Distancing: A Guide to Avoidance and Avoidant Personality Disorder [Hardcover]

Martin Kantor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0275944085 | ISBN-13: 978-0275944087

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.

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

As the title suggests, Distancing is as much about avoidance as it is about Avoidant Personality Disorder. It's important to distinguish between the two because descriptive material and treatment are different. My offering up various and sometimes conflicting therapeutic suggestions is consistent with my eclectic view and with Laura Smith Benjamin's reconstructive learning therapy which is an approach to dealing with personality disorders that draws from a wide range of available therapies in the belief that anything that helps is legitimate. Thank you, Dr. Kantor

About the Author

MARTIN KANTOR is a Psychiatrist on the staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medical Center, East Orange, NJ.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (September 30, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275944085
• ISBN-13: 978-0275944087
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,853,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For many people the hardest life challenge to overcome involves the anxiety associated with finding and keeping intense, lasting, committed, long-term, loving relationships. This anxiety is typically the product of a disorder called AvPD, or Avoidant Personality Disorder. This disorder doesn't take life, but it does ruin it. I have treated so many people I know and love succumbing to its ravages that I felt the urgency to write books that offer the layman a step by step method for coping with and overcoming this emotional difficulty.
Mine are the only books that deal with AvPD as an entity, not as a subvariety of Social Phobia. This is significant because the treatment is different in each case: treatment of social phobia should emphasize cognitive-behavioral interventions, while treatment of AvPD additionally requires uncovering via a psychoanalytically-oriented and interpersonal approach that goes beyond attempting to reverse symptoms directly to halting the process of anxious interpersonal withdrawal through uncovering its roots.
The Essential Guide to Overcoming Avoidant Personality Disorder is the third book I have written on the topic, but it is the first with material primarily directed toward individuals who finding themselves lonely and isolated because of relationship anxiety long for a self-help approach based on understanding to overcome the relational terrors that keep them from experiencing the fulfillment that can only come from closeness and commitment to significant others.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An inadequate study of "the hidden disorder", December 15, 2002

By 

Neil Ford (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Distancing: A Guide to Avoidance and Avoidant Personality Disorder (Hardcover)

This book has a number of problems and contains little helpful content for clinician or APD sufferer:

Firstly, although this book is presumably intended to be a definitive work, it does not address the specific descriptors of the DSM criteria. Indeed, across the whole book the DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is only accorded half a dozen of the 200 pages.

Second, the relationship between "avoidance" and Avoidant Personality Disorder is not made clear, so that the terms seem to be used synonymously. This enables the author to include the descriptions of "avoidant" behaviour which make up the bulk of the book. These descriptions include much aggressive and extrovert behaviour which directly contradicts the DSM diagnostic criteria.

Third, little attention is given to the "classic" APD sufferer, presumably because this would furnish few of the anecdotes with which the book is decorated. I suppose the chronic withdrawal of "classic" APD is rather unspectacular, given the extent to which social interactions are avoided. Nonetheless, it is the nominative topic, and should have been properly addressed.

Fourth, little space is given to speculation about causation. In the chapter "The literature" various names are cited with usually only a paragraph on their observations and opinions. An exception is made for Freud, who gets five pages. With a straight face, Kantor quotes "Anxiety in males is 'always ultimately a fear of castration'". Kantor also seems to agree with Freud, parenthetically, that the incest taboo is a prime cause of avoidance, if not of APD, but no clinical evidence is produced.

Fifth, an inordinate number of the anecdotes (I would not call them case studies) concern gay men. Kantor does not appear to have considered the socio-cultural, as opposed to clinical, causes of their behaviour.

Sixth, the following clinical observation may give you pause:
"Entirely unacceptable for some patients are treatment techniques that involve either sex with surrogates or the therapist watching the couple having sex so that he can make helpful, on-the-spot suggestions. This is especially true for obsessives ... and paranoids ... ." (p. 142)
You may disagree that an aversion to being observed in coitus by one's therapist is a sign of a personality disorder!

Despite some controversy over the term's legitimacy, I believe that APD warrants a serious and thorough study. It is a shame that this book does not sufficiently address APD in a way useful to clinician, student or patient.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More Descriptive than Prescriptive, May 23, 2001

By 

Marlo Archer (Tempe, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Distancing: A Guide to Avoidance and Avoidant Personality Disorder (Hardcover)

I found this book quite boring and of little use. The author spends a great deal of time describing the various presentations of Avoidant Personality Disorder, such that there is little, behaviorally, that is not explained in terms of APD. Further, he may state that a certain behavior is reflective of APD, but then go on to state how the exact opposite behavior could also reflect APD, rendering both statements fairly useless. Next, the sections about how to assist someone with APD in therapy was rudimentary enough as to be insulting to a practitioner. If a therapist was actually considering some of the approaches the author advises against, the therapist had better go back to school or change careers, not read a book. Finally, there are a handful of suggestions offered to the individual who suffers from APD, but again, they are varied enough to include just about anything that might be helpful and there are mutually exclusive activities suggested, with rationales for doing each. I would think the book would either confuse a client or provide enough suggestions that a client could find several he was already doing (as part of his avoidant spectrum) such that there would be little motivation to make any change and much frustration as to why things weren't getting better. Very disappointing.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review on Distancing, March 12, 2001

By 

Michael C. (Kentucky, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Distancing: A Guide to Avoidance and Avoidant Personality Disorder (Hardcover)

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?