Begun by Audrey Carlson in 2005. Please e-mail suggestions or comments to John McKinnon, MD (johnm@montanaacademy.com).

Terri Apter. The Myth of Maturity. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2001.
This is an intelligent book, written by an Englishwoman, I seem to recall, who describes, quite independently and quite well, much the same idea we have about the troubles young people struggle with, because of immaturity.

John Bradshaw. Healing the Shame That Binds You. Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications, Inc. 1988.
A Bradshaw book about family.

Diane Ehrensaft. Spoiling Childhood. New York, The Guilford Press, 1997.
This book describes the results of a childhood without limit-setting in terms that we would readily agree with. More broadly, Eherensaft coins the term “kinderdult” to describe children made the center of the parental universe, and suggests, in effect, that such parents get a life.

Erik H. Erikson. Childhood and Society. New York, New York: W. W. Norton, 1950.
The classic essay on “The Eight Ages of Man” is especially noteworthy—and all parents ought to read this essay on the psycho-social stages of development.

James W. Fowler. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco, HarperSan Francisco, 1995.
The single best short summary of the key developmental works of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Robert Kohlberg—a brilliant book. Don’t be put off by the reference to faith, if you are likely to put aside a religious book. This is not a religious tract. More precisely, it is a book about human faith, but it is predicated on a very competent discussion of the stages of psychological maturation.

Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Harvard researcher, excellent resource but a difficult text. Kegan’s The Evolving Self is also excellent, but PhD’s find it a difficult read. These books have had a very important influence on the thinking of the MA leadership.

Paul Krugman (2007) “How to Save the Middle Class from Extinction,” keynote address, Economic Policy Institute conference, Agenda for Shared Prosperity, excerpted on Alternet.com. The link: http://www.alternet.org/story/48988/
I do try to restrain myself from making political comments, even wise-cracks. And this Princeton economist, who writes Op-Ed economic commentary for the NY Times is not lacking a point of view. But it is difficult to come away from Madeline Levine’s The Price of Privilege or Jean Twenge’s Generation Me without wanting to understand how we got to this contemporary political economy, which provided the cultural basis for contemporary narcissism, and which has created the economic context in which our children are going to have to make their way? Krugman’s address is one of the few answers I have come across.

Madeline Levine . The Price of Privilege, Harper Collins, 2006.
A Marin County therapist whose eloquent contemplation about the clinical results that may follow from economic privilege is must reading for MA parents—and for American parents more broadly. This book can be read side-by-side with Jean Twenge’s new contribution, Generation Me.

Robert J. McKenzie, EdD. Setting Limits. Roseville, CA, Prima Publishing, 1998.

John McKinnon, MD (2008) An Unchanged Mind: The Problem of Immaturity in Adolescence, New York, Lantern Books.

John McKinnon, MD (2010) To Change a Mind: Parenting to Promote Maturity in Teenagers. New York, Lantern Books.

Alice Miller (1979) translated by Ruth Ward. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. New York, NY: Perennial, HarperCollins Publishers.

Daniel Siegel. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. New York, The Guilford Press, 1999.

Scott E. Spradlin (2003) Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Put You in Control. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
A user-friendly workbook approach to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Jean Twenge (2007) Generation Me. New York, The Free Press.
This is a description of the predicament of young people born after 1970 (her year of birth). Twenge wrote a PhD thesis and then this book as a professor at UCSD. I found it a provocative, convincing description of a political and economic shift in our culture since the sixties. My daughter was assigned this book (in law school) and couldn’t put it down. “It’s me!” she said with a mixture of recognition, relief and humiliation. What’s missing is an explanation for this cultural shift (but see Krugman cited above).