New Books in Psychology

Most of us have had this experience: browsing through countless options on Netflix, unable to commit to watching any given movie—and losing so much time skimming reviews and considering trailers that it’s too late to watch anything at all. In a book borne of an idea first articulated in a viral commencement address, Pete Davis argues that this is the defining characteristic of the moment: keeping our options open. We are stuck in “Infinite Browsing Mode”—swiping through endless dating profiles without committing to a single partner, jumping from place to place searching for the next big thing, and refusing to make any decision that might close us off from an even better choice we imagine is just around the corner. This culture of restlessness and indecision, Davis argues, is causing tension in the lives of young people today: We want to keep our options open, and yet we yearn for the purpose, community, and depth that can only come from making deep commitments. In Dedicated: The Case for Commitment In An Age of Infinite Browsing (Simon and Schuster, 2021), Davis examines this quagmire, as well as the counterculture of committers who have made it to the other side. He shares what we can learn from the “long-haul heroes” who courageously commit themselves to particular places, professions, and causes—who relinquish the false freedom of an open future in exchange for the deep fulfillment of true dedication. Weaving together examples from history, personal stories, and applied psychology, Davis’s candid and humble words offer a meaningful answer to our modern frustrations and a practical path to joy. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

This Ideas Roadshow Collection includes five Ideas Roadshow books that have been developed from filmed wide-ranging conversations with the following leading neuroscientists: Lisa Feldman Barrett (Northeastern University), Jennifer Groh (Duke University), Kalanit Grill-Spector (Stanford University), John Duncan (Cambridge University) and Miguel Nicolelis (Duke University). Howard Burton is the founder and host of all Ideas Roadshow Conversations and was the Founding Executive Director of Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and an MA in philosophy. This collection includes a detailed preface highlighting the connections between the different books which offer a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship while each individual book also includes a detailed introduction plus questions for discussion. These mind-stretching books provide readers through an engaging dialogue format with a wide range of fascinating findings in today's neuroscience research, such as: how the brain combines various streams of sensory input to determine where things are, together with the corresponding implications for a wide range of issues, from neuroplasticity to evolutionary mechanisms; how our brain is anticipating and making sense of sensory inputs from its environment; how functional imaging techniques are used to visualize the brain in action and how it functions to recognize people, objects and places; whether intelligence can be measured and improved; what role our frontal lobe plays in executive control; sophisticated ways of harnessing the thoughts of rats, monkeys and humans to drive mechanical devices in the rapidly emerging field of brain-machine interfaces, and much more. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

A path-breaking journey into the brain, showing how perception, thought, and action are products of maps etched into your gray matter—and how technology can use them to read your mind. Your brain is a collection of maps. That is no metaphor: scrawled across your brain’s surfaces are actual maps of the sights, sounds, and actions that hold the key to your survival. Scientists first began uncovering these maps over a century ago, but we are only now beginning to unlock their secrets—and comprehend their profound impact on our lives. Brain maps distort and shape our experience of the world, support complex thought, and make technology-enabled mind reading a modern-day reality, which raises important questions about what is real, what is fair, and what is private. They shine a light on our past and our possible futures. In the process, they invite us to view ourselves from a startling new perspective. In Brainscapes: The Warped, Wondrous Maps Written in Your Brain and How They Guide You (HMH, 2021), Rebecca Schwarzlose combines unforgettable real-life stories, cutting-edge research, and vivid illustrations to reveal brain maps’ surprising lessons about our place in the world—and about the world’s place within us. Support for this book was provided through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program for the Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics Program. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Overcoming Challenges in the Mental Capacity Act 2005: Practical Guidance for Working with Complex Issues (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) both delivers on what promises and more: it gives practical and ethical guidance for mental health law practitioners, and applicable tools to apply the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It also provides the ethical and philosophical justifications for doing so. This very useful book sets out the legal framework and within that shows how relationships can impact in both positive and negative ways. It demonstrates how autonomy can be supported within existing laws and practices and how to achieve excellent ethical standards in assessments of mental capacity and best interests. In navigating the complexities of mental capacity law and practice, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners of law, and for those who work in medicine, mental health services and social care. It is also of great significance for those interested in the task of law reform - legislators, researchers and philosophers alike will make great use of this book. This is an important book which provides insight into how the law can either support or obstruct the autonomy of people whose capacity comes into question. Dr. Camillia Kong is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London. She is a moral and political philosopher with research expertise on medico-legal conceptualisation of mental capacity, the ethics of psychiatry and psychiatric genomics, and the hermeneutics and phenomenology of mental disorder. Alex Ruck Keene of 39 Essex Chambers, is an experienced barrister, writer and educator. His practice is focused on mental capacity and mental health law, in which he is able to provide specialist advice and representation, as well as delivering expert training for front line professionals. He also writes extensively in the field, including publishing the 39 Essex Chambers Mental Capacity Law Report, the ‘bible’ for solicitors (and others) working in the area. He holds a number of prestigious academic roles and is the creator of the website http://www.mentalcapacitylawandpolicy.org.uk/. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Paul Davis about her new book Beating Burnout at Work: Why Teams Hold the Secret to Well-Being and Resilience (Wharton School, 2021) What if companies held executives responsible for the turn-over rate, absenteeism rate, and the degree to which employees in the department they direct had higher-than-usual chronic mental and physical health issues? Might that be a different, more humane world of work? The answer is yes, most likely; and Davis’s book and this episode explores what causes stress and burn-out as well as solutions. Adjusting the workload, providing a sense of recognition and rewards, allowing for flexibility as opposed to micro-managing, and building teams that foster a feeling of trust and belonging are among the keys. The bottom line here is that managing people by offering support and imposing control is the single best recipe for lowering the level of burnout for staffs everywhere. Paula Davis, JD, MAPP, is the founder and CEO of the Stress & Resilience Institute. A former lawyer, Paula earned a M.A. in applied psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She’s been featured in The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, and The Washington Post, and she contributes to Forbes, Fast Company and Psychology Today. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their effectiveness, rather, these laws cling to outdated notions of disability, mental illness and mental disorder why deny the fundamental rights of this category of people on an equal basis with all others. In Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion (Oxford University Press, 2017) Professor George Szmukler examines the violation of these rights, such as the right to autonomy, self-determination, liberty, and security and integrity of the person in the context of the domestic laws which themselves perpetuate ongoing discrimination against people with mental impairments. Tracing first the history of the medical coercion and involuntary treatment of people with mental illnesses and mental disorders, Professor Szmukler offers a potential path which he argues would end discrimination against this category of people. He puts forward a legal framework which is non-discriminatory and is based on a person's decision-making abilities and best interests, as opposed to a diagnosis. Crucially, he argues that this law is generic, and would not apply by reason of a person's mental disorder. His solution - Fusion Law - would better support people's autonomy, better engage with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and have significant social value by recognising the dignity and equality of people with mental health impairments. It would also have implications for the forensics system, in particular, with regards to defendants who have mental disorders. Professor George Szmukler is a psychiatrist who started practising in the field as a trainee in 1972. He retired from clinical work in 2012, and is now an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Society at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's college London. His major research now concerns methods of reducing compulsion and ’coercion’ in psychiatric care, for example, through the use of ’advance statements’. A related interest is mental health law, particularly the possibility of generic legislation centred on impaired decision-making capacity which would apply to all persons, regardless of the cause of the underlying disturbance of mental functioning. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives—identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic—celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass (Chelsea Green, 2021): three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high. Smoke Hole is a passionate call to arms and an invitation to use these stories to face the complexities of contemporary life, from fake news, parenthood, climate crises, addictive technology and more. Shaw urges us to reclaim our imagination and untangle ourselves from modern menace, letting these tales be our guide. Dr Martin Shaw is a writer and one of the most widely regarded teachers of the mythic imagination. He is the author of the award winning A Branch From The Lightning Tree, Snowy Tower, and Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia (2016). He also directs the Westcountry School of Myth in the UK, and he devised and led the Oral Tradition course at Stanford University. And he has been published in Orion Magazine, Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine, and Mississippi Review. Susan Grelock Yusem, PhD, is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Neil Altman’s White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge, 2020) is a slip (80 pages including references and the index) of a book that reads as both addendum and antidote to some of the literature aimed at waking white people (Ta-Nahesi-Coates’ “dreamers”) up to the realities of racism. I say antidote as some of that literature (the work of Robin Di Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi come to mind) seems to depend on commands from the super ego to shed the scales from white eyes. On finishing Di Angelo’s White Fragility (which was required reading last summer) I felt both paranoid and ashamed and had to wonder how self-policing was going diminish my racism? Altman’s book intervenes precisely in this potentially deleterious cycle arguing that anti-racist thinking that relies on “should” and “oughts”, are potentially doomed to fail. By attacking the defenses rather than softening them, such efforts run the risk of hardening the racism they set out to transform. Humans hate. Freud tells us it is our first feeling. Undeniably, hating can fill us with great and solidifying pleasure. Racism is one form of hatred. When acted on, it can and does destroy lives. Fully loaded with white privilege, white people are apt to act on our racism, and also to shudder, deny or dissociate when encountering our racist thoughts and feelings. When confronted with our racism and its impact, with our awareness that we in fact rely on denigrating stereotypes to feel a little better about ourselves, states of mortification (deathliness) emerge that do no one any good. Such a state is a purely narcissistic one where the other has been snuffed out. If you are white, as I am, you have likely found yourself more than once tossing the hot potato of your own racism as far away as from yourself as you can. And some part of you feels weakened by being this way but it is practically an involuntary reflex. Thinking about this reflex, Altman employs Melanie Klein’s thinking about what it means to be human, which highlights our ineluctable destructiveness. If hate is a human feeling, not one to be gotten rid of but rather one to be accepted and contended with, there may be a way for us to take responsibility for being hurtful, for being racist. Hating hate or hating our racism can maintain the status quo. In fact, hidden hateful feelings seek justification and become reified, rather than being fleeting—as all feelings truly are. Altman highlights the difference between making reparations based on guilt versus the descent into guiltiness. Guilt implies that one is interested in our impact on others because we know that in living, we will hurt many people along the way. Guiltiness, which we can see in white virtue signaling around racism, has much more to do with returning the self that has harmed to its happy and perfect place without addressing the harm done. While white people are primed, particularly in an American context, to say and do horrible and hurtful racist things, it is the disavowal of the destructiveness that perhaps does, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the most harm in the end. Altman quotes the journalist Leonard Pitts who captures the experience of white negation succinctly, writing, “If people who hate you would stand up and declare it you would not have to go through with your day on guard against the world.” The refusal to take responsibility for the harm we do—and Altman makes the strong point that whiteness can be defined as an identity that is principally based on dehumanization—keeps white people on the run from reality. When we depend on delusions to shore us up, a part of us knows we are in real bad shape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond (Bloomsbury, 2020), science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship's biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas--when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. Denworth sees this urge to connect reflected in primates, too, taking us to a monkey sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a baboon colony in Kenya to examine social bonds that offer insight into our own. She meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immune systems; its opposite, loneliness, can kill. At long last, social connection is recognized as critical to wellness and longevity. With insight and warmth, Denworth weaves past and present, field biology and neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed for friendship across life stages, the processes by which healthy social bonds are developed and maintained, and how friendship is changing in the age of social media. Blending compelling science, storytelling, and a grand evolutionary perspective, Denworth delineates the essential role that cooperation and companionship play in creating human (and nonhuman) societies. Friendship illuminates the vital aspects of friendship, both visible and invisible, and offers a refreshingly optimistic vision of human nature. It is a clarion call for putting positive relationships at the center of our lives. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron (Routledge, 2020) offers a sampling of Lewis Aron's most important contributions to relational psychoanalysis. One of the founders of relational thinking, Aron was an internationally recognized psychoanalyst, sought after teacher, lecturer, and the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His pioneering work introduced and revolutionized the concepts of mutuality, the analyst's subjectivity, and the paradigm of mutual vulnerability in the analytic setting. During the last few years of his life, Aron was exploring the ethical considerations of writing psychoanalytic case histories and the importance of self-reflection and skepticism not only for analysts with their patients, but also as a stance towards the field of psychoanalysis itself. Aron is known for his singular, highly compelling teaching and writing style and for an unparalleled ability to convey complex, often comparative theoretical concepts in a uniquely inviting and approachable way. The reader will encounter both seminal papers on the vision and method of contemporary clinical practice, as well as cutting edge newer writing from the years just before his death. Edited and with a foreword by Galit Atlas, each chapter is preceded by a new introduction by some of the most important thinkers in our field: Jessica Benjamin, Michael Eigen, Jay Greenberg, Adrienne Harris, Stephen Hartman, Steven Kuchuck, Thomas Ogden, Joyce Slochower, Donnel Stern, Merav Roth, Chana Ullman, and Aron himself. This book will make an important addition to the libraries of experienced clinicians and psychoanalytic scholars already familiar with Aron's work, as well as students, newer professionals or anyone seeking an introduction to relational psychoanalysis and one of its most stunning, vibrant voices. Roy Barsness is a Clinical Psychoanalytic Psychologist, Founder and Executive Director of the Post-Graduate Program in Relationally-Focused Psychodynamic Therapy; Professor at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and have been in clinical practice for 30+ years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Carla Diana about her new book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). Carla Diana is a robot designer responsible for the creative aspects of Diligent Robotics’ new hospital service robot named Moxi. She created and leads the 4D Design masters program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, wrote the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince, and she cohosts the Robopsych Podcast. The author is intrigued by where technology is headed—the “electronic guts” of high-tech offerings--at the same time that she never loses focus on what kind of gut reaction a user will have in interacting with a product. This episode therefore ranges from discussing modalities central to Diana’s work (sound, movement, and lighting) to addressing how important it is for designers and engineers alike to engage in “bodystorming” exercises that align everyone around what the user’s experience will be like. Delight and ease of use are both key criteria in achieving success. If there’s a Frankenstein aspect to helping bring robots “alive,” fortunately Diana is somebody concerned with all the ethical challenges that arise. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this interview, I talked with Professor Sonia Livingstone about her book Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives (Oxford UP, 2020). The book is co-authored with Alicia Blum-Ross who is the Public Policy Lead for Kids & Families at Google. Professor Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, specifically focusing on children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Professor Livingstone currently directs the Digital Futures Commission with the 5Rights Foundation and the Global Kids Online project with UNICEF along with various other prestigious affiliations. Najarian R. Peters is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kansas and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Her research interests and teaching areas focus on privacy and emerging technology. Email her at: [email protected] or [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Jeanne Simons devoted her career as a social worker and educator to the study, treatment, and care of children with autism. In 1955, she established the Linwood Children's Center in Ellicott City, Maryland, one of the first schools dedicated to children with autism. Her Linwood Model, developed there, was widely adopted and still forms the basis for a variety of autism intervention techniques. Incredibly—although unknown at the time—Jeanne was herself autistic. Behind the Mirror: The Story of a Pioneer in Autism Treatment and Her Work with Children on the Spectrum (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) reveals the remarkable tale of Simons. In this interview I speak with Dr. Sabine Oishi, who co-author this book with Simons and also the book, the hidden child. Sabine Oishi, PhD, was educated first as a teacher and then as a child psychologist at the University of Geneva. She earned her PhD in child development and family therapy from the University of Maryland. She has worked as a teacher, researcher, and therapist both in Switzerland and the United States. With Jeanne Simons, she was the coauthor of The Hidden Child. Dr. Yakir Englander is the National Director of Leadership programs at the Israeli-American Council. He also teaches at the AJR. He can be reached at: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In The Power of Artistic Thinking: Think Like an Artist and Innovate (Common Ground, 2019; 2021 paperback), Marisol D’Andrea, PhD explores the potential of artistic thinking and shares practical guidance to help us all harness the power of artistic thinking. Through in-depth interviews and conversations with artists, scholars, and thought leaders, she has arrived at core commonalities in artistic thinking: passion and obsession; imagination and belief; observation and connection; visualization and pondering; learning and exploration; and practice and repetition. In this book, she examines these elements and translates them into practical exercises. D’Andrea writes, “Through the arts, I learned—and I hope you will learn, too—how to prioritize your thinking (i.e., follow your passions), how to think (e.g., imagine), when to think (e.g., explore), and to discover who you are (e.g., self-transform) … It was artistic thinking that empowered me and spurred me on to write this book.” Marisol D'Andrea, PhD is a visual artist, illustrator, author, and multidisciplinary researcher. She holds a doctoral degree in Leadership, Higher and Adult Education from the University of Toronto and currently resides in Canada. Susan Grelock Yusem, PhD, is independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

To many mathematicians and math enthusiasts, the word "innumeracy" brings to mind popular writing like that of John Allen Paulos. But inequities in our quantitative reasoning skills have received considerable interest and attention from researchers lately, including in psychology, development, education, and public health. Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a unified treatment of these broad-ranging studies, from the ways more and less numerate people differ in our perceptions of risk and our number-based decisions to the roots of our numeric faculties and how we can make the best of them. Dr. Ellen Peters has made significant contributions to the subject and brings her expertise and an exceptional clarity to its presentation. Precious little of the research surveyed in her book could fit into this interview! We discussed the three components of numeric ability—objective numeracy, subjective numeracy, and the innate number sense—and how they vary within and across populations. We talked through some key lessons from this literature, such as the importance of calibrating our self-efficacy to our real ability and an awareness of how our cultural allegiances can drive even our mathematical reasoning. And we identified some of the essential personal habits and policy levers (early childhood education!!) available to us in our efforts to improve our individual numeracy and our collective numeric decision-making. For a firm grounding in the state of knowledge and urgent open questions, there may be no better resource for many years to come. Suggested companion works: Contributions from the labs of Isaac Lipkus, Angela Fagerlin, John Opfer, Edward Cokely, Rocio Garcia-Retamero, Jakub Traczyk, Agata Sobków, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Keith Stanovich, and Valerie Reyna. Ellen Peters, Ph.D., is the Philip H. Knight Chair, and Director of the Center for Science Communication Research, in the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication. As a decision psychologist, she studies the basic building blocks of human judgment and decision making and their links with effective communication techniques and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers on these topics. She is former President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. She also works with federal agencies to advance decision and communication sciences in health and health policy, including having been Chair of FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee and member of the NAS’s Science of Science Communication committee. She has been awarded the Jane Beattie Scientific Recognition Award and an NIH Group Merit Award. Finally, she has received extensive funding from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Cory Brunson is a Research Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida. His research focuses on geometric and topological approaches to the analysis of medical and healthcare data. He welcomes book suggestions, listener feedback, and transparent supply chains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In The Analyst’s Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice (Bloomsbury, 2020), Mitchell Wilson explores the fundamental role that lack and desire play in psychoanalytic interpretation by using a comparative method that engages different psychoanalytic traditions: Lacanian, Bionian, Kleinian, Contemporary Freudian. Investigating crucial questions Wilson asks: What is the nature of the psychoanalytic process? How are desire and counter-transference linked? What is the relationship between desire, analytic action, and psychoanalytic ethics? Mitchell Wilson is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, USA. While in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, he obtained a postgraduate degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied the early English novel and Lacanian theory. He has been a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and has served on the editorial boards of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief of JAPA. Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Frank Buckley's new book offers some important guidance for those of us who have emerged jaded from a year of social distancing. Curiosity, and Its Twelve Rules for Life (Encounter Books, 2021) is too playful and witty to fit into the genre of self-help, and it rewards readers with a vast range of literary, cultural and religious reference. Buckley's first rule is "don't make rules" - and by tugging away at the earnest and responsible publications to which its title alludes, Curiosity encourages that fascination with ourselves and our worlds that should lead to a life well lived. Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Why do I feel bad? There is real power in understanding our bad feelings. With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (Dutton, 2019), a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds. Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations yet can become overwhelming. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low moods prevent us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but they often escalate into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the mismatch between modern environment and our ancient human past. And there are good evolutionary reasons for sexual disorders and for why genes for schizophrenia persist. Taken together, these and many more insights help to explain the pervasiveness of human suffering and show us new paths for relieving it by understanding individuals as individuals. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Freedom of choice lies at the heart of American society. Every day, individuals decide what to eat, which doctors to see, who to connect with online, and where to educate their children. Yet, many Americans don't realize that these choices are illusory at best. By the start of the 21st century, every major industrial sector in the global economy was controlled by no more than five transnational corporations, and in about a third of these sectors, a single company accounted for more than 40 percent of global sales. The available options in food, healthcare, education, transportation, and even online presence are largely constructed by corporations, whose sweeping influence have made them the public face and executive agents of 21st-century capitalism. At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (Oxford UP, 2021) confronts how globalization, financial speculation, monopolies, and control of science and technology have enhanced the ability of corporations and their allies to overwhelm influences of government, family, community, and faith. As corporations manipulate demand through skillful marketing and veto the choices that undermine their bottom line, free consumer choice has all but disappeared, and with it, the personal protections guarding our collective health. At What Cost argues that the world created by 21st-century capitalism is simply not fit to solve our most serious public health problems, from climate change to opioid addiction. However, author and public health expert Nicholas Freudenberg also shows that though the road is steep, human and planetary well-being constitute a powerful mobilizing idea for a new social movement, one that will restore the power of individual voice to our democracy. With impeccably detailed research and an eye towards a better future, At What Cost arms ordinary citizens, activists, and health professionals with an understanding of how we've arrived at the precipice, and what we can do to ensure a healthier collective future. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Michelle Schwarze’s engaging new book, Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge UP, 2020), delves into the idea and role of resentment within the political environment and how spectatorial resentment can work to support the pursuit of justice within society and political systems. Schwarze argues that resentment, as an emotion, recognizes the humanity in others, and, if realized appropriately, can help integrate emotions into political life. The liberal political project focuses so much on rationality and eliding the emotions, the turn to resentment and, from it, sympathy can seem at odds both with the modern liberal approach and with our general understanding of resentment. Schwarze’s research centers around three thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment, Bishop Joseph Butler, Adam Smith, and David Hume. Recognizing Resentment also integrates work by Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, Samuel von Pufendorf, as all of these thinkers were considering the role of sentiment, specifically sympathy within liberal society, and this is a path towards sympathetic resentment, which allows a citizen to put themselves in the shoes of another, particularly an individual who has been wronged or is a victim, and to advocate for justice on behalf of another. Spectatorial resentment is the embodiment of this capacity, this ability to adopt emotions on behalf of other people—especially anger—and this can sustain a kind of contagion sympathy. Recognizing Resentment’s focus on Butler, Hume, and Smith as their work is trying to get at the emotions that are behind justice, pursuing the specific concern with social trust. The individual needs to be able to adopt the resentment of others—this also provides a kind of equality across citizens, thus leading to a form of political equality, which is a key component of liberal society. Schwarze also discussed the pitfalls or problems with sympathetic resentment, and the forms of inequality that can undermine the capacity for true spectatorial resentment. If citizens are too stratified, particularly based on class and wealth, it becomes quite difficult to sympathize with each other. Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought leads the reader through the complexities of affect within politics and political thought, and argues for the importance of resentment within a just political order. Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at [email protected] or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

We often think the key to success and satisfaction is to get more: more money, time, and possessions; bigger budgets, job titles, and teams; and additional resources for our professional and personal goals. It turns out we're wrong. Using captivating stories to illustrate research in psychology and management, Rice University professor Scott Sonenshein examines why some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much. People and organizations approach resources in two different ways: "chasing" and "stretching." When chasing, we exhaust ourselves in the pursuit of more. When stretching, we embrace the resources we already have. This frees us to find creative and productive ways to solve problems, innovate, and engage our work and lives more fully. Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined (HarperCollins, 2017) shows why everyone--from executives to entrepreneurs, professionals to parents, athletes to artists--performs better with constraints; why seeking too many resources undermines our work and well-being; and why even those with a lot benefit from making the most out of a little. Drawing from examples in business, education, sports, medicine, and history, Scott Sonenshein advocates a powerful framework of resourcefulness that allows anybody to work and live better. Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the excellent podcast Psychologists Off the Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults - a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he'd endured. And that was the beginning of Marc's awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn't alone, he wasn't stuck on a timeline, and he wasn't "wrong" to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it. In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional well-being. His prescription for healthy children (and their parents, teachers, and schools) is a system called RULER, a high-impact and fast-effect approach to understanding and mastering emotions that has already transformed the thousands of schools that have adopted it. RULER has been proven to reduce stress and burnout, improve school climate, and enhance academic achievement. This book is the culmination of Marc's development of RULER and his way to share the strategies and skills with readers around the world. It is tested, and it works. Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive (Celadon, 2019) combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don't have to be. Marc Brackett's life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how. Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the excellent podcast Psychologists Off the Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements--both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides-- there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (Oxford UP, 2021) explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud? Michael D. Gordin both answers these questions and guides readers along a bewildering array of marginalized doctrines, looking at parapsychology (ESP), Lysenkoism, scientific racism, and alchemy, among others, to better understand the struggle to define what science is and is not, and how the controversies have shifted over the centuries. On the Fringe provides a historical tour through many of these fringe fields in order to provide tools to think deeply about scientific controversies both in the past and in our present. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In The Healing Otherness Handbook: Overcome the Trauma of Identity-Based Bullying and Find Power in Your Difference (New Harbinger, 2021), Stacee Reicherzer—a nationally known transgender psychotherapist and expert on trauma, otherness, and self-sabotage—shares her own personal story of childhood bullying, and how it inspired her to help others heal from the same wounds. Drawing from mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Reicherzer will help you gain a better understanding of how past trauma has limited your life, and show you the keys to freeing yourself from self-defeating, destructive beliefs. Stacee L. Reicherzer, PhD, is a Chicago, IL-based transgender counselor, educator, and public speaker for the stories of the bullied, forgotten, and oppressed. The San Antonio, TX, native serves as clinical faculty of counseling at Southern New Hampshire University, where she received the distinguished faculty award in 2018. She travels the globe to teach and engage audiences around diverse topics of otherness, self-sabotage, and imposter phenomenon. Website: https://www.drstacee.com/ John Marszalek III is author of Coming Out of the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples in Mississippi (2020, University Press of Mississippi). He is clinical faculty of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Southern New Hampshire University. Website: Johnmarszalek3.com Twitter: @marsjf3 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Debbie Sorensen about her book, co-authored with Diana Hill, ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (New Harbinger, 2021). When you are faced with life’s challenges, it’s easy to lose track of what’s important, get stuck in your thoughts and emotions, and become bogged down by day-to-day problems. Even if you’ve made a commitment to live according to your core values, the ‘real-world’ has a way of driving a wedge between you and a deeper, more meaningful life. Now there’s a flexible program for learning how to practice a popular, proven-effective therapy protocol on your schedule! With The ACT Daily Journal, you’ll learn all about the six core processes of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)—including mindfulness, acceptance, and values-based living—and even learn about a seventh: self-compassion. If there was ever a time to adopt the ACT approach to living, it’s now. By applying ACT to your life, you’ll learn how to roll with life’s punches, and stay in contact with the present moment, even when you have unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. The gift of being present is becoming increasingly valuable in these uncertain times of conflict and chaos; it’s never been so important to live flexibly, with more meaning, and with a deeper understanding of shared struggles and our inherent humanity. ACT is more than just a therapy—it’s a framework for living well. It helps us accept. It teaches us to make a commitment to what we deeply care about. And it works best when practiced daily. Let this journal guide you toward what really matters to you. Debbie Sorensen, PhD is a psychologist in private practice in Denver, Colorado. I have a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. See is a co-founder of Impact Psychology Colorado, a collective of therapists in Colorado, and the Healthcare Wellbeing Collective, which provides resources for Healthcare Professionals. She holds a part-time position as a Clinical Research Psychologist at the Rocky Mountain VA MIRECC for Suicide Prevention. She co-created and co-host the popular psychology podcast Psychologists Off the Clock. Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA. You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this episode, host J.J. Mull interviews Daniel José Gaztambide about his book, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology (Lexington Books, 2021). The project traces a global intellectual lineage spanning from the first generation of analysts in Europe to Harlem, the Caribbean, and finally, to Latin America. Challenging a broader cultural narrative that conceives of psychoanalysis as somehow fundamentally “white” or euro-centric, Gaztambide presents a radical and politicized version of psychoanalytic thought inherited and expanded by thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire and Ignacio Martín-Baró. J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and graduate student at Smith College School for Social Work living in Northampton, MA. He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. 16 million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their seventies and eighties, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025. Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer's: How Science, Culture, and Politics Turned a Rare Disease into a Crisis and What We Can Do About It (St. Martin's Press, 2021) traces Alzheimer’s from its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. While it is an unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our health care systems’ failures to take action, it tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine and also presents an argument for how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients better quality of life. Rich in science, history, and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer's takes us inside laboratories, patients' homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive care communities, and Jason Karlawish's own practice at the Penn Memory Center. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) was a leading neo-Kantian who developed a systematic view of how we construct and experience culture, widely construed to include mathematics, science, religion, myth, art, politics, ethics and other social endeavors. In Cassirer (Routledge 2021), Samantha Matherne explains how Cassirer updates Kant to develop his critical idealism in the form of a distinction between substance and function – the mind-dependent objects we cognize, and the structure of our minds that these objects depend on. He uses this view in his broad philosophy of symbolic forms, unpacking the way we build up the cultural world around us and our lived experience in that cultural world. Matherne, who is an assistant professor of philosophy at Harvard University, brings Cassirer’s work to life for those beyond his contemporary influences in the metaphysics of science, the philosophy of art, and the insertion of myth into the politics of fascism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Jon Levy about his new book You’re Invited: The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence (Harper Business, 2021). Jon Levy is a behavioral scientist who over a decade ago founded The Influencer Dinner, a secret dining experience for industry leaders. He’s the author of The 2 AM Principle: Discover the Science of Adventure and has also served as a consultant on influence, connectivity and decision making for companies looking to transform how they do business. This episode starts with discussing Jon’s idea of launching dinners where famous people would come together to cook a meal, talk, and clean up afterwards. It grew from there to covering why connectivity is so important, and what can make an event compelling: generosity, novelty, (good) curation, and the ability to create a sense of awe. Without pushing oneself, in other words, the event can’t by definition be remarkable. Another insight is what Jon calls the IKEA Effect; just as putting your own furniture together makes you commit more to it, so likewise does an event benefit by having people come together in an activity or activities where they feel engaged and hence have a greater sense of belonging. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that could not seem more foreign to our own: sea sponges, soft corals, and serpulid worms, whose rooted bodies, intricate geometry, and flower-like appendages are more reminiscent of plant life or even architecture than anything recognizably animal. Yet these creatures are our cousins. As fellow members of the animal kingdom—the Metazoa—they can teach us much about the evolutionary origins of not only our bodies, but also our minds. In his acclaimed 2016 book, Other Minds, the philosopher and scuba diver Peter Godfrey-Smith explored the mind of the octopus—the closest thing to an intelligent alien on Earth. In Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind (FSG, 2020), Godfrey-Smith expands his inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of subjective experience with the assistance of far-flung species. As he delves into what it feels like to perceive and interact with the world as other life-forms do, Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the animal body well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path. In accessible, riveting prose, he charts the ways that subsequent evolutionary developments—eyes that track, for example, and bodies that move through and manipulate the environment—shaped the subjective lives of animals. Following the evolutionary paths of a glass sponge, soft coral, banded shrimp, octopus, and fish, then moving onto land and the world of insects, birds, and primates like ourselves, Metazoa gathers their stories together in a way that bridges the gap between mind and matter, addressing one of the most vexing philosophical problems: that of consciousness. Combining vivid animal encounters with philosophical reflections and the latest news from biology, Metazoa reveals that even in our high-tech, AI-driven times, there is no understanding our minds without understanding nerves, muscles, and active bodies. The story that results is as rich and vibrant as life itself. Peter Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of the bestselling Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, which has been published in more than twenty languages. His other books include Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, which won the 2010 Lakatos Award. Mark Molloy is the reviews editor at MAKE: A Literary Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: the challenges Kaylah Marcello, a STEM graduate student at UC Davis, suddenly faced when she was having coffee with a friend in mid-March 2020 and her phone rang telling her that her son’s elementary school was closing down. She quickly realized she couldn’t work in the lab she was assigned to while homeschooling her son. Kaylah shares openly about her personal history, her mental health struggles, and why taking care of herself was crucial to taking care of her family and her own educational goals. Our guest is: Kaylah Marcello, a Microbiology PhD student at the University of California, Davis. Kaylah is researching cold tolerance genes that support photosynthesis in Antarctic cyanobacteria with Dr. Dawn Sumner. She has been a teaching assistant for in-person microbiology lab courses during the pandemic. Prior to pursuing a graduate education, she was a transfer student from the California Community College system to the UC system. She is passionate about science communication, educational outreach, mental health awareness and making academia more accessible to people who would otherwise not pursue it. She is a mother and an all-around science enthusiast, taking life one minute at a time. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Postpartum depression resources California community colleges Dr. Dawn Sumner Lab https://dysumner.faculty.ucdavis.edu/ Dr. Miriam Martin’s interview about her own graduate school experiences Antarctic Cyanobacteria UC Davis COVID testing initiative Creating a support system in grad school Discussions about the Mind and Mindfulness Dr. Christina Gessler is a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. In this episode you’ll hear about: mental wellness services on campus, asking for help, embracing who you are, and why you need support to succeed at your life. Our guest is: Elisabeth Gonella, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has worked in the mental health and spiritual counseling fields for over 25 years. The early years of her career were spent working primarily with adolescents in various institutional settings where she facilitated therapeutic wilderness programs, Gestalt based group therapy, expressive arts, and daily activities as a vehicle for self-reflection. She has received training in working with substance abuse and dually diagnosed clients in both in-patient and out-patient settings. Currently, Elisabeth is seeing clients in private practice and in a College Counseling and Psychological Services Department. Elisabeth develops curriculum for The Therapist Development Center assisting hundreds of interns to pass the MFT exams (both California and National). Since 2012, Elisabeth has served as an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Elisabeth is a clinical member of both the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists and the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. She is also a graduate of Community Choir Leadership Training and facilitates Community Singing in Santa Barbara, California to promote well-being through music. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender. Listeners to this episode might be interested in: Elisabeth’s website Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom, MD The documentary film Finding Joe Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow, the Ted Talk: The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work by Joseph Campbell Acacia Counseling and Wellness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Believers: Faith in Human Nature (Norton, 2019) is a scientist's answer to attacks on faith by some well-meaning scientists and philosophers. It is a firm rebuke of the "Four Horsemen"--Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens--known for writing about religion as something irrational and ultimately harmful. Anthropologist Melvin Konner, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew but has lived his adult life without such faith, explores the psychology, development, brain science, evolution, and even genetics of the varied religious impulses we experience as a species. Conceding that faith is not for everyone, he views religious people with a sympathetic eye; his own upbringing, his apprenticeship in the trance-dance religion of the African Bushmen, and his friends and explorations in Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and other faiths have all shaped his perspective. Faith has always manifested itself in different ways--some revelatory and comforting; some kind and good; some ecumenical and cosmopolitan; some bigoted, coercive, and violent. But the future, Konner argues, will both produce more nonbelievers, and incline the religious among us--holding their own by having larger families--to increasingly reject prejudice and aggression. A colorful weave of personal stories of religious--and irreligious--encounters, as well as new scientific research, Believers shows us that religion does much good as well as undoubted harm, and that for at least a large minority of humanity, the belief in things unseen neither can nor should go away. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Through discussion of his famous 1970s experiment alongside new research, in Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can (Columbia University Press, 2019), Herbert Terrace argues that, despite the failure of famous attempts to teach primates to speak, from these efforts we can learn something important: the missing link between non-linguistic and linguistic creatures is the ability to use words, not to form sentences. Situating language-learning as a capacity gained through conversation, not primarily representing internal thought, Terrace takes naming as the first step towards language. By drawing on research in developmental psychology, paleoanthropology, and linguistics, Terrace builds a case for understanding human language as grounded in social interaction between mother and child, rather than an inevitable, asocial result of a person’s development. Malcolm Keating is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale-NUS College. His research focuses on Sanskrit philosophy of language and epistemology. He is the author of Language, Meaning, and Use in Indian Philosophy (Bloomsbury Press, 2019) and host of the podcast Sutras (and stuff). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this episode, I interview Kas Saghafi, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis, about his book The World After the End of the World, published through SUNY Press in 2020. In this book, Kas Saghafi argues that the notion of “the end the world” in Derrida’s late work is not a theological or cosmological matter, but a meditation on mourning and the death of the other. He examines this and several other tightly knit motifs in Derrida’s work: mourning, survival, the phantasm, the event, and most significantly, the term salut, which in French means at once greeting and salvation. An underlying concern of The World after the End of the World is whether a discourse on salut (saving, being saved, and salvation) can be dissociated from discourse on religion. Saghafi compares Derrida’s thought along these lines with similar concerns of Jean-Luc Nancy’s. Combining analysis of these themes with reflections on personal loss, this book maintains that, for Derrida, salutation, greeting, and welcoming is resistant to the economy of salvation. This resistance calls for what Derrida refers to as a “spectro-poetics” devoted to and assigned to the other’s singularity. Britt Edelen is a Ph.D. student in English at Duke University. He focuses on modernism and the relationship(s) between language, philosophy, and literature. You can find him on Twitter or send him an email. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Economist, data journalist, and best-selling author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses data from the internet to gain new insights into the human psyche. In his new book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are (HarperCollins, 2017), Seth has used Google searches to measure racism, self-induced abortion, depression, child abuse, hateful mobs, the science of humor, sexual preference, anxiety, son preference, and sexual insecurity, among many other topics. In this interview he explains how web searches are a kind of digital truth serum that reveals our hidden desires, insecurities and biases. He also explores other ways economists have used the explosion of new data created by the digitization of the economy to shed new light on old questions. Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of San Francisco, where he created and leads a new digital economy-focused Master's program in Applied Economics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In an era of increasing social isolation, platforms like Facebook and Twitter are among the most important tools we have to understand each other. We use social media as a mirror to decipher our place in society but, as Christopher A. Bail explains, it functions more like a prism that distorts our identities, empowers status-seeking extremists, and renders moderates all but invisible. Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing (Princeton University Press, 2021) challenges common myths about echo chambers, foreign misinformation campaigns, and radicalizing algorithms, revealing that the solution to political tribalism lies deep inside ourselves. Drawing on innovative online experiments and in-depth interviews with social media users from across the political spectrum, this book explains why stepping outside of our echo chambers can make us more polarized, not less. Bail takes you inside the minds of online extremists through vivid narratives that trace their lives on the platforms and off—detailing how they dominate public discourse at the expense of the moderate majority. Wherever you stand on the spectrum of user behavior and political opinion, he offers fresh solutions to counter political tribalism from the bottom up and the top down. He introduces new apps and bots to help readers avoid misperceptions and engage in better conversations with the other side. Finally, he explores what the virtual public square might look like if we could hit “reset” and redesign social media from scratch through a first-of-its-kind experiment on a new social media platform built for scientific research. Providing data-driven recommendations for strengthening our social media connections, Breaking the Social Media Prism shows how to combat online polarization without deleting our accounts. Marshall Poe is the founder and editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Apps have