The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (ISPS) comprises a diverse range of individuals, networks and institutional members across more than twenty countries. Central to its ethos is that the perspectives of individuals with lived experience of psychosis, and their families and friends, are key to forging more inclusive understandings of, and collaborative therapeutic approaches to, psychosis.
With a core aim of promoting psychological and social approaches to psychosis, ISPS has a history stretching back more than five decades. During this time it has witnessed the relentless pursuit of primarily biological explanations for psychosis. This tide has been turning in recent years, with growing international recognition of a range of psychological, social, and cultural factors that have considerable explanatory traction and distinct therapeutic possibilities. Policymakers, treatment professionals, people with lived experience of psychosis, and family members are increasingly exploring interventions in which talking and listening are key ingredients. Psychosocially informed understandings and support frameworks are helpful for fostering and promoting personal recovery in the face of adverse psychotic experience. Recognising the humanitarian and therapeutic potential of these perspectives, ISPS embraces a wide spectrum of approaches from psychodynamic, systemic, cognitive, and arts therapies, to need-adapted and dialogical approaches, family and group therapies and residential therapeutic communities.
A further ambition of ISPS is to draw together diverse viewpoints on psychosis and to foster discussion and debate across the biomedical and social sciences, including establishing meaningful dialogue with practitioners and researchers who are more familiar with biological-based approaches. Such discussions are supported by growing evidence of the entanglement of genes and physiology with socio-cultural, environmental, and emotional contexts. This allows a consideration of mental distress as an embodied psycho-social experience that must be understood in relation to a person’s life history and circumstances.
The ISPS book series seeks to capture these developments in the field by providing a forum in which authors with a variety of lived and professional experiences can share the significant value of their work. Complemented by international and national conferences and publication of the journal Psychosis, this series is central to the activities of ISPS and their global reach. It comprises books with a variety of empirical focuses and with differing experiential and disciplinary perspectives. Although diverse, the range of books combines intellectual rigour with accessibility to readers across the ISPS community. We aim for the series to be a resource for mental health professionals, for those developing and implementing policy, for academics in the social and clinical sciences, and for people whose interest in psychosis stems from personal or family experience.
To support its aim of advancing scholarship in an inclusive and interdisciplinary way, the series benefits from the advice of an editorial board whose members are drawn from across the ISPS community:
Katherine Berry; Sandra Bucci; Marc Calmeyn; Caroline Cupitt; Stephanie Ewart; Pamela Fuller; Jim Geekie; Olympia Gianfrancesco; Lee Gunn; Kelley Irmen; Sumeet Jain; Nev Jones; David Kennard; Eleanor Longden; Tanya Luhrmann; Brian Martindale; Andrew Moskowitz; Michael O’Loughlin; Jim van Os; David Shiers.
For more information about ISPS, email [email protected] or visit our website, www.isps.org.
For more information about the journal Psychosis visit www.isps.org/index.php/publications/journal
By Orna Ophir
December 21, 2017
Covering the last four decades of the 20th century, this book explores the unwritten history of the struggles between psychoanalysis and psychiatry in postwar USA, inaugurated by the neosomatic revolution, which had profound consequences for the treatment of psychotic patients. Analyzing and ...
Edited
By Katherine Killick
March 03, 2017
Art Therapy for Psychosis presents innovative theoretical and clinical approaches to psychosis that have developed in the work of expert clinicians from around the world. It draws on insights that have emerged from decades of clinical practice to explain why and how specialised forms of art therapy...
By Sadeq Rahimi
November 10, 2016
This book explores the relationship between subjective experience and the cultural, political and historical paradigms in which the individual is embedded. Providing a deep analysis of three compelling case studies of schizophrenia in Turkey, the book considers the ways in which private experience ...
Edited
By Jeanne Magagna, Murray Jackson
February 04, 2015
Creativity and Psychotic States in Exceptional People tells the story of the lives of four exceptionally gifted individuals: Vincent van Gogh, Vaslav Nijinsky, José Saramago and John Nash. Previously unpublished chapters by Murray Jackson are set in a contextual framework by Jeanne Magagna, ...
By Andrew Lotterman
January 23, 2015
In this unique book, Andrew Lotterman describes a creative approach to the psychotherapy of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis. Lotterman focuses on specific techniques that can be used in psychological therapy with people who have symptoms such as hallucinations, ...
By Johan Cullberg
February 15, 2006
Psychoses provides a unique perspective on the challenges associated with understanding and treating psychoses, bringing together insights and developments from medicine and psychology to give a full and balanced overview of the subject. Johan Cullberg draws on his extensive experience working ...
Edited
By David Garfield, Daniel Mackler
November 24, 2008
Beyond Medication focuses on the creation and evolution of the therapeutic relationship as the agent of change in the recovery from psychosis. Organized from the clinician’s point of view, this practical guidebook moves directly into the heart of the therapeutic process with a sequence of chapters ...
Edited
By John Gale, Alba Realpe, Enrico Pedriali
July 01, 2008
Therapeutic Communities for Psychosis offers a uniquely global insight into the renewed interest in the use of therapeutic communities for the treatment of psychosis, as complementary to pharmacological treatment. Within this edited volume contributors from around the world look at the range of ...
Edited
By Andrew I. Gumley, Alf Gillham, Kathy Taylor, Matthias Schwannauer
September 19, 2013
There is increasing recognition that emotional distress plays a significant part in the onset of psychosis, the experience of psychosis itself and in the unfolding of recovery that follows. This book brings together leading international experts to explore the role of emotion and emotion regulation...
Edited
By Roger Hagen, Douglas Turkington, Torkil Berge, Rolf W. Gråwe
November 22, 2010
This book offers a new approach to understanding and treating psychotic symptoms using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT for Psychosis shows how this approach clears the way for a shift away from a biological understanding and towards a psychological understanding of psychosis. Stressing ...
Edited
By John Gale, Michael Robson, Georgia Rapsomatioti
August 29, 2013
How close is spirituality to psychosis? Covering the interrelation of psychosis and spirituality from a number of angles, Insanity and Divinity will generate dialogue and discussion, aid critical reflection and stimulate creative approaches to clinical work for those interested in the connections ...
By Pamela R. Fuller
July 25, 2013
For professionals working with people who experience severe psychosis, increasing empirical evidence for the benefits of psychotherapy for psychosis has been especially welcome. Given the limitations of medication-only approaches and the need for an expanded perspective, including for those ...