Recommended Books
Books that support the course material and the broader work — on attachment, childhood, trauma, humanistic psychology and becoming.
These books support the course material and the broader work. Some are gentle companions; some ask a great deal of you emotionally. Each entry says which, so you can choose what you are ready for.
Attachment Theory
Attached
A clear, accessible introduction to adult attachment styles — anxious, avoidant and secure — and how they play out in romantic relationships.
Why I recommend it: It gives everyday language to patterns most of us have lived without naming. An ideal first book on attachment before moving to the deeper theory.
Hold Me Tight
From the founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy: how emotional bonds work, why couples get stuck in painful cycles, and what secure connection actually requires.
Why I recommend it: It reframes conflict as protest against disconnection — a shift that changes how you see every relationship pattern you have ever repeated.
Childhood & Development
The Drama of the Gifted Child
A short, piercing book about children who learned to earn love through performance, achievement and attunement to their parents’ needs — and the adults they become.
Why I recommend it: If you have ever felt loved for what you do rather than who you are, this book will read like your own biography. Go slowly with it.
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
A compassionate, practical map of what it does to a child when a parent cannot meet them emotionally — and how that child, grown up, can stop waiting and start healing.
Why I recommend it: It validates experiences that are easily dismissed because “nothing happened”. Emotional neglect is real, and this book names it with precision and care.
Humanistic Psychology
On Becoming a Person
The foundational text of person-centred psychology: Rogers’ belief that beneath our defences there is a self worth trusting, and that growth happens in conditions of genuine acceptance.
Why I recommend it: The course is named after the process Rogers describes. This is the deep source — slower reading, but the ideas underneath everything here.
Trauma & Emotional Healing
The Body Keeps the Score
The landmark book on how trauma lives in the body and nervous system, not only in memory — and what that means for healing.
Why I recommend it: It explains why insight alone is sometimes not enough, and why the body must be included in any honest account of healing. Contains detailed accounts of trauma; read with care.
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Written by a therapist who lived it: a map of complex trauma, the four survival responses — fight, flight, freeze and fawn — and the long, possible road back to self.
Why I recommend it: The chapter on the inner critic alone is worth the book. Walker writes for the reader who is doing the work, not observing it.
Purchase links will be added as the library grows. All of these titles are available from major book retailers in South Africa and internationally.