CAPROCK'S VIRTUAL LIBRARY
This Caprock County History focuses on ten families in the county, all imaginary, just as Caprock County, its residents and communities, the Ste. Sadie Lou Wilderness, and the Canyon of the Beetles are imaginary. The following bibliography is real and factual.Vinegar P. Miller
Out of clutter, find Simplicity. From discord, find Harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.

Albert Einstein
INTRODUCTION

The most powerful influence on our lives has been our family. If any family is and always has been problem free it may be the only one the world has ever seen or ever will see. The greatest problem in a family is to deny the possibility of it's never having problems. That fear of facing reality is destructive because not examining one's family guarantees its problems can never be confronted and solved.

The following list of books and other works can help us determine the depth of our family's effect on our very personal problems and the consequences of continuing to deny their existence. A most all encompassing and effective guide to use to begin any personal examination is John Bradshaw's "The Family". It can point you to many other sources to further gentle and undemanding personal research tools.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
  1. Birth Order
  2. Family Systems Theory
  3. Evaluating Family
  4. Good Old Days
  5. Where Are We Now
  6. Skills to Survive Abuse
  7. More General Survival Skiills
  8. Being Different
  9. Setting Personal Borders
  10. Crowd, Gang, Tribe, et al.
  11. Sources of Destructivenesss
  12. Twenty PerCent of Us
  13. Imagination
  14. Vinegar Miller's Stories
  15. Links to the Outside


    More and more people are researching their family history. Geneology is becoming more and more popular. Most people would like to know more about themselves and why they are who they are. By learning more about one's family a person will learn more about themself. And by learning more about oneself it is impossible not to learn more about one's family.

    The following information is offered for the use of anyone wanting to know more about themself and/or their family.

    And for an entertaining and enlightening book about some prominent families and how to make sense of the complications in any family, try You Can Go Home Again by Monica McGoldrick .

    John Emmett Maguire
BIRTH ORDER
Bradshaw, John. Family Secrets.New York: Bantam Books, 1996. In chapter three is a clear, concise introduction to the Bowen Theory on Family Systems, including Dr. Bowen's Sibling Position Profiles.

Harper, James M., with Margaret H. Hoopes. Birth Order and Sibling Patterns in Individual and Family Therapy. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publications, 1987.

Leman, Dr. Kevin., The Birth Order Book- Why You Are The Way You Are.- New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1995

Sulloway, Frank J. Born to Rebel - Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996. More and more studies are focusing on first born sons.

Somit, Albert., Arwine, Alan., Peterson, Steven A., Birth Order and Political Behavior.

Toman, Walter. Family Constellation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1991.
FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY AND THE USE OF GENOGRAMS -
THAT WHICH FOLLOWS GENEOLOGY
Kerr, Michael E., MD, and Bowen, Murray, MD
Family Evaluation- An Approach Based on the Bowen Theory.New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.

McGoldrick, Monica and Gerson, Randy
Genograms in Family Assessment. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985

McGoldrick, Monica
You Can Go Home Again - Reconnecting With Your Family.New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995
EVALUATING AND ASSESSING THE FAMILY
Bradshaw, John
The Family - a Revolutionary Way of Self- Discovery. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc. 1988

Coontz, Stephanie
The Way We Never Were - American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. Harper Collins, 1992

Elkind, David
Ties That Stress- The New Family Imbalance. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994.
From Chapter 10, - "The vital family still takes many different kinship forms, from the traditional nuclear pattern to that of single parents, adoptive parents, blended families, and more. What distinguishes the vital family is its emphasis on lifespan human development - its recognition that both children and adults undergo continuous change and growth - and its adaptive of unilateral and mutual authority.

Friel, John and Friel, Linda
Adult Children - The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families. Health Communications, 1988

And here are two works which disagree mightily on the subject of why we are who we are. There is a powerful amount of reading here.

Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin,
"Not in Our Genes",- on Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. Pantheon Books, 1984

Wilson, Edward O.,
Sociobiology - The New Synthesis (25th Anniversary Edition) Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2000
OH TO BE A CHILD AGAIN IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS
deMause, Lloyd, (editor)
The History of Childhood. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aaronson Inc, first softcover, 1995
The results of ten historians' major research project of writing a history of childhood in the west done under the auspices of the Association of Applied Psychoanalysis. The first chapter, by Lloyd deMause begins, "The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused. ..."

