents, including diagnostic differences and classification. Also included is a chapter on the validity of applying a classification for feeding disorders in infants and young children, as well as one that covers latent profile analysis to identify eating disorder phenotypes in the adolescent population.? Cultural considerations and cross-cultural variation in the classification of eating disorders, including Native American, Japanese, Canadian, and Pacific Fijian populations.? A discussion of non-fat-phobic anorexia nervosa and its suitability for inclusion in DSM-5.? Current and future directions for the assessment of the cognitive criteria for anorexia nervosa.? A chapter on loss of control eating, including implications for future weight gain, depression, binge drinking, and substance abuse.

Key terms, references, summaries, charts, tables, and other illustrative features are abundant and assist the reader in understanding the research and putting it in context. Developing an Evidence-Based Classification of Eating Disorders: Scientific Findings for DSM-5 is required reading for both investigators and clinicians in the rapidly evolving field of eating disorders.

In Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages, Stephen A. Mitchell offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.

Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians, as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland.

By examining witches, wizards and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.

In 81 brief chapters, Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the universe.

Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

In eighty-one brief chapters, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao—the basic principle of the universe.

Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

Stephen A. Mitchell has been at the forefront of the broad paradigmatic shift in contemporary psychoanalysis from the traditional one-person model to a two-person, interactive, relational perspective. In Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis, Mitchell provides a critical, comparative framework for exploring the broad array of concepts newly developed for understanding interactive processes between analysand and analyst. Drawing on the broad traditions of Kleinian theory and interpersonal psychoanalysis, as well as object relations and progressive Freudian thought, he considers in depth the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, anachronistic ideals like anonymity and neutrality, the nature of analytic knowledge and authority, and the problems of gender and sexual orientation in the age of postmodernism. The problem of influence guides his discussion of these and other topics. How, Mitchell asks, can analytic clinicians best protect the patient’s autonomy and integrity in the context of our growing appreciation of the enormous personal impact of the analyst on the process?

Although Mitchell explores many facets of the complexity of the psychoanalytic process, he presents his ideas in his customarily lucid, jargon-free style, making this book appealing not only to clinicians with various backgrounds and degrees of experience, but also to lay readers interested in the achievements of, and challenges before, contemporary psychoanalysis. A splendid effort to relate parallel lines of theorizing and derivative changes in clinical practice and informed by mature clinical judgment and broad scholarship into the history of psychoanalytic ideas, Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis takes a well-deserved place alongside Mitchell’s previous books. It is a brilliant synthesis of converging insights that have transformed psychoanalysis in our time, and a touchstone for enlightened dialogue as psychoanalysis approaches the millennium.