New Books in Psychology

In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Kelly Wilson about kindness and the common humanity of feeling inadequate and broken. Dr. Wilson describes the evolutionary science behind suffering and how “evolutionary mismatch” plays an important role in modern day physical and psychological illness. Dr. Wilson, co-founder of Accept...

We’re all familiar with cases where one attributes certain psychological states or capacities to creatures and systems that are not human persons.  For example, your cat might prefer a certain variety of cat food, and maybe your houseplants enjoy a certain corner of the room they’re in.  In many cases, these attributions pass by without much notice.  However, in certain regimented scientific conte...

In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun talks with expert and author Dr. Eckhard Roediger about the ins and outs of contextual schema therapy. In his recent book, Contextual Schema Therapy: An Integrative Approach to Personality Disorders, Emotional Dysregulation and Interpersonal Functioning (Context Press, 2018), Dr. Roediger describes an in...

Sigmund Freud may have been the first to popularize the study of dreams, but several scholars since Freud have advanced our understanding of dreams in revolutionary ways. Among them is Mark Blechner, an interpersonal/relational psychoanalyst who first published his theories on dreams in his 2001 book The Dream Frontier. With his new book, The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Think...

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade debate over race, class, and IQ. In The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Michael E. Staub, Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College, City Univ...

Steven Shaviro’s book Discognition (Repeater Books, 2016) opens with a series of questions: What is consciousness? How does subjective experience occur? Which entities are conscious? What is it like to be a bat, or a dog, a robot, a tree, a human being, a rock, a star, a neutrino? Discognition looks at a series of fascinating science fiction narratives – in some cases reading philosophical or scie...

Listeners familiar with our recent podcasts exploring the remarkable legacy of William T. Powers revolutionary Perceptual Control Theory of human behaviour, including its contribution to cognitive behavioural therapy through the development of the Method of Levels approach, may be wondering about the empirical evidence for such a sweeping repudiation of classical behaviourism.  Prepare to have tho...

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons periodically, and occasionally providing consultations for policymakers. In Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (Teachers College Press, 2018), renowned critical...

Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence other people. The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition–the theory-theory and the simulation theory–have provided focused accounts of mindreading, the more specific practice of ascribing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others in order to predict and explain their behavior. In How We Understand Others...

Human beings have long seen themselves as the center of the universe, as specially-created creatures who are anointed as above and beyond the natural world. Professor and noted scientist David P. Barash calls this viewpoint a persistent paradigm of our own unique self-importance and argues that it is as dangerous as it is false. In his recent book, Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Ou...

Humans are the only animals that can use language processes to create abstract, symbolic thoughts. This is both a blessing and a curse. Although symbolic processes have many benefits to humans, they can also lead us to great suffering. We worry about the future, fret over the past, get stuck in rigid rules, and create problems for ourselves that exist only in our minds. In this episode, cross-post...

Sometimes, a couch is a only a couch, but not in Dr. Nathan Kravis’s new book, On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud (MIT Press, 2017). In a live interview conducted in connection with the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, we discuss how the couch has become the leading symbol for psychoanalysis in positive and maligned ways. Dr. Kravis discusses how the...

In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun discusses common struggles in adult romantic relationships with Dr. Avigail Lev, co-author (with Matthew McKay) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Couples: A Clinician’s Guide to Using Mindfulness, Values, and Schema Awareness to Rebuild Relationships (Context Press, 2017). Dr. Lev discusses how ea...

Magical thinking lies at the heart of J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood’s new book, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Oliver is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and Wood is assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University. In the book, they argue that our intuitions and differences in whe...

Pamela Woolner, senior lecturer in education at Newcastle University, joins us in this episode to discuss her edited volume, School Design Together (Routledge, 2014). Pam is an expert in understanding and developing learning environments, particularly the use of participatory research methods to engage and empower users to share their experiences and knowledge. My conversation with Pam begins with...

To many, the title, A Transdiagnostic Approach to CBT using Method of Levels Therapy: Distinctive Features (Routledge, 2012) , may seem incongruous with a podcast channel called “New Books in Systems and Cybernetics.”  However, listeners familiar with my previous interview with Richard S. Marken about his co-authored book, Contolling People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human, will be aware of...

Balancing work and a personal life can be a challenge for many of us, and we often make things worse by buying into myths that interfere with our effectiveness and happiness but are unsupported by social science. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews psychology professors and authors Drs. Miriam Liss and Holly Schiffrin about thei...

In Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity (Princeton University Press, 2018), Theodore Porter uncovers the unfamiliar origins of human genetics in the asylums of Europe and North America. Rather than beginning his story with Gregor Mendel or 1909, the date when Wilhelm Johannsen coined the term “gene,” Porter takes us back to King George III. After a political and medical...

Schizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a strong argument in support of the history of psychiatry “from below.” Using vast archival resources and ample patient files, Hervé Guillemain demonstrates convincingly how schizophrenia in France was a socially constructed category—one that circumscribed and...

Evolution science and behavioral science both have strong theories that can help us understand humans in context, and yet, until now, the two fields have been mostly separate. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock,  Dr. Steven Hayes and Dr. David Sloan Wilson share how they are collaborating to bridge this divide. They discuss their recent co-edited book, Evolu...

In this inspirational episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Steven Hayes, co-developer of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), about the future of evidence-based therapy. Dr. Hayes describes the core processes involved in effective change and presents a model that breaks free from diagnoses and protocols. Dr. Hayes shares how he uses...

In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Dan Siegel about his new book, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence (TarcherPerigree, 2018). Dr. Siegel describes interpersonal neurobiology and how he has learned from mathematics, anthropology, biology, physics, sociology, and neuroscience to understand the mind. He discusses a powerf...

In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter state-sanctioned psychiatric diagnoses of insanity. Reich discusses the interesting literary preoccupations of Soviet psychiatrists and psychiatric discourse in the post-Stalin era to he...

In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Deirdre Fay, LICSW discusses how she integrates yoga, meditation and attachment theory into healing trauma. Ms. Fay discusses the intersection between yoga philosophy and attachment theory. She explores why embodiment is important in the healing of trauma and how she cultivates a “nourishing opposite” when shame acc...

Ever since the first clinical account of autism was published by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943, Western culture has tended to mythologise the disorder as impenetrable, non-verbal and characterised by silence. As such, in both medical literature and popular culture, autistic individuals are depicted as incomprehensible and Other, problems to be rectified or puzzles to be solved. In contrast to this view o...