Greven, Philip
The Protestant Temperament - Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religous Experience, and the Self in Early America. University of Chicago Press: 1988

Spare The Child - The Religous Roots of Punishment and the Paychological Impact of Physical Abuse.New York: First Vintage Books, 1992.
More - from an enlightened historian.
WHERE WE ARE NOW

From a plaque next to the front door of the Methodist Church at New York University

When They Come For The Innocents
Without Crossing Over Your Body,
Then Cursed Be Your Religion
and Cursed Be Your Life.
Chase, Naomi Feigelson
A Child Is Being Beaten - Violence Against Children, An American Tragedy. McGraw-Hill: 1976
This early book is as pertinent today as when written and one of the first to call attention to our problem of Child Abuse and one of the first to connect children who desperately needed help from that abuse to their eventual roles as killers; Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, Charles Whitman, Anthony Spencer, Thomas Ruppert, and Ellery Channing.

Covitz, Joel
Emotional Child Abuse - The Family Curse.Boston: Sigo Press, 1986.
Preface- "In what I call the democratic family system, the goal is the optimal development of each member within the system."

Kempe, Ruth S., and Kempe, C. Henry.
Child Abuse- The Developing Child. Harvard University Press, 1978.
This is a early gentle introduction and sometimes naive but very welcome book on the ills and solutions to child abuse.(ed.)

Miller, Alice
(Alice Miller enters the American scene with this book and steps up as a highly knowledgeable, experienced, courageous, and fierce warrior as a childrens' advocate. ed.)

Drama of the Gifted Child - The Search for the True Self. Basic Books Revised Edition, 1994. First published in the United States as Prisoners of Childhood. Basic Books, 1981.

Thou Shalt Not Be Aware - Society's Betrayal of the Child. New York: Meridian, 1984.

Pictures of a Childhood. Meridian, 1986

The Untouched Key - Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness. New York: Anchor, 1990

For Your Own Good - Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence. Canada: HarperCollins, 1990

Banished Knowledge - Facing Childhood Injuries. Anchor, 1991

Breaking Down The Wall Of Silence - The Liberating Experience of Facing Painful Truth. Meridian, 1993

Paths of Life - Seven Scenarios. New York: Pantheon, 1998
SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES OF SURVIVING EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE, INCLUDING SEXUAL ABUSE.
Bass, Ellen and Thornton, Louise (editors)
I Never Told Anyone - Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. With Jude Brister, Grace Hammond, Jean Huntley, and Vicki Lamb.

Blume, E. Sue, Secret Survivors - Uncovering Incest And Its Aftereffects In Women. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991

Engel, Beverly, M.F.C.C., The Right To Innocence - Healing the Trauma of Sexual Abuse. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989

Golomb, Elan, PH.D., Trapped In The Mirror- Adult Children of Narcissists In Their Struggle For Self. New York: Quill, William Morrow, 1992

Parrish, Dee Anna, MSSW. Abused - A Guide to Recovery for Adult Survivors of Emotional/Physical Child Abuse. ( Includes a self-help test to help identify your childhood experience - A support services directory - and a parent's guide to signs of sexual abuse.) Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1990

Whitfield, Charles L., MD., Memory and Abuse - Remembering and Healing the Effects of Trauma Florida: Health Communications, Inc.
MORE GENERAL SURVIVAL SKILLS
Beattie, Melody
Codependent No More - How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself. San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1987.

Beyond Codependency - and getting better all the time. San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1989.

Epstein, Seymour, Ph.D. with Archie Brodsky You're Smarter Than You Think - How to Develop Your Practical Intelligence For Success In Living. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993

Siebert, Al, Ph.D. The Survivor Personality - Why Some People are Stronger, Smarter, and More Skillful at Handling Life's Difficulties... and How You Can Be, Too. New York: Practical Psychology Press, 1993, 1994.
BEING DIFFERENT
Goffman, Irving
Stigma - notes on the management of spoiled identity. New York: Touchstone, 1963
ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES AND OTHER PERSONAL PROTECTIVE NECESSARIES.
Alderman, Ellen, and Kennedy, Caroline
The Right to Privacy Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1995

