New Books in Psychology

Is love between man and woman the source of wisdom and the cornerstone of moral life? Naftali Rothenberg says it is, based on the works and life of the first century Jewish scholar and sage, Rabbi Akiva. In Rabbi Akiva’s Philosophy of Love (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) Rothenberg explores the philosophy of love through the thought and life of Rabbi Akiva whose life was transformed by the love of his wife, Rachel. From this starting point, Naftali Rothenberg conducts a thorough examination of the harmonious approach to love in the obstacle-laden context of human reality. Discussing the deterioration of passion into simple lust, the ability to contend with suffering and death, and so forth, Rothenberg addresses the deepest and most pressing questions about human love. The readings and observations offered here allow readers to acquire the wisdom of love—not merely as an assemblage of theoretical arguments and abstract statements, but as an analysis of the internal contradictions and difficulties revealed in the context of attempts to realize and implement harmonious love. Renee Garfinkel is a Jerusalem-based psychologist, writer, and television & radio commentator. Write her at [email protected] or tweet Renee Garfinkel@embracingwisdom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word “namaste” without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents. Harris found that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him less annoying. Science suggests that the practice can lower your blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain. So what’s holding you back? In their new book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book (Spielgel and Grau, 2017), authors Jeff Warren, Dan Harris, and Carlye Adler, offer an irreverent exploration of the how’s and why’s of meditation. They translate the science and practice of meditation with wisdom, wit, and by revealing their own personal challenges. They tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that keep people from meditating, and offer game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a 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

Over the past forty years, U.S. prisons and jails have used various psychotropic drugs. In this interview, Anthony Ryan Hatch discusses the need to think deeply about mass incarceration, pharmaceuticals, and psychiatry. He talks about the role of pharmacies and drug experiments in prison settings, and he underlines the ways that institutions themselves can be addicted to drugs. These are just a few of the topics that he examines in his recent book, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America(University of Minnesota Press, 2019). And, importantly, he also offers thoughts about recovery from this addiction. Lucas Richert is an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studies intoxicating substances and the pharmaceutical industry. He also examines the history of mental health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

How does perception result in thoughts about items in the world (such as dogs or flowers) and in conscious states of many kinds (such as experiences of seeing red)? How does perception provide evidence for our beliefs (such as the belief that there is a red rose in front of you)? In The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, and Evidence (Oxford University Press, 2018), Susanna Schellenberg considers these questions about the role of perception in mind and knowledge. Schellenberg, who is professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Rutgers University, offers a unified account of perception as the capacity to discriminate and single out particulars, and defends the answers that “capacitism” provides to such questions as the relation between perception and consciousness and the way in which hallucinators and perceivers share some types of evidence for their beliefs but differ importantly in others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Nowadays it seems that even high-performing kids are acutely stressed and lacking motivation. Many feel that they have no control over their own lives. Some stumble in high school, or hit college and unravel. As parents, we can only drive our kids so far; at some point, they will have to take the wheel and map out their own path. The Self-Driven Child (Penguin, 2019) written by Dr. William Stixrud, a clinical neuropsychologist, and Ned Johnson, a motivational coach who runs an elite tutoring service, offers a combination of cutting-edge brain science, the latest discoveries in behavioral therapy, and case studies drawn from the thousands of kids and teens. Together, Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson discovered that the best antidote to stress is to give kids more of a sense of control over their lives. But this doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. In this groundbreaking book they reveal how you can actively help your child to sculpt a brain that is resilient, and ready to take on new challenges. In this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Stixrud about how to support healthy development, self-motivation, and emotional resilience in our kids. They discuss more effective approaches to dealing with homework battles, technology use, and underage drinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

