compulsive behavior

Sixteen-year-old Callie Knowles fights her compulsion to write constantly, even on herself, as she struggles to cope with foster care, her mother's life in a mental institution, and her belief that she killed her father, a minister, who has been missing for a year.

Hope Donahue chronicles her desperate quest for physical perfection, discussing how she became obsessed with looking beautiful and her many plastic surgeries, problems with food, low self-esteem, parents' role in her problems, and other related topics.

Explains to therapists how to use the technique of motivational interviewing (MI) to help individuals get "unstuck" and make changes in their lives, discussing session strategies and the process of learning MI; providing case examples; and describing applications in such fields as criminal justice, medicine, and public health.

Rebuts the assertion by doctors, therapists, and other professionals that alcoholism and other addictions are genetically acquired diseases, explains the individual and societal problems that can come of these viewpoints, and offers alternatives.

Their wealthy lifestyle marred only by a two-time occurrence of a short-lived illness, Tim and Jane Farnsworth are devastated when the illness returns in ways that frighteningly alter Tim's behavior and test Jane's endurance.

Presents an examination of obsessive behavior and its evolution from a social and religious aspect of life into a psychiatric and medical problem, covering the clinical definition of the condition, the increase in obessive-compulsive disorder diagnoses since the late seventies, and many other topics within the field.