Distancing: A Guide to Avoidance and Avoidant Personality Disorder

By Martin Kantor

Book Overview

While it is not surprising that in today's world avoidance (or distancing) has become so widespread that people assign greater importance to their possessions than their relationships, what is surprising is the extent to which avoidance has been overlooked, misunderstood, and/or downplayed. This book provides an in-depth look at avoidance and Avoidant Personality disorder (APD). The author studies the avoidant in the real world and habitat and evolves a dedicated, eclectic, action-oriented therapeutic approach. Kantor believes it is important to move away from individual components of avoidance, such as fear of rejection or low self-esteem, and to study and treat the avoidant gestalt for which the proper treatment is avoidance reduction. Components of the psychoanalytic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, and supportive approaches that involve doing or action, are emphasized.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275944085
• ISBN13: 9780275944087
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.1"

Customer Reviews

Distancing

This text is a different read for me,in that it is a text book.It was some what dificult to follow,but is also written for the lay reader. Avoident disorders are common,and complex.For me this book is a real find.

Review on Distancing

While this book touched on the main core of problems in AvPD (Avoidant Personality Disorder) and was very useful in that respect, adding in the information about its contribution to other disorders, as well as some examples, confused me. One story depicted an antique store worker responding to an inquire about a lamp with a rude, blunt "no."...as an avoidant myself, i cannot comprehend how someone with AvPD would do this, as it is likely to cause conflict and draw attention. The different therapys talked about in this book, though they might really cure this disorder, is nearly impossible to do by someone who is AvPD and has severe anxiety. All in all, the book is good, as well as almost the only book about AvPD, so who am I to gripe?

This book captures the essense of the problems of AVPD

As a student studying psychology, I found the book Distancing to be very helpful in establishing connections to several personality features not mentioned in the DSM-IV. One of these features is anger. According to Kantor, when avoidants passively fear rejection they will often produce that rejection by mere excess and/or ill-suited anger (Kantor, 1993: 42). The subject of anger was not a major focus in the book, but it provides new avenues into research of the avoidant personality. It is possible that aviodence may, in fact, have a strong connection to voilent behavior when combined with sexual frustration. The frustration of rejection (or fear of) may result in violent acts perpetrated against vulnerable targets such as women, children, or even men as was the case with Jeffery Dahmer.