Getting to Oz: The Personal Journey Home to Your True Self (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781502773210)

Dr. Deborah Khoshaba has emerged as one of the leading psychologists in her area of work. Her groundbreaking research on coping and resilience strategies as part of The Hardiness Institute initiative has earned her tremendous accolades within the academic community, and her books continue to enjoy wide critical acclaim. Over the course of a 25-year clinical career, she's treated over 1,000 patients suffering from a wide range of conditions, including marital problems, eating disorders, PTSD, and emergencies. Many have returned to work with her at multiple points in their lives. Deborah Khoshaba grew up in Chicago, born into a family of six children of two working, immigrant parents. Early in life, she found herself drawn to music and followed that passion into her first career as a professional opera singer. It was through the experience of performing live at the Chicago Lyric Opera that she discovered the enormous communicative power of music; its ability to uplift and transform, offering thousands of listeners a brief moment of respite from the varied complexities or irrevocable sorrows of their everyday lives. Relief and comfort, Deborah decided, are the greatest gifts that can be given or received. It was this perspective on the world, developed through a cultural lens, that later shaped Dr. Deborah's philosophy as a psychologist. The breadth of her emotional range developed through the arts, coupled with an ability to recognize parallels and relatable themes in seemingly disparate contexts, has served to greatly magnify Dr. Deborah's value throughout her career and has led to numerous successes, academic and commercial. Her work continues to appeal equally to the specialized academic community and to the greater mainstream public. Through the use of film therapy, music, and literary analysis (as well as other creative metaphors and allegories), Dr. Deborah has brought intuitive depth and dimension to her work as a therapist that continues to resonate profoundly with her patients, students, and readers.