In this warm and deeply personal text, author Ronald B. Miller offers students a different approach to conceptualizing and treating mental illness. Miller critically examines reigning orthodoxies, such as our tendency to pathologize psychological difficulties and to downplay or ignore subjective experiences of human suffering. He reviews theoretical bases, methods of diagnosis and assessment, and treatments that have long produced successful outcomes, yet have too often been denigrated or ignored by proponents of the dominant approaches to mental health care. This text offers a pragmatic and compassionate approach that can revolutionize readers' understanding of abnormal psychology.