A pivotal development in the history of psychology was the invention of family systems theory by psychiatrist Murray Bowen. He was among the first to observe families in a naturalistic setting, and his observations informed his ideas about families as ‘systems’ that functioned as ‘emotional units.’ Michael E. Kerr served as Dr. Bowen’s right-hand-man for many years, and he recently published a book showcasing the unique insights offered by family systems theory, entitled Bowen Theory’s Secrets: Revealing the Hidden Life of Families (Norton & Company, 2019). In our interview, Dr. Kerr discusses Murray Bowen’s journey from curious psychiatry resident to household name, and he explains with unique clarity and thoroughness some of the most revolutionary ideas from systems theory. This interview will interest anyone interested in better understanding how families function and the reciprocal influences between individuals and their families. Michael E. Kerr, M.D. is a psychiatrist who has specialized in the practice of Bowen theory-guided family therapy for over 45 years. He became Emeritus Director of the Bowen Center for the Study of the Family in 2011 after succeeding Murray Bowen ad directing the Center for 20 years. He is President of the Bowen Theory Academy in Islesboro, Maine. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is also a university psychologist at Florida International University’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, where he coordinates the eating disorders service. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Given our modern scientific view of the world, how is freedom of the will possible? That is the classical problem of free will. Strategies for addressing this problem include the flat denial of free will, as well as various attempts to render free will consistent with a physically deterministic world. Among these latter, there’s a tendency to redefine free will in a way that dissolves the apparent tension between freedom and determinism. In his new book, Why Free Will is Real (Harvard University Press, 2019), Christian List defends a robust conception of free will according to which it requires intentional agency, alternative possibilities, and causal control. He argues that humans indeed have free will, and this free will is consistent with a naturalistic and scientific world view. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Adolescence is a unique developmental period of life, during which we face the challenges and pressures of moving from childhood into independent adulthood. Evolutionarily, adolescence is a time of risk-taking and growing independence, and one of the important developmental tasks is to learn to respond to thoughts and emotions in a helpful way, in order to live a full and meaningful life. In this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Debbie Sorensen interviews Dr. Louise Hayes about her book, The Thriving Adolescent(Context Press, 2015), which offers teachers and mental health professionals evidence-based techniques for understanding and working effectively with adolescents. Based in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the developmental model outlined by Dr. Hayes will help adolescents and teens manage difficult emotions, connect with their values, achieve mindfulness and vitality, and develop positive relationships with friends and family. Debbie Sorensen, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Denver, Colorado and a 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

American society is deeply divided at this moment—not just on values and opinions but on basic perceptions of reality. In their latest book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in American Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2019), Morgan Marietta and David Barker attribute such division to the natural human tendency towards having different versions of reality. They introduce the concept of ‘dueling fact perceptions’ based on years of research, and for our interview, Morgan Marietta explains how they arrived at such conclusions and their implications for our country’s future. We have a sobering conversation about how fact-checking and greater education will not fix the problem of dueling fact perceptions, and we address the importance of trust—in our politicians, media, and other information sources—can ultimately shape how we use information to advance our beliefs. This interview is essential for those seeking to making sense of our current political climate and will provide realistic but thoughtful answers to many of your persistent questions about it. Morgan Marietta is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where he studies the political consequences of belief. His prior books include The Politics of Sacred Rhetoric: Absolutist Appeals and Political Influence, and A Citizen’s Guide to American Ideology: Conservatism and Liberalism in Contemporary Politics. He and co-author David Barker write the "Inconvenient Facts" blog at Psychology Today. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is also a university psychologist at Florida International University’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, where he coordinates the eating disorders service. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric in the Department of Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo—is joined by co-host and recent Geneseo Graduate Haley Wigsten to interview Derek Gaunt (he/his)expert trainer and coach at the Black Swan Group--on his thrilling new book Ego, Authority, Failure: Using Emotional Intelligence Like a Hostage Negotiator to Succeed as a Leader (New Degree Press, 2019). Gaunt is a lecturer and author who trained for 29 years in law enforcement; for 20 of those years, he was leader, then commander, of a hostage negotiations team. Ego, Authority, Failure uses the fundamentals of hostage negotiations leadership (HNL) to teach readers practical strategies for increasing their leadership potential and negotiating uncomfortable situations. Gaunt uses real-life stories of successes and failures in leadership and negotiations which are both compelling and pragmatic to readers’ own lives. The book is a must-read for anyone who has felt that they could improve on their own tactical empathy, emotional intelligence, and negotiation skills. Learn more about Gaunt and his team at the Black Swan Group 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 order to explain thought in natural physical systems, mainstream cognitive science posits representations, or internal states that carry information about the world and that are used by the system to guide its behavior. Naturalistic theories of representation provide explanations of what information, or content, these internal states carry, and how they come to have the contents that they do. In Representation in Cognitive Science (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nicholas Shea approaches the problem from the perspective of the role that the contents of subpersonal states play in explanations of a system’s behavior. Shea, who is professor of philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London, offers a theory that integrates two main components – task functions and exploitable relations – into a pluralist view called Varitel Semantics. He presents and defends his account and considers how it fares in relation to competitor theories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Donnel Stern has been a key figure in the advancement of interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis since his initial writings on unformulated experience in the 1980s, in which he offered a fresh perspective on what constitutes the unconscious. Since then, he has consistently been on the cutting edge of theoretical developments in the unconscious and dissociation, and he continues such innovation in his new book, The Infinity of the Unsaid: Unformulated Experience, Language, and the Nonverbal (Routledge, 2019). In the book, he addresses the place of nonverbal meaning in unformulated experience and psychoanalytic practice. In our interview, we discuss the inspiration for this evolution in his theory and its implications for our understanding of how psychotherapy works. This episode will be of interest to anyone that is fascinated by the workings talk therapy and the unconscious mind. Donnel Stern is a training and supervising analyst at William Alanson White Institute in New York City and adjunct clinical professor of psychology and clinical consultant at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is the founder and editor of the Routledge book series Psychoanalysis in a New Key and author and editor of many articles and books. His most recent authored book is Relational Freedom: Emergent Properties of the Interpersonal Field (Routledge, 2015), and his landmark book, which started it all, is Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2003). Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is also a university psychologist at Florida International University’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, where he coordinates the eating disorders service. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (Routledge, 2018). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a cutting-edge and evidence-based form of cognitive behavioral therapy. ACT concepts and principles help us heal from pain, make life affirming choices, and build happiness. ACT has been shown to help individuals with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, relationship problems, and general stress improve their happiness and general well-being. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews ACT expert Dr. Jill Stoddard. Metaphors and exercises play an incredibly important part in the successful delivery of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). These powerful tools go far in helping clients connect with their values and give them the motivation needed to make a real, conscious commitment to change. Dr. Stoddard’s book, The Big Book of ACT Metaphors: A Practitioner’s Guide to Experiential Exercises and Metaphors in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (New Harbinger Publication, 2014), offers an essential A-Z resource guide that includes tons of new metaphors and experiential exercises to help promote client acceptance, defusion from troubling thoughts, and values-based action. The book also includes scripts tailored to different client populations, and special metaphors and exercises that address unique problems that may sometimes arise in your therapy sessions. Several ACT texts and workbooks have been published for the treatment of a variety of psychological problems. However, no one resource exists where you can find an exhaustive list of metaphors and experiential exercises geared toward the six core elements of ACT. Whether you are treating a client with anxiety, depression, trauma, or an eating disorder, this book will provide you with the skills needed to improve lives, one exercise at a time. About Dr. Jill Stoddard Jill Stoddard, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, the director of the Center for Stress & Anxiety Management in Carlsbad. She received her Ph.D. from the renowned Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders under the mentorship of David Barlow. Jill is an award winning teacher and peer-reviewed ACT trainer who has presented at local, national and international conferences and has co-authored articles on CBT, ACT, anxiety disorders, and cardiac and chronic pain. Her newest book, Be Mighty: A Woman's Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry, and Stress Using Mindfulness and Acceptance can be pre-ordered and will be released this year by New Harbinger. Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a 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

Whether graduating from college, starting a career, trying to gain financial independence, or creating meaningful relationships—entering into the world of grownups can be more than a little overwhelming. And while there are plenty of fun books out there for young adults offering advice on how to fix a leaky faucet or find the right apartment, none really delve into the deeply emotional aspects of growing up. This interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, psychologist Lara Fielding talks about her new book Mastering Adulthood: Go Beyond Adulting To Become An Emotional Grown-Up (New Harbinger Publications, 2019), Dr. Fielding offers evidence-based skills to help young adults cope with the feelings of anxiety, depression, anger, and stress that may be getting in the way of living an independent, fulfilling adult life. Drawing on case examples from young adults she’s worked with in her private practice, Fielding provides empowering strategies and skills for managing difficult emotions using mindfulness, dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). When you experience big life changes that cause you stress, you need emotional flexibility to reach your goals and be your best self. Using the skills in this book, you’ll learn to take charge of your emotional habits, stop feeling stuck, and discover what really matters to you. Dr. Lara Fielding is a Clinical Psychologist in California, specializing in the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapies. She studied the psychophysiology of stress and emotions at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Harvard; before getting her doctorate at Pepperdine University graduate school of education and psychology, where she is an adjunct professor. Debbie Sorensen, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Denver, Colorado and a 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

Non-human animals are companions, research subjects, creatures we fear, creatures we eat. Why do we put other animals in the various categories we do, and treat them in the various good and bad ways that we do? These are questions about human attitudes towards other animals, and the moral implications of those attitudes. In Subhuman: The Moral Psychology of Human Attitudes Towards Animals (Oxford University Press, 2018), T. J. Kasperbauer examines this relatively underexplored area of moral psychology. Kasperbauer, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Bioethics and the Indiana University School of Medicine, argues that we dehumanize animals in a particular way to ensure their status as inferior outgroups, and that our ability to improve moral outcomes is limited by our psychology. But knowing what these psychological limits are is crucial for understanding how moral behavior towards animals can be improved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Normal turned to PTSD and a substance abuse nightmare for Jenny the instant a taxi struck her, catapulting her twenty feet across a busy New York City street. Jenny is one of the lucky ones to have survived the drug rehabilitation system, which routinely fails those at risk. Her story is multiplied across the U.S. in the shattered lives and torn-apart families of millions of Jennies. Vivian Percy's new book Saving Jenny: Rescuing Our Youth from America's Opioid and Suicide Epidemic (Radius Books, 2018) is the narration of a mother and daughter’s long painful journey from tragedy, through opioid addiction, toward redemption. Its cautionary tale sheds light on drug dependency, suicidal depression, sexual exploitation and misdiagnosed mind disorders. We discover that these are symptoms of much larger societal issues: the decimation of the family, childhood traumatization, and a culture devoid of human values. These pages unmask a mental health industry focused more on profits than people, which regularly betrays those in its keeping, and the complicity of Big Pharma and insurance companies in these schemas. We see firsthand the abuse, negligence and illicit activities going on in psychiatric and rehab facilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

From the earliest days of medical research into autism, both psychologists and the general public have characterised those on the autism spectrum as literal-minded, unimaginative and lacking in empathy. While in recent years a fresh emphasis on neurodiversity has served to sweep aside this kind of reductive thinking, many people still view autistic readers as limited in their capacity to engage with literary texts. In his new book See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor (Duke University Press, 2018), educator and author Ralph James Savarese challenges the notion that autistic readers are unable to immerse themselves in figurative language or get lost in imaginative worlds. Instead, Savarese, himself the father of a young autistic man, explores the many diverse and illuminating ways in which neurodivergent readers can engage with literature. From a young reader who identifies with the cetacean “antagonist” of Moby Dick to a woman who provides stunning new insights into Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, See It Feelingly foregrounds the unique perspectives of autistic readers and highlights their inventive approaches to literary analysis. In this podcast, Professor Savarese speaks to Miranda Corcoran about the impetus for this project and his experience working with neurodivergent readers. Miranda Corcoran is a lecturer in twenty-first-century literature in University College Cork. Her research focuses on Cold-War fiction, science fiction, horror and the gothic. She is currently writing a monograph on witchcraft and adolescence in popular culture. She is a regular contributor to Diabolique and blogs about popular culture here. You can follow her on Twitter @middleagedwitch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Gender and sexual minorities face unique concerns and, according to research, are actually more likely to want and seek therapeutic help due to greater levels of psychological distress. But research also shows that many psychologists and therapists do not feel adequately educated or efficacious discussing topics related to sexuality and gender in clinical practice. This interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Aisling Curtin and Dr. Matthew Skinta discuss their new book Mindfulness and Acceptance for Gender and Sexual Minorities: A Clinician's Guide (Context Press, 2016), which offers a number of practical strategies within a contextual behavioral science framework, including mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions, compassion-focused therapy (CFT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), relational frame theory (RFT), and more. With chapters on stigma, shame, relationships, and parenting, this book will be a valuable resource for all therapists. If you’re a clinician, you understand the ongoing need for cutting-edge, effective approaches for treating a variety of clients. With this guide, you’ll learn about the unique application of contextual behavioral approaches as they relate specifically to the experiences of gender and sexual minorities, and feel better equipped to help all of your clients work toward happiness and health. Debbie Sorensen, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Denver, Colorado and a 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