In Our Defense Avon Books: New York, 1991

Once again-
Bradshaw, John.
Family Secrets.New York: Bantam Books, 1996.
THE MADDING CROWDS, (Gangs, Mobs, Cliques, Armies, Sects, Tribes, [Families?] )
Freud, Sigmund
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Introduction by Franz Alexander. New York: Bantam Books, 1960 (new publication due, January, 2002)

Le Bon, Gustave
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: 1920 ,(? Other, in paperback, 1994)

McDougall, William.
The Group Mind. Cambridge: 1920 (Other, in hardback, 1973)

Trotter, Wilfred
Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., London: 1916
SOURCES OF DESTRUCTIVENESS
Fromm, Erich
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Henry Holt, 1973

Miller, Alice
The Drama of the Gifted Child. Basic Books, revised edition - 1998
"The repression of injuries endured during childhood is the root cause of psychic disorders and criminality. The price of repression and denial in childhood, however necessary to the child, is the symptoms of the adult. A difficult childhood, even the most cruel, doesn't automatically create a criminal. Taking examples like Hitler, Stalin, and others, I could prove that it was not the cruel childhood alone but rather the total denial of this suffering and the flight from it into destructive grandiosity that drove them to become mass murderers." Alice Miller. (Italics mine. ed.)

Rhodes, Richard
Why They Kill.The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

- W. H. Auden
(from the frontispiece)
TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE MENTAL DISORDERS AND SUBSTANCE-ABUSE PROBLEMS THAT RAVAGE THE LIVES OF ONE IN FIVE PERSONS IN OUR U.S.A.

Frances, Allen, MD. and First, Michael, MD.
Your Mental Health: A Layman's Guide to the Psychiatrist's Bible Crowne Publishing, 1998

"The most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), published in 1994, has become the standard reference for clinicians in the mental health field -- and a surprise bestseller. It has sold over a million copies, including hundreds of thousands of copies to lay readers looking for an understanding of the mental disorders that affect the lives of one in five persons. Dr. Allen Frances, who chaired the task force that wrote the DSM-IV and Dr. Michael First, editor of the DSM-IV, have now translated that guide's insights into clear and lively prose.
The authors cover the full gamut of psychiatric disorders. And they do so in a tone that is consistently reassuring and respectful. They argue eloquently that you are far more likely to get good care if you are educated about your problem, understand its usual course, and know what can be done about it. Most important, the more you learn, the less alone and helpless you will feel.
Because getting the right treatment almost always depends on having the right diagnosis, each chapter of Your Mental Health focuses on a particular type of problem and provides an extremely clear set of questions to help you determine whether your symptoms are severe enough to be considered a clinical disorder. The authors offer encouraging advice that either confirms that you are, in fact, in good mental health or that directs you on the proper professional path.
Complete with detailed explanations about the treatments currently available, each chapter also concludes with a list of suggested readings and information about national organizations, support groups, and other sources of help. For a layperson it is reader-friendly and provides a basic home-reference work. The screening questionnaire in this book helps with self-diagnosis. Chapters on specific disorders describe available treatment approaches.


(The above review is from Amazon.com's review. This book is, at least for now, out of print but it can be found through used book sources.
Dr. Michael First and Dr. David Reiss and other psychiatrists are circulating a paper recommending that a category "Relational Disorders" be added to the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.This is a startling advance because it will identify sickness in groups of individuals and in the relationship between them.
The Bowen Family System Theory which is mentioned frequently on this site, introduced the importance of therapy and diagnoses based on associations between and among individuals in such groups and relationships.)



IMAGINARY PLACES, PEOPLE, AND THINGS
Beetle Canyon
in Caprock County, also known as BDL CNYN, owned by Burton Daniel Louisburg, who hates vowels and who is equally imaginary as Beetle Canyon, Caprock County, and BDL CNYN.

Lake Woebegone
a place somewhere northeasterly from Caprock County. Ask Garrison Keillor.

Oz
much more than the movie reveals. L. Frank Baum, The Marvellous Land of Oz, Chicago, 1904

Potencia -
Created by Aristotle to define the place midway between reality and imaginary.

STORIES AND WRITINGS BY VINEGAR P. MILLER
Back to the Prologue of
"Hector and Vinegar's
Arrival in Caprock County"


The Official Beginning of the story
"The History of Caprock County"

copyrights 1984 through 2009,
John Emmett Maguire, all rights reserved.