transformed dating from a mysterious adventure into a daily chore. Young, single, college-educated women are sick and tired of competing for a shrinking supply of guys. And marriage-material men, long expected to take the lead when it comes to asking women out, are suddenly balking at making the first move, fearing they'll come across as creepy or inappropriate. Society is changing, which means it's time for dating to evolve. Millennial and Gen Z women are more than capable of seeking out what—and who—they want. They're standouts in the classroom and champions on the playing fields. They're leaders in the workplace and trailblazers in city halls, state houses, and Congress. So why would we tell a generation of badass women that they're not allowed to be bold when it comes to finding love? Why should they have to sit back and wait (and wait and wait) for men to find them? In Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge (Benbella, 2021), Jon Birger, author of Date-onomics, offers women bold new strategies for finding the one. Backed by research showing that women can win at romance by making the first move with the men of their choice, Birger explains why: It's better to choose than to be chosen The "play hard to get" method is not only outdated but grounded in bad science The first move does not have to be a big move It's time to log off of dating apps and date men you actually know The workplace can be a terrific place to meet a long-term romantic partner . . . and more! Make Your Move is an honest, solution-based guide to finding love that lasts. If you're tired of playing by old rules, look no further: Make your move and win Jon Birger is an award-winning writer, a contributor to Fortune, and the author of Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game. A former senior writer at both Fortune and Money, Jon's work has also appeared in Barron's, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, New York Magazine, Time, and Washington Post. He was included on AlwaysOn Network's list of "Power Players in Technology Business Media." A familiar face and voice on television and radio, Jon has been a guest on ABC's Good Morning America, BBC World Service, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and Fox News-discussing a wide range of topics from the dating market to the stock market to oil market. Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA. You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Eric Rupp about his book The Transformational Travel Journal: Your Guide to Creating a Life-Changing Journey (TTC, 2020). Eric Rupp is a founding partner at the Transformational Travel Council, and runs an insightful naturalist guiding company. He’s a traveler, storyteller, an engineer, a carpenter, a designer, and a woodsman. He’s built traditional Spanish stone homes in Andalucia, Spain, and run a small university in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. He currently splits his time on- and off-grid around Seattle, Washington. My favorite part of this episode was Eric describing the Unpacking List before you go on a trip, i.e., preparing to dispense with one’s usual routines and mental habits to prepare for the life-affirming physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and mental challenge that a fulfilling travel experience will entail. Along the way, the episode touches on Joseph Campbell’s “hero” narrative, as a good journey has both an internal and external component. The episode also looks at how one might form new neural pathways through immersive sensory and social activities, and grow via meaningful conversations with fellow travelers. Finally, no journey is complete without reflecting on it afterwards. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

MeaningFULL: 23 Life Changing Stories of Conquering Dieting, Weight, & Body Image Issues (Unsolicited Press, 2021) is a blend of motivational self-help, memoir, psychology, and health and wellness. Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, an expert in eating and body image issues, and a woman on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food and body. A $702 billion global diet/nutrition and weight loss industry shows that people worldwide are devoted to achieving maximum health and their desired bodies. Yet mainstream approaches are failing these individuals, and sadly, science proves this. Intent on gaining the "health" and "happiness" that diets promise, consumers keep trying. They become sad and frustrated, believing they're failing when they're not. They simply need a legitimate, alternative path, which MeaningFULL offers. Through the contributors' diverse, real-life mini-memoirs followed by Spotts-De Lazzer's commentaries, readers will learn about themselves and discover their unique, unconventional formulas for conquering their issues. Along the way, MeaningFULL will also guide them towards more self-appreciation, wellness, and fulfillment. Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, a CEDS Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, a CEDS Supervisor, and a person on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food battles and body dislike. Alli has presented educational workshops at conferences, graduate schools, and hospitals; published articles in academic journals, trade magazines, and online information hubs; and appeared as an eating disorders expert on local news. For more information you can visit her website https://therapyhelps.us/ Her professional-related volunteerism includes co-chairing committees for both the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals and the Academy for Eating Disorders and creating #ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance!(R), a series of public events sparking conversations about self-acceptance through fun, motivating messages. She was named the 2017 iaedp Member of the Year, and Mayor Garcetti declared July 13, 2017 #ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance! Day in the City of Los Angeles. Alli feels fortunate to share MeaningFULL with readers. She regards it as the book I needed years ago. Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA. You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

For centuries, science has largely dismissed the idea that animals experience complex emotions, despite the fact the most humans who’ve spent time in the company of animals would argue otherwise. While research on animal subjectivity is expanding, we still know relatively little about the complexities of non-humans’ emotional lives. Teya Brooks Pribac’s new book, Enter the Animal: Cross-Species Perspectives on Grief and Spirituality, published this year by Sydney University Press, examines the scientific and cultural discourse surrounding animal grief and spirituality. Her interdisciplinary approach combines scientific research with a discussion of psychology and attachment theory, and argues for commonalities of experience shared by many—if not all—living creatures. Brooks Pribac is an independent researcher in the area of animal studies, with a particular interest in cross species grief as well as spirituality as a bodily-focused, non-denominational engagement. She lives in the rural Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The conventional approach to suicide is psychiatric: ask the average person why people kill themselves, and they will likely cite depression. But this approach fails to recognize suicide’s social causes. People kill themselves because of breakups and divorces, because of lost jobs and ruined finances, because of public humiliations and the threat of arrest. While some psychological approaches address external stressors, this comprehensive study is the first to systematically examine suicide as a social behavior with social catalysts. Drawing on Donald Black’s theories of conflict management and pure sociology, Suicide: The Social Causes of Self-Destruction (University of Virginia Press, 2020) presents a new theory of the social conditions that compel an aggrieved person to turn to self-destruction. Interpersonal conflict plays a central but under-appreciated role in the incidence of suicide. Examining a wide range of cross-cultural cases, Jason Manning argues that suicide arises from increased inequality and decreasing intimacy, and that conflicts are more likely to become suicidal when they occur in a context of social inferiority. As suicide rates continue to rise around the world, this timely new theory can help clinicians, scholars, and members of the general public to explain and predict patterns of self-destructive behavior. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Microaggressions have been identified as a common and troubling cause of low retention and poor psychotherapy outcomes for people of color. All therapists want and intend to be helpful to their clients, but many unknowingly committing microaggressions due to unconscious biases and misconceptions about people from ethnic and racial minority groups. Managing Microaggressions: Addressing Everyday Racism in Therapeutic Spaces (Oxford UP, 2020) is intended for mental health clinicians who want to be more effective in their use of evidence-based practices with people of color. Many well-intentioned clinicians lack the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively engage those who are ethnoracially different. This book discusses the theoretical basis of the problem (microaggressions), the cognitive-behavioral mechanisms by which the problem is maintained, and how to remedy the problem using CBT principles, with a focus on the role of the therapist. Not only will readers learn how to avoid offending or harming their clients, they will also be better equipped to help clients navigate microaggressions they encounter in their daily lives. Managing Microaggressions will endow clinicians with a clear understanding of these behaviors and the errors that underpin them, leading to more successful therapy. Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade of disruptions in the 1970s, and among the rattled fixtures of American society was mainstream psychiatry. A "Radical Caucus" formed within the psychiatric profession and the "antipsychiatry" movement arose. Critics charged that the mental health establishment was complicit with the military-industrial complex, patients were released from mental institutions, and powerful antipsychotic drugs became available. Meanwhile, practitioners and patients experimented with new approaches to mental health, from primal screaming and the therapeutic use of psychedelics to a new reliance on quantification. In Break on Through: Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture (MIT Press, 2020), Lucas Richert investigates the radical challenges to psychiatry and to the conventional treatment of mental health that emerged in the 1970s and the lessons they offer for current debates. Drawing on archives and government documents, medical journals, and interviews, and interweaving references to pop (counter)culture into his account, Richert offers fascinating stories of the decade's radical mental health practices. He discusses anti-Vietnam War activism and the new diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder given to some veterans; the radical psychiatrists who fought the system (and each other); the entry of New Age-style therapies, including Esalen's Human Potential Movement, into the laissez-faire therapeutic marketplace of the 1970s; the development of DSM III; and the use of LSD, cannabis, and MDMA. Many of these issues have resonance today. Debates over medical marijuana and microdoses of psychedelics echo debates of the 1970s. With rising rates of such disorders as anxiety and depression, practitioners and patients continue to search for therapeutic breakthroughs. C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In a culture where women are still paid less for doing the same jobs, expected to juggle family and career effortlessly, and faced with the harsh realities of misogyny and sexism daily, it's no wonder you're also twice as likely to experience issues related to anxiety and trauma. But there are real tools you can use now to build personal resilience in a difficult world, move past anxious thoughts, and conquer your worries and fears. This book will help guide the way. Be Mighty: A Woman's Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry, and Stress Using Mindfulness and Acceptance (New Harbinger, 2020) leads you on a bold quest to gain a deeper understanding of your anxiety by exploring your own "origin story"--how your early experiences led to thoughts and behaviors that may have offered comfort and protection at one time, but are now keeping you from living your best life. Using practical tools and experiential exercises based in mindfulness and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), you'll learn to respond to present-day triggers in a new way, making choices from a more conscious, values-driven place. So, drop that outdated armor and dive headlong into this book. You'll emerge fresh and fierce, with the confidence to stand up for the life you want to live and the power to face life's complexities as your best, most authentic self. It's time to be who you truly want to be. It's time for you to be mighty Debbie Sorensen is a psychologist in Denver and is the co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (W. W. Norton & Company, 2021), anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field, led by leading creativity thinkers like Barron and Montuori, have helped it establish creativity as an important discipline in its own right. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, the institutionalization of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardization, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfillment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterize systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. Originally from Colombia, Jóse-Rodriguo Córdoba-Pachón brings his background as a software developer, entrepreneur, academic—and father of young twins—to Managing Creativity: A Systems Thinking Journey (Routledge, 2018). He shares personal vulnerabilities and setbacks as rich context for his own systems thinking journey as a creator and invites the reader to explore deeply what creativity means for him/her/them. While Córdoba-Pachón possesses a deep understanding and appreciation for the primary creativity thinking lineages, it is ‘creativity as socio-cultural phenomenon’ that most intrigues him and influences his work (joining Montuori and others in de-bunking the ‘lone genius’ myth). He offers that there is an opportunity to apply additional systems ideas to creativity, building on those who have previously researched creativity in the systems thinking context such as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Córdoba-Pachón aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking (AST) can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. Managing Creativity uses the systems idea as an ‘enquiring device’ to bring together different actors to promote reflection and action about creative possibilities. Córdoba-Pachón offers conceptualizations, applications and reflections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Insights from Managing Creativity act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, students grappling with an uncertain future, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organizations. Córdoba-Pachón suggests that “promoting open (and random) as well as responsible engagement in creativity could help us shift... and engage differently and systemically with things ‘out there’— the risks and uncertainty, ‘shit’ and serendipity”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America (Rutgers UP, 2021) explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing in particular on the influence of phrenology. In the United States, phrenology shaped the production of medico-legal knowledge around crime, the treatment of the criminal within prisons and in public discourse, and sociocultural expectations about the causes of crime. The criminal was phrenology’s ideal research and demonstration subject, and the courtroom and the prison were essential spaces for the staging of scientific expertise. In particular, phrenology constructed ways of looking as well as a language for identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in American culture, law, and medicine, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to David G. White, Jr. about his book Disrupting Corporate Culture: How Cognitive Science Alters Accepted Beliefs About Culture and Culture Change and Its Impact on Leaders and Change Agents (Routledge, 2021). David G. White, Jr. is a cognitive anthropologist working with organizations on culture, change, and leadership issues. He’s the co-founder of Ontos Global, a boutique consulting firm. David previously held leadership roles at Microsoft, Mercer, and IBM, and he is also a professional jazz musician with 7 CDs to his credit. This episode challenges myths that hinder true culture change at companies, such as Culture Starts at the Top and Culture Is What We Say We Care About. Instead, David argues that new neural pathways form in the brain based on tangible, physical practices that change. So leaders spouting off about “shared values” (talking the talk) won’t be nearly as productive as investigating a company’s dominant logic and how that may serve or hinter the company’s prospects. In other words, David argues that culture is shaped by tasks and the basic operating assumptions that underlie them. Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of eight books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

W. Pearson and H. Marlo's The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2020) examines the interaction of spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages with psychotherapy in everyday practice. Written by a team of seasoned clinicians and illustrated through clinical vignettes, chapters explore topics pertaining to the mystical dimensions of psychological and spiritual life and how it may be integrated into clinical practice. Topics discussed include dreams, dissociation, creativity, therapeutic relationship, free association, transcendence, poetry, paradox, doubleness, loss, death, grief, mystery, embodiment and soul. The authors, clinicians with decades of experience in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and spiritual practice, draw from their deep engagement with spirituality and psychoanalysis, focusing on a particular theme and its application to clinical work that is supported by the generative conversation among these lineages. At once applied and theoretical, this book weaves insights from the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, Ecumenicism, Integral Spirituality, Judaism, Kabbalah, Non-violence, Sufism and Vedanta. They are in conversation with psychoanalytic perspectives including Jungian, Post-Jungian, Winnicottian, Bionian, Post-Bionian and Relational. A felt sense of the spiritual psyche in clinical practice emerges from this conversation among spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages, beckoning clinicians ever further on the path of spiritually rooted, psychodynamic practice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology