New Books in Psychology

Latest Episodes:

Ayelet Fishbach, "Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation" (Little, Brown Spark, 2022) Mar 09, 2023

Show notes

Today I talked to Ayelet Fishbach about her book Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)

The key to motivating yourself is to change your circumstances. You can do so by the goals you set, how you accept feedback in pursuing them, the flexibility you show in making progress, and how well you leverage social support. Each of those four aspects has its own pitfalls, and today’s interview explores in depth a number of challenges. To harness the value of intrinsic motivation, can you stay attuned to the values and benefits that matter to you most? Likewise, can you demonstrate patience—not giving in to temptation or ceasing to engage because you don’t trust that the benefits you count on will actually be there at the end of the journey? Dr. Fishbach offers insights on all of these issues, and more, in a manner that recognizes the vulnerabilities people contend with daily.

Dr. Ayelet Fishbach is an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation. Her scientific findings are regularly featured in the media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR.

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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Jamie Kreiner, "The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction" (Liveright, 2023) Mar 08, 2023

Show notes

The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction(Liveright, 2023) by Dr. Jamie Kreiner presents a revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge—and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later.

Although we think of early monks as master concentrators, a life of mindfulness did not, in fact, come to them easily. Delving into the experiences of early Christian monks living in the Middle East, around the Mediterranean, and throughout Europe from 300 to 900 CE, Dr. Kreiner shows that these men and women were obsessed with distraction in ways that seem remarkably modern. At the same time, she suggests that our own obsession is remarkably medieval. Ancient Greek and Roman intellectuals had sometimes complained about distraction, but it was early Christian monks who waged an all-out war against it. The stakes could not have been higher: they saw distraction as a matter of life and death.

Drawing on a trove of sources that the monks left behind, Dr. Kreiner reconstructs the techniques they devised in their lifelong quest to master their minds—from regimented work schedules and elaborative metacognitive exercises to physical regimens for hygiene, sleep, sex, and diet. Blending history and psychology, The Wandering Mind is a witty, illuminating account of human fallibility and ingenuity that bridges a distant era and our own.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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H. Yumi Kim, "Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan" (Oxford UP, 2022) Mar 08, 2023

Show notes

To fend off American and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, Japan strove to strengthen itself by drawing on the most updated ideas and practices from around the world. By the 1880s, this included the introduction of Western-derived psychiatry and its ideas about mental illness. The first Japanese psychiatrists claimed that mental illnesses required medical treatment in specialized institutions rather than confinement at home, as had been common practice. Yet the state implemented no social welfare policies to make new medical services more accessible and affordable to the public. The family, especially women, thus continued to carry the burden of caring for those considered mad.

Madness in the Family: Women, Care, and Illness in Japan(Oxford UP, 2022) examines how the family in Japan came to be seen as the natural provider of care for those suffering from mental illnesses. It centers on the experiences of women and families, which have long been obscured by the voices of male psychiatrists, state officials, and lawmakers. H. Yumi Kim traces how women and families negotiated a dizzying array of claims about madness and its proper management across various settings. In the countryside, psychiatrists tried to refute the notion that fox spirits could cause madness, and the government regulated the use of cage-like structures inside homes. In cities, a booming medical marketplace spread ideas about feminized illnesses such as hysteria, and female defendants were evaluated for menstruation-induced disorders. As women and families navigated this shifting therapeutic landscape, they produced their own gendered approaches to madness that would take precedence over the claims of psychiatry, the law, and the state in

everyday life.

Decoupling the history of mental illness from the discipline and institutions of psychiatry, Madness in the Family reveals the power and fragilities of gender, kinship, and care in the creation of different modes of caring for and understanding mental illness that persist to this day.

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Choice Architecture Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of High Theory, Eli Cook tells us about choice architecture. The term was invented by behavioral economists in 2008 who proposed it as a soft-power model of “libertarian paternalism” to influence consumer choice. Eli traces their concept through a twentieth-century history of structured choices, from personality tests and the five-star rating to the swipes and likes of platform capitalism. He shifts our attention from the rhetoric of consumer choice as freedom to the power of “choice architects” who determine the options for us.

Eli takes the term “choice architecture” from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Yale UP, 2008). He mentions the industrial psychologist Walter Dill Scott and the inventors of behavioral economics, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Amusingly, there is a New Yorker article about Tversky and Kahneman written by Thaler and Sunstein, called “The Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About How We Think.” (New Yorker 7 Dec 2016). In the full version of our conversation, Eli referenced the work of Sophia Rosenfeld on the longue durée history of choice.

