Product Description

With extraordinary reverence and compassion for the human spirit, Dr. Wood demonstrates that with time, patience, willingness, and hope, we can work through even the most impossible challenges in order to achieve emotional health and inner peace. Believing that each of us has a tale we are meant to live and share, Dr. Wood shows us how to find and live our own stories. Whether you suffer from a diagnosable condition, or simply want to better understand yourself, Medicine, Mind and Meaning will help you find your path to a better future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #522798 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 360 pages

Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, M.D., Sc.D.
I have seldom been so moved by a book. This is the only healing model that makes sense.

Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine & Miracles
Read the wisdom contained here and find the way to your desired destination.

About the Author
Eve A. Wood, M.D., has devoted nearly two decades to the care of troubled individuals from all walks of life. Her therapeutic approach has attracted attention and acclaim from the nation's leading authorities in the fields of medicine, health, and spiritual well-being. She is the author of numerous articles for medical and professional publications and is a frequent speaker at national workshops and conferences, including the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Wood has served on the faculty of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the executive committee of The Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital and recently has been appointed Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine. She lives in Tucson with her husband and four children.

Customer Reviews

Understanding the meanings that guide our lives
Written by a psychiatrist who cares deeply for her clients, this book explores ways in which understanding the meanings that guide our lives can help us to sort out various disorders that cause physical and emotional problems.

I agree with the observation about this book by C. Everett Koop, former US Surgeon General, in the foreword: "It is written by a physician who loves her patients and has come to see that life depends not on the hand you are dealt, but on how you choose to live it." (p. 4)

Many books offer a spectrum of cases, briefly described. Wood chooses to focus much of her sharings about how she works through a detailed description of the treatment of a severely disturbed woman who was suicidal. This woman had such low self-esteem that she would repeatedly cut herself when she was upset. It took many years of therapy to help her accept herself and settle into much more self-accepting and satisfying ways of being and relating in a world that she had earlier found hostile and unaccepting.

Many books offer the views and understandings of the author as the primary window into appreciating the author's approaches. Wood chooses to give many pages to the words of her clients, who report how they felt and what it was like to have Wood help them through their difficulties.

A NEW WAY TO TREAT MY PSYCHOTHERAPY AFTER 33 YEARS
Ever since I had the first of my two psychotic episodes I have been floundering in psychotherapy or in the beginning when that was not the "norm" (just meds)I have felt at a loss. I found Dr. Wood's book and am extremely pleased that a new avenue or "path" I think she might appropriately call it is presented to me. I gave my psychiatrist, psychologist/minister, and physician a copy of this book and mine I plan to keep and read and reread over and over again. I especially liked the references to a spiritual aspect of therapy and how it definitely relates to ones' healing self. I feel like I now have "hope" of success at arriving at a goal for myself and if I try hard enough with my therapists I might indeed find the "feeling" words I am in need of to succeed at life. Thank you, Dr. Wood for the "gift of this book!" God bless you! Maybe a miracle can happen in my life as in those other patients in your book whom you describe so well. (Or those with whom you asked them to write themselves their own story to put into your book! YES! Why don't people ask patients and the mentally ill OUR OWN STORIES!!!)

A prescription for self-healing
This is one of the most inspiring books for self-empowered healing from mental illness I have read. In her childhood, Dr. Eve Wood learned that, "If a person saves one life, it is as if he has saved the entire world." By this criterion, Dr. Wood is saving the galaxy.

The central theme in her patients' recoveries seems to be Dr. Wood's ability to help them create a safe container of self-acceptance without judgment and her considerable genius in inspiring hope. But she doesn't stop with just the storytelling. This is an interactive book in which she challenges the reader to explore how the patient's story might be relevant to "you," the reader. Concluding each section are "lessons," "take home points," and questions that help the reader to assess her own imbalances.

Throughout Medicine, Mind and Meaning, Dr. Wood offers exercises to help the reader fully integrate the "lessons" of the stories she tells. This book is, in itself, a prescription for self-healing.