From the pen of a master educator and clinician, Fatal Flaws, by Stuart Yudofsky M.D., is a remarkable gift to mental health practitioners everywhere. Drawing on years of clinical experience, Dr. Yudofsky allows us into his consulting room and shares his views and strategies about how best to help patients who suffer from severe, complex, and disabling personality disorders. Most importantly, after careful 'de-identification' of each patient, he presents (from enviably detailed and preserved clinical records) selected dialogues between himself and his patients as well as between his patients ant heir friends, family members, employers, and others with whom they have interacted regularly.
* The American Journal of Psychiatry *
Fatal Flaws provides us with a user-friendly instrument to help us perceive personality flaws (fatal and otherwise) in ourselves and in others, and it quickly presents us with nine principles for safely interacting with people who have fatal flaws. . . . Each chapter leads with a captivating clinical vignette and then presents the available knowledge and wisdom on the subjract that at once is valuable to clinicians at all levels of experience and gives practical and effective help to the lay person in understanding and changing their destructive relationships with people who have severe and persistent personality disorders.
* Psychiatric Services *
Fatal Flaws is a well-written, accessible guide for understanding personality disorders. Its discussion of symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment is thorough enough to serve as guide for mental health practitioners in training, yet the case studies and guidelines are practical and useful for the layperson who is in a relationship with someone with a personality disorder.
* PsycCRITIQUES *
Using 30 years of experience as a successful therapist in the psychoanalytic tradition, the author provides rich information about personality disorders through cases that illustrate symptoms and treatment. The book is hard to put down, attesting to the author's achievement of his goal of providing information about persons with these disorders in a clear and interesting way. The style of the book lends itself well to the targeted audience of those who are beginning or are in training to proved therapy for persons with personality disorders as well as for patients themselves or their families who want a better understanding of these 'flaws'.
* Doody's Book Review Service *
[Fatal Flaws] is readable, thorough, and unique practical sharing of the author's and the mentors' wisdom regarding personality disorders of all types delineated in the DSM-IV.
* Journal of Clinical Psychiatry *