Eli Cook is a historian of American capitalism. He works as a Senior Lecturer in History and as head of the American Studies Program at the University of Haifa in Israel. His first book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life was published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Last year, he was a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center where he worked on his new book about choice architecture.

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Measure for Measure Episode 6: IQ Mar 07, 2023

Show notes

The Intelligence Quotient is a measure of intelligence that has life-or-death consequences. Should we trust it?

GUEST

Alan Gouddis is a Partner with Sherman & Sterling. He was recognized by The Legal 500 as a “Leading Lawyer” in M&A Litigation Defense in 2021.

This episode was produced by Andrew Middleton and Liya Rechtman.

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Carl H. Shubs, "Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality" (Routledge, 2020) Mar 04, 2023

Show notes

Traditionally, trauma has been defined as negatively impacting external events, with resulting damage. This book puts forth an entirely different thesis: trauma is universal, occurring under even the best of circumstances and unavoidably sculpting the very building blocks of character structure.

In Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality(Routledge, 2020), Dr. Carl Shubs depathologizes the experience of trauma by presenting a listening perspective which helps recognize the presence and effects of traumatic experiences of normal development (TEND) by using a reconstruction of object relations theory. This outlook redefines trauma as the breach in intrapsychic organization of Self, Affect, and Other (SAO), the three components of object relations units, which combine to form intricate and changeable constellations that are no less than the total experience of living in any given moment. Bridging the gap between the trauma and analytic communities, as well as integrating intrapsychic and relational frameworks, the SAO/ TEND perspective provides a trauma-based band of attunement for attending to all relational encounters including those occurring in therapy.

Though targeted to mental health professionals, this book will help enable therapists and sophisticated lay readers alike to recognize the impact of relational encounters, providing new tools to understand the traumas we have experienced and to minimize the hold they have on us.

Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022).

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Thomas Kelly, "Bias: A Philosophical Study" (Oxford UP, 2023) Mar 01, 2023

Show notes

The concept of bias is familiar enough, partly because it is deployed frequently and in different contexts. For example, we talk about biased jurors, biased procedures, biased laws, biased decisions, and biased people. But we also talk about bias as a feature of certain frames of mind, habits, dispositions, and mental processes. In most of these contexts, bias is seen as a kind of failing or a bad-making feature. Attributions of bias are hence often accusatory, or at least a matter of negative assessment.

Although these phenomena are familiar, questions remain. Is bias is a single thing? Is bias always bad? Is bias always misleading? Can bias be eliminated? In Bias: A Philosophical Study (Oxford University Press, 2023), Thomas Kelly addresses a broad range of such questions. He develops a norm-theoretic account of what bias is, and then explores its implications.

Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

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Contemplative, Existential Psychotherapy and Dzogchen Feb 28, 2023

Show notes

Ken Bradford, Ph.D., has been a practitioner in the Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist traditions since 1975, and engaged in introducing meditative sensibilities and nondual wisdom streams into the experience-near practice of psychotherapy since 1988.

Formerly, he was in private psychotherapy practice for 25 years, an Adjunct Professor at John F. Kennedy University and CIIS, Co-Director of Maitri Psychotherapy Institute, and a teaching associate with Jim Bugental.

Bradford is a clinical psychologist, currently offering advanced training, workshops, and lectures in the United States and Europe in Contemplative-Existential oriented psychotherapy and consultation.

His publications include Opening Yourself: The Psychology and Yoga of Self-liberation, The I of the Other: Mindfulness-Based Diagnosis and the Question of Sanity; Listening from the heart of silence: Nondual wisdom and psychotherapy, Vol. 2 (with John Prendergast); and articles addressing “Therapeutic Courage” & “The Play of Unconditioned Presence in Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy,” among other topics at the interface between Existential-phenomenological and Buddhist thought & practice.

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Making Meaning Episode 24: The Shining Surface Feb 27, 2023

Show notes

It's common to equate meaning with depth, but the surface of things, with its wild and rapturous beauty, can coax us into life.

GUEST

Stephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies in the Harvard Divinity School and served as the Interim Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church from 2019 to 2020. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), she is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf, (2019), editor (with David Carrasco and Mara Willard) of Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019), and a regular columnist in The Christian Century.

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness.

Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas.

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Making Meaning Episode 23: Limits and Love Feb 26, 2023

Show notes

We are finite creatures who struggle to accept our finitude. But if we can learn to embrace our limits, we will find that our relations with one another, the created world, and God allow us to experience a love so exquisite, it need not last forever.

Guest:

Matthew Ichihashi Potts is Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He studies the thought and practice of Christian communities through attention to diverse literary and theological texts.

Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas.

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