New Books in Psychology

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The Happiness Myth: A Talk by Jennifer Michael Hecht Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

In 2006, Jennifer Michael Hecht spoke to the Institute about her book, The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong. Hecht is a poet and historian, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of science/European cultural history from Columbia University. She has published four books of nonfiction and three books of poetry. She has taught in the MFA programs at Columbia University and the New School.

Since 1977, the New York Institute for the Humanities has brought together distinguished scholars, writers, artists, and publishing professionals to foster crucial discussions around the public humanities. For more information and to support the NYIH, visit nyihumanities.org.

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Petra Bueskens, "Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract" (Routledge, 2018) Jul 27, 2023

Show notes

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?

In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (Routledge, 2018), Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.

Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality, drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disrupts the gendered dynamics of household work.

Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period

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Tarek Younis, "The Muslim, State, and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia" (Sage, 2022) Jul 23, 2023

Show notes

Mental health is positioned as the cure-all for society’s discontents, from pandemics to terrorism. But psychology and psychiatry are not apolitical, and neither are Muslims. This book unpacks where the politics of the psy-disciplines and the politics of Muslims overlap, demonstrating how psychological theories and practices serve State interests and perpetuate inequality—especially racism and Islamophobia. Viewing the psy-disciplines from the margins, The Muslim, State, and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia (Sage, 2022) illustrates how these necessarily serve the State in the production of loyal, low-risk and productive citizens, offering a modern discussion of three paradigms underlying the psy-disciplines: neoliberalism, security and the politics of mental health.

Dr Tarek Younis is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Middlesex University, and a registered psychologist. He researches and writes on Islamophobia, racism in mental health, the securitisation of clinical settings and the politics of psychology; and teaches on the impact of culture, religion, globalisation and security policies on mental health interventions.

Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London. She is currently researching the US Passport Office's role in governing Cold War travel, and broadly interested in questions of security, surveillance and mobility. She can be reached by email, Mastodon or Twitter.

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Gabe Howard, "Mental Illness Is an Asshole: And Other Observations" (DGC Press, 2018) Jul 22, 2023

Show notes

Today I talked to Gabe Howard about his book Mental Illness Is an Asshole: And Other Observations (DGC Press, 2018).

Howard has an interesting story to tell. He is an award-winning podcast host, author, and sought-after speaker, but he says he wouldn’t be any of these things today if he hadn’t found himself in a psychiatric hospital diagnosed with a bipolar disorder in 2003.

What is particularly rewarding is the fact that Howard is frank, open and honest about his problems and dislikes speakers who only discuss success. He shares very personal stories because he wants his listeners and readers to know that his recovery isn't a perfectly curated social media event but has ups and downs with symptoms and setbacks.

For years, Howard's entertaining articles and essays have been educating people about living with mental illness. His observations cover everything from practical advice to family relationships to the fears that people with mental illness experience.

In essays such as "Anxiety Says Everyone Hates Me," "I Have Bipolar and I'm a Hypocrite," and, yes, "Mental Illness Is an Asshole," Howard makes mental illness less scary and more understandable.

Karyne Messina is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst with the Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. She is on the medical staff at Suburban Hospital of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is author of Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy

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Dimitry Shevchenko, "Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self: Mirror of Self: Models of Consciousness in Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Advaita Vedānta" (Oxford UP, 2023) Jul 20, 2023

Show notes

In Indian philosophical traditions, a reflection in a mirror frequently serves as a metaphor, suggesting that just as a face in a mirror appears where it is not, so does consciousness. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self: Mirror of Self: Models of Consciousness in Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Advaita Vedānta(Oxford UP, 2023) utilizes this metaphor to address metaphysical, epistemological, and theological problems within non-reductionist approaches to consciousness. Author Dimitry Shevchenko contends that consciousness and its properties--such as the sense of self, subjectivity, and experience of qualia--stand in falsely perceived relations to cognitive and perceptive processes. This book explores models of interaction between consciousness, the mind-body complex, and the world in the philosophical schools of Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Advaita-Vedant. In a dialogue with psychoanalytical theory and analytic philosophy of mind, Shevchenko defends a new model of consciousness, integrating consciousness-mind dualism, mind naturalism, and representationalism about consciousness.

Despite the overwhelming presence of pratibimbavadas, or "theories of reflection", in major philosophical traditions in India, they have received little scholarly attention. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self is the first systematic exploration of mirror models of consciousness across traditions. By grounding these theories in their historical intellectual context, Shevchenko contributes to an intense philosophical conversation between Indian reductionists and non-reductionists about consciousness. The book explores the impact of Indian mirror models on theories of mental representation, theories of knowledge, philosophy of language, debates on illusory causality and the relationship between noumena and phenomena, as well as soteriological and theological theories. Finally, by comparing mirror models of consciousness in Indian philosophy with Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and by engaging with theories of consciousness in analytic philosophy, this study contributes to contemporary debates across philosophical disciplines.

In Indian philosophical traditions, a reflection in a mirror frequently serves as a metaphor, suggesting that just as a face in a mirror appears where it is not, so does consciousness. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self utilizes this metaphor to address metaphysical, epistemological, and theological problems within non-reductionist approaches to consciousness.

The book is available open access here.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

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Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, "Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do about It" (Basic Books, 2023) Jul 16, 2023

Show notes

From phishing scams to Ponzi schemes, fraudulent science to fake art, chess cheaters to crypto hucksters, and marketers to magicians, our world brims with deception. In Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do about It(Basic Books, 2023), psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris show us how to avoid being taken in. They describe the key habits of thinking and reasoning that serve us well most of the time but make us vulnerable--like our tendency to accept what we see, stick to our commitments, and overvalue precision and consistency. Each chapter illustrates their new take on the science of deception, describing scams you've never heard of and shedding new light on some you have. Simons and Chabris provide memorable maxims and practical tools you can use to spot deception before it's too late.

Informative, illuminating, and entertaining, Nobody's Fool will protect us from charlatans in all their forms--and delight us along the way.

Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the excellent podcast Psychologists Off the Clock.

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The Future of Food: A Discussion with Kimberly Wilson Jul 14, 2023

Show notes

We all know that as a nation our mental health is in crisis. But what most don't know is that a critical ingredient in this debate, and a crucial part of the solution - what we eat - is being ignored. Nutrition has more influence on what we feel, who we become and how we behave than we could ever have imagined. Listen to Kimberly Wilson speak with Owen Bennett-Jones discuss the connection between food and mental health. Wilson is the author of Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat Is Fuelling Our Mental Health Crisis (W. H. Allen, 2023).

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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Charlotte Fox Weber, "Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires" (Atria Book, 2023) Jul 13, 2023

Show notes

Today I talked to Charlotte Fox Weber about her book Tell Me What You Want: A Therapist and Her Clients Explore Our 12 Deepest Desires (Atria Book, 2023).

What we often want most is what we shouldn’t want or at least don’t dare admit to wanting. That’s but one point Charlotte Fox Weber is keen on exploring. Aren’t we always (especially in therapy, perhaps) like little kids still, playing games of (emotional) hide-and-seek? We long for attention, for ego gratification but also know it’s not “polite” to admit as much. This episode touches on a variety of topics, from a client named Alice who longs for the “darkness” that she finds more real than health, to at the end an exploration of Prince Harry’s travails with the Royal Family. In between, the episode touches on Weber’s favorite term from the book’s glossary: Sufferiority, a sense of pride and exceptionalism mixed with feelings of shame and inadequacy. Few guests are as free-form and intriguing as this one.

Charlotte Fox Weber is a psychotherapist and writer. She cofounded Examined Life and was the founding head of the School of Life Psychotherapy. She grew up in Connecticut and Paris and now lives in London with her husband and two young children.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His latest two books are Blah Blah Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo and Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals.

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Lee Grossman, "The Psychoanalytic Encounter and the Misuse of Theory" (Routledge, 2022) Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

InThe Psychoanalytic Encounter and the Misuse of Theory(Routledge, 2022), Lee Grossman addresses the disjuncture between analytic literature and clinical work in an effort to render analytic theorizing more representative of clinical experience.

Pointing out the ways in which analytic literature can fail to capture the intensity of feeling and the stumbling, lurching, working in the dark that captures much of clinical engagement, Grossman shows how incomprehensibility is sometimes mistaken for wisdom. As an alternative, Grossman shows how attention to what he calls the syntax of thought can naturally define three different broad categories of life experience: the omnipotence of the neurotic, the wishful, short-sighted thinking of the perverse, and the concrete, disordered thinking of the psychotic. Using rich clinical material, interspersed with detailed exposition and artful satire, Grossman departs from conventional theoretical writing to provide new ways of conceptualizing analytic therapy.

Addressing analytic therapy as an encounter between two people, both governed by forces about which they know very little, this book provides essential insights for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and other clinical practitioners both in training and in practice.

Jacob Goldberg is an incoming Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at Duquesne University. He can be reached at goldbergj1@duq.edu.

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Mathias F. Clasen, "Why Horror Seduces" (Oxford UP, 2017) Jul 08, 2023

Show notes

From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is the drive to be frightened, and why is it so perennially popular?

Why Horror Seduces (Oxford UP, 2017) addresses these questions through evolutionary social sciences.Explaining the functional seduction of horror entertainment, this book draws on cutting-edge findings in the evolutionary social sciences, showing how the horror genre is a product of human nature. Integrating the study of horror with the sciences of human nature, the book claims that horror entertainment works by targeting humans' adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe, allowing a high intensity experience within a safe context.

Through analyses of well-known and popular modern American works of horror--Rosemary's Baby; The Shining; I Am Legend; Jaws; and several others--author Mathias Clasen illustrates how these works target evolved cognitive and emotional mechanisms; we are attracted to horrifying entertainment because we have an adaptive tendency to find pleasure in make-believe that allows us to experience negative emotions at high levels of intensity within a safe context. Organized into three parts identifying fictional works by evolutionary mode--the evolution of horror; evolutionary interpretations of horror; the future of horror--Why Horror Seduces succinctly explores the cognitive processes behind spectators' need to scream.

Mathias Clasen Associate Professor of English at Aarhus University in Denmark. Clasen’s research integrates horror study with the natural and social sciences, in particular human behavioral biology and evolutionary and cognitive psychology

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.

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