New Books in Psychology

Today I talked to Jackie Fast about her new book Rule Breaker: Rebellious Leadership for the Future of Work (Kogan Page, 2021). Imagine finding yourself in a career sector, sponsorship, because it’s the way to get a visa and stay in England. Well, that’s what happened to Jackie Fast. And as things turned out, she was very good at sponsorship work. In a few years her ability to put two brands toget...

Trauma, Guilt and Reparation: The Path from Impasse to Development (Routledge, 2019) identifies the emotional barriers faced by people who have experienced severe trauma, as well as the emergence of reparative processes which pave the way from impasse to development. The book explores the issue of trauma with particular reference to issues of reparation and guilt. Referencing the original work of...

Gillian Straker’s name has long been on my radar, particularly for the ways in which she has used psychoanalytic thought to contend with the vicissitudes of apartheid and its aftermath in her home country, South Africa. But she has also made use of what apartheid taught her about the human mind. Indeed, there is much for psychoanalysis to learn from apartheid. For over 20 years, Straker has publis...

The Limits of Consciousness is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Martin Monti, Associate Professor in Psychology and Neurosurgery, Brain Injury Research Centre, UCLA. This extensive conversation examines Martin Monti’s innovative work with patients who are in a vegetative state or minimally conscious state which has led to some surprising results that might well pr...

Derek Hook and Sheldon George's Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2021) is a path-breaking edited volume that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation. In my conversation with Derek and Sheldon, touching on the main themes of the volume, we explore the problems with popular psycholo...

Today I talked to Soo Bong Peer about her new book The Essential Diversity Mindset: How to Cultivate a More Inclusive Culture and Environment (Career Press, 2021) In 1967, bans on interracial marriages were finally declared unconstitutional in America. Only a decade earlier than that, merely 4% of Americans endorsed them. Today, the figure is 87% approval. So clearly, progress has been made in a c...

Deconstructing Genius is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and intellectual historian Darrin McMahon, Dartmouth College. The word “genius” evokes great figures like Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Mozart but what quintessential quality unites these individuals? Can we measure it? Can we create it? This thoughtful conversation explores Darrin’s research on the evolutio...

Films about chainsaw killers, demonic possession, and ghostly intruders. Screaming audiences with sleepless nights or sweat-drenched nightmares in their immediate future. Presumably, almost everybody has experience with horror films. Some people would even characterize themselves as horror fans. But what about the others—the ones who are curious about horror films, but also very, very nervous abou...

If all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then it must be that Socrates is mortal. What could be more obvious? Well, sometimes obviousness serves to conceal philosophical difficulties. There’s more going on in this simple deduction than we tend to recognize. For one thing, we are not being asked to assess whether all men are, indeed, mortal. Nor are we asking whether Socrates is indeed a man....

When Sarah Nannery got her first job at a small nonprofit, she thought she knew exactly what it would take to advance. But soon she realized that even with hard work and conscientiousness, she was missing key meanings and messages embedded in her colleagues' everyday requests, feedback, and praise. She had long realized her brain operated differently than others, but now she knew for sure: she had...

Gidi Ifergan's new book The Psychology of the Yogas (Equinox Publishing, 2021) explores the dissonance between the promises of the yogic quest and psychological states of crisis. Western practitioners of yoga and meditation who have embarked upon years-long spiritual quests and who have practiced under the guidance of a guru tell of profound and ongoing experiences of love, compassion and clarity:...

At the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition (Princeton UP, 2021) makes sens...

The Malleability of Memory is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Elizabeth Loftus, a world-renowned expert on human memory and Distinguished Professor of Psychological Science; Criminology, Law, and Society; Cognitive Science and Law at UC Irvine. This extensive conversation covers her ground-breaking work on the misinformation effect, false memories and her battles...

Why do newborns show a preference for a face (or something that resembles a face) over a nonface-like object? Why do baby chicks prefer a moving object to an inanimate one? Neither baby human nor baby chick has had time to learn to like faces or movement. In Born Knowing: Imprinting and the Origins of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2021), neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara argues that the mind is not a bl...

In a world that demands faith in progress and growth, Limbo (Fitzcarraldo, 2019) is a companion for the stuck, the isolated, delayed, stranded and those in the dark. Fusing memoir with a meditation on creative block and a cultural history of limbo, Dan Fox considers the role that fallow periods and states of inbetween play in art and life. Limbo is an essay about getting by when you can't get alon...

Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies prom...

Today I talked to Maya Hu-Chan about her new book Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2020) There are so many sayings that involve the face, but perhaps none is more central to at least Asian culture than “saving face.” That’s because it represents retaining one’s dignity versus being embarrassed or humiliated in front of others. In truth, though, ever...

Applied Psychology: Thinking Critically is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Stephen Kosslyn, a renowned psychologist and Founder, President and Chief Academic Officer of Foundry College. This wide-ranging conversation explores Kosslyn and his colleagues’ extensive analysis of research results on the differences between what the top parts of the brain and the botto...

This podcast features the wisdom and work of Mark Van Buren, Bergen County's go-to guide for all meditation and mindfulness-based training. With well over a decade of experience in the field, Mark instructs meditation workshops, lectures, professional development days, corporate wellness classes, and silent retreats in a practical, yet accessible way. He offers simple tools and practices that can...

Horror fans are attracted to movies designed to scare us, but others shudder already at the thought of the sweat-drenched nightmares that terrifying movies often trigger. The fear of sleepless nights and the widespread beliefs that horror movies can have negative psychological effects and display immorality make some of us very, very nervous about them. In A Very Nervous Person's Guide To Horror M...

Shameless Parenting: Everything You Need to Raise Shame-free Confident Kids & Heal Your Shame Too! (2021) is the 21st-century book parents have been asking for! It highlights the trickiest parts of each age (birth to 18) that tend to trigger shame and guides them on how-to provide emotionally for their children while helping them understand the shame that is emerging for them. Shame is what makes...

How could you lose your memory overnight, and what would it mean? The day neurologist Jed Barash sees the baffling brain scan of a young patient with devastating amnesia marks the beginning of a quest to answer those questions. First detected in a cluster of stigmatized opioid overdose victims in Massachusetts with severe damage to the hippocampus--the brain's memory center--this rare syndrome rev...

Today I talked to Eileen McDargh about her new book Burnout to Breakthrough: Building Resilience to Refuel, Recharge, and Reclaim What Matters (Berrett-Koehler, 2020). What’s another way to frame both living-in-the-moment and respecting colleagues at work: seeing them as human beings as opposed to merely humans doing. That’s but one indication of the energy Eileen brings to this episode. The empha...

Understanding ADHD is based on an in-depth, filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Stephen Hinshaw, Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley. Stephen Hinshaw is an expert in the fields of clinical child and adolescent psychology and developmental psychopathology, as well as stigma, preventive interventions and dehumanization related to mental illness. Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas...

Towards an Ecopsychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020) provides an overview of ecopsychology and introduces the newly emerging field of ecopsychotherapy, including insightful case examples for practitioners. However, ecopsychotherapy is not simply a technique to be applied in therapy; for practitioner and client, it involves a change in perspective. Rust gives a solid introduction to this evolving work,...