New Books in Psychology

While most children experience some fear and anxiety, some develop more extreme forms of anxiety that can impair their daily functioning. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Veronica Raggi, expert on childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders, discusses her book Exposure Therapy for Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: A Comprehensive Guide (New...

What makes you who you are? What makes you distinct from me? What is identity? In the book You and Me: The Neuroscience of Identity (Notting Hill Editions, 2016), Baroness Susan Greenfield scientifically dives into concepts of identity from, a biological perspective, that are usually reserved for philosophers. In this interview Dr. Greenfield discusses individual and cultural identity, what they m...

In this episode, cross posted from the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Michael Kearney, a palliative care physician who takes an interpersonal, integrative approach to healing. Dr. Kearney shares with us how he has had to learn to “breathe underwater” and allow pain to move through him and he discusses his new book: The Nest in the Stream: Lessons from Nature on...

In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews Dr. Barry Schwartz, co-author (with Kenneth Sharpe) of the book Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (Riverhead Books, 2011). Dr. Schwartz dives into a discussion of his writing on the ways that practical wisdom has been diminished in our modern society, and how to overcome th...

In order to fully grasp the workings of racism, we cannot limit ourselves to examining it within majority cultures. Racism exists in minority cultures, such as the gay community, but the intersection of diverse minority identities can make the operation of racism difficult to see. This is the subject of Damien Riggs’ new anthology, The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities (Lexington Boo...

In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Russell Kolts, expert in Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) about his new workbook for therapists Experiencing Compassion-Focused Therapy from the Inside Out (The Guilford Press, 2018). In their discussion, Hill and Kolts explore the tricky human brain and compassion as “the only thing th...

Treatment of addiction often focuses on abstinence or ‘harm reduction.’ While many people benefit greatly from such approaches, the underlying pain and heartache often go untreated, leaving individuals vulnerable to relapse. Focusing on the emotional undercurrents of addiction can help individuals address, once and for all, the deep-seated factors that drive them to substances in the first place....

How do emotions affect participation in protests, and in politics more generally? In The Emotions of Protests (University of Chicago Press, 2018), James M. Jasper develops a solid critique to approaches that present political action as strictly rational and emotions as something outside the realm of strategy. Instead, Jasper speaks about feeling-thinking processes to highlight the interaction betw...

What is it really like to have a family member with serious mental illness? Sandra Allen’s unique book, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia (Scribner, 2018), addresses this question. In the book, a hybrid between memoir and third-person narrative, Sandra publishes excerpts from her schizophrenic uncle’s autobiography interlaced with her own narrative about her uncle and...

Our modern culture prompts us to work ever harder. But it turns out the most successful and creative among us don’t just work hard, they actually rest more skillfully. In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews Dr. Alex Pang, the author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Basic Books, 2016) to learn about the scie...

Everyone experiences anxiety and worry sometimes. However, when anxiety controls your life, it pulls you away from things that you care about. In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. John Forsyth about his new book Anxiety Happens: 52 Ways to Find Peace of Mind (New Harbinger Publishing, 2018). Dr. Forsyth shares why he was d...

French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot is perhaps most well known today from the images of his “hysterical” female patients featured in Bourneville’s Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière. While not diminishing the epistemological and aesthetic importance of “the image” to Charcot, Jonathan W. Marshall argues in Performing Neurology: The Dramaturgy of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (Palgrave Macm...

Kant famously asked the question, how is knowledge possible? In her new book, Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information (Oxford University Press, 2018), Ruth Garrett Millikan responds to this question from a naturalistic, and specifically evolutionary, perspective. Millikan, who is distinguished professor emerita at the University of Connecticut, has long been a leading figure i...

Autism as a condition has received much focused attention recently, but less attention has been paid to its politics. It is a condition that necessitates significant accommodations and interventions, which can be difficult for people with autism and their loved ones to obtain, depending on the state of autism public policy. Sociologist John J. Pitney argues that political science needs to more rig...

The word “control”, with its seemingly instantaneous mental associations with forms of top-down oppression, is one that makes even some cyberneticians nervous and is often downplayed in contemporary descriptions of the field.   Perhaps this is one reason why William Powers’ fundamentally cybernetic Perceptual Control Theory, or PCT, has, in recent decades, continued its substantial development out...

Often, when writing the intellectual history of the Middle East, we make assumptions about the influence of ideas from other places on the Middle East itself. We assume what ideas are being adapted in their entirety and not necessarily as challenged and critiqued; this is often influenced by power dynamics themselves the products of historical processes like colonialism and capitalism. Omnia El Sh...

How and where do transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people find good mental healthcare? And how can psychotherapists and other mental health professionals become competent in this kind of care? Furthermore, what are the most important mental health issues faced by TGNC people? These are some of the questions with which TGNC people grapple regularly, and they motivated Dr. Eric Yarbrough...

After working clinically with patients for over 25 years, it’s natural that one would learn something about what heals or harms humans. Such is the case with Dr. Eva Ritvo, who discovered through her work and personal life the power of human kindness and put together a book about it entitled Bekindr: The Transformative Power of Kindness (2017, Momosa Publishing). The book contains short stories by...

Early studies of the functions of the human brain used a simple method: wait for misfortune to strike—strokes, seizures, infectious diseases, lobotomies, horrendous accidents-and see how the victim coped. In many cases survival was miraculous, and observers could only marvel at the transformations that took place afterward, altering victims’ personalities. An injury to one section can leave a pers...

We all put a great deal of care into protecting, managing, and monitoring our reputation. But the precise nature of a reputation is obscure. In one sense, reputation is merely hearsay, a popular perception that may or may not have any basis in fact. Yet we rely heavily on reputations for example, when were choosing a restaurant, mechanic, or physician. Accordingly, multiple sites on social media a...

The biggest problem in American health care is us. Do you know how to tell good health care from bad health care? Guess again. As patients, we wrongly assume the best care is dependent mainly on the newest medications, the most complex treatments, and the smartest doctors. But Americans look for healthcare solutions in the wrong places. For example, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved ea...

In her book, Be Mindful and Stress Less: 50 Ways to Deal with Your (Crazy) Life (Shambhala, 2018), Gina Biegel shows how the demands and pressures of everyday life can really stress you out! She shows how even the little things when stacked one on top of another can eventually build up to much bigger and deeper problems. Using her background in psychology, she crafts an easy to follow format that...

In her new book, The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia (NewSouth Books, 2018), Christina Twomey, Professor of History at Monash University, explores the “battle within,” the individual and collective challenge of rehabilitating Australian prisoners of war in the post-war decades. Using a variety of sources, including memoirs and the archives of the Prisoners of War Trust Fund, Twomey argues...

Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment (Notting Hill Editions, 2017) is a fascinating account by one of the world’s leading and most decorated neurologists of the profound influence of William Burroughs on his medical career. Dr. Andrew Lees relates how Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and troubled drug addict, inspired him to discover a ground-breaking treatment for Parkinson’s Di...

Dr. Radhule Weininger is a clinical psychologist and meditation teacher who integrates psychodynamic, Jungian and Gestalt psychotherapies with Buddhist psychology. In her new book Heartwork: The Path of Self-Compassion (Shambhala, 2017), Dr. Weininger shares the path she took from medical school to Buddhist Psychologist and how she applies the principles of Buddhist practice in therapy. Heartwork...