People have always sought ecstatic experiences - moments where they go beyond their ordinary self and feel connected to something greater than them. Such moments are fundamental to human flourishing, but they can also be dangerous. Beginning around the Enlightenment, western intellectual culture has written off ecstasy as ignorance or delusion. But philosopher Jules Evans argues that this diminishes our reality and denies us the healing, connection and meaning that ecstasy can bring. In his book, The Art of Losing Control: A Philosopher's Search for Ecstatic Experience (Canongate Books, 2017) he sets out to discover how people find ecstasy in a post-religious culture, how it can be good for us, and also harmful. Along the way, he explores the growing science of ecstasy, to help the reader - and himself - learn the art of losing control. Evans’ exploration of ecstasy is an intellectual and emotional odyssey drawing on personal experience, interviews, and readings from ancient and modern philosophers. From Aristotle and Plato, via the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis and Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny and thought-provoking journey through under-explored terrain, which Evans creatively maps out like a tour through a festival, with stops at the major pavilions along the way. [complete with a cutely drawn festival map at the front of the book] Jules Evans is policy director at the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations, which was published in 19 countries and was a Times Book of the Year. Evans has written for The Times, Financial Times, Guardian, Spectator and WIRED and is a BBC New Generation Thinker. He also runs the London Philosophy Club, the world’s biggest philosophy club. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In today's podcast, I speak with American professor Ira Helderman about his newly published book, Prescribing the Dharma: Psychotherapists, Buddhist Traditions, and Defining Religion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) which surveys the diversity of Buddhist practices used in psychotherapy today. Ira shows that psychotherapists approaches to Buddhist traditions are moulded by how they relate to what is and is not religion. This book will be of interest to scholars of psychotherapy, religion, and Buddhism as well as anyone interested in the relationship between psychotherapy and Buddhism in the West today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Entering into psychoanalysis takes courage, for patients and analysts alike. When it does what it’s supposed to do, it changes one’s relationship to the bigger questions in life—transforming a search for answers into an embrace of the unknown. But such transformation requires a change in how one thinks about knowledge and a growing tolerance for non-knowledge—and it all starts with the psychoanalyst’s willingness to undergo such a conversion. Jamieson Webster ponders these matters, and what they mean for the place of psychoanalysis in modern society, in her latest book, Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 2019). And in our interview, she talks about her personal struggles to find her grounding as a psychoanalyst and how she understands the journey on which she takes her patients. Our conversation, much like her book, is full of intimate and raw revelations about doing psychoanalysis as well as thought-provoking ideas about what it means to do it. Dr. Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York. She has written for Artforum, Cabinet, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Playboy. Her books include The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (2011) and Stay, Illusion! (with Simon Critchley, 2013). In her private practice, she works with children, adolescents, and adults. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is also a university psychologist at Florida International University’s Counseling and Psychological Services Center, where he heads the eating disorders service. He is a graduate of the psychoanalytic training program at William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (Routledge, 2018). 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 information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contribute to this process? This podcast addresses this issue. We interview Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, whose book, The Good Drone: How Social Movements Democratize Surveillance (forthcoming with MIT Press) is undergoing a Massive Online Peer-Review (MOPR) process, where everyone can make comments on his manuscript. Additionally, his book will be Open Access (OA) since the date of publication. We discuss with him how do MOPR and OA work, how he managed to combine both of them and how these initiatives can contribute to the democratization of knowledge. You can participate in the MOPR process of The Good Drone through this link: https://thegooddrone.pubpub.org/ Felipe G. Santos is a PhD candidate at the Central European University. His research is focused on how activists care for each other and how care practices within social movements mobilize and radicalize heavily aggrieved collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

What does it mean to consider trauma and media from the perspective of technology and not from that of the subject of trauma, the clinician or the witness? In Transmitted Wounds: Media and the Mediation of Trauma (Oxford University Press, 2019), Amit Pinchevski carries out this thought experiment to great effect. By bringing media theory to bear on trauma theory, this book reveals the technical operations that inform the understanding of traumatic impact on bodies and minds. Under consideration is not the way trauma and traumatic memory figure in the media (film, television, photography and other popular culture portrayals of traumatic experience), but rather media as partaking in the very construction of the traumatic itself. Pinchevski conducts an erudite and innovative exploration through a series of case studies: the radio broadcasts of the Eichmann trial; the videotaping of Holocaust testimonies; recent psychiatric debates about trauma through media following the 9/11 attacks; current controversy surrounding drone operators' post-trauma; and digital platforms of algorithmic-holographic witnessing and virtual reality exposure therapy for PTSD. Each of these cases makes a compelling argument about how media technology and logic shape the social life of trauma both clinically and culturally. Transmitted Wounds takes us from mid-twentieth century to our current moment, moving us from an analogue world of trauma to the digital ecosystem that promises to transcend trauma all together. This temporal set-up demands ethical considerations of past and current systems of memory, witnessing and therapy, which Pinchevski does exceptionally well. Transmitted Wounds offers fresh and thought-provoking contributions to the fields of trauma and memory, media theory, and the history of science and technology. It will also be of relevance to theoreticians and practitioners interested in digital culture and digital humanities. Amit Pinchevski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is the author of By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the Ethics of Communication (Duquesne University Press 2005) and coeditor of two books, Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Ethics of Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His research interests are in philosophy and theory of communication and media. Tal Zalmanovich is a cultural historian of modern Britain. She’s a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Haifa. Prior to being an academic, Tal was a journalist. Podcasting is the fruitful convergence of the two. You can contact Tal 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

Human brains have two hemispheres whose major connection is the corpus callosum, which enables information to be shared between the hemispheres. Split-brain subjects are people whose corpus callosum has been surgically cut to alleviate epilepsy. This and other similar operations or conditions yield an odd phenomenon in which the patient appears to be two agents: for example, in controlled experiments they may only be conscious of stimuli shown to just their right eye, but when asked to draw the stimulus with the left hand they draw the stimulus shown to just their left eye. It is as if each hemisphere is its own self, with its own eye. In Self-Consciousness and Split Brains: The Mind's I (Oxford University Press, 2018), Elizabeth Schechter argues that while split brain subjects have two minds and two subjective perspectives, and are two intentional agents, they nevertheless constitute one person. Schechter, who is an assistant professor of philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, offers an in-depth exploration of the neuroscience and psychology of split brains and their implications for our understanding of minds, selves, agents and persons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Emily Baum’s The Invention of Madness: State, Society, and the Insane in Modern China, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2018 as part of the Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute book series, is a genealogy of “psychiatric modernity,” of the invention and reinvention of modern mental illness in Beijing, 1901-1937. Focusing on the pivotal roles of the city’s police-run municipal asylum and the Peking Union Medical College, Baum chronicles the transition from eclectic but largely family-centered premodern apprehensions and treatments of “mad behaviors” to a more unified, biomedical, institutionalized view of madness that was intimately linked to questions of social control, political legitimacy, and the rubric of “mental hygiene.” Along the way, this history of neuropsychiatry’s penetration of the administrative and social fabric of modern China examines topics including disjunctures between state and civil actors concerning new understandings and practices around mental illness, as well as the “psychiatric entrepreneurs” who profited from—and sometimes helped to invent or define—new psychiatric conditions. Baum’s careful unearthing of these tensions and innovations sheds informative light on the ways in which madness was invented not just as a top-down administrative or biomedical-neuropsychiatric project but in negotiation with a wide range of actors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Most of us have behavior changes we would like to make, but behavior change can be hard! In this motivational interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews behavior Dr. Dr. DJ Moran, co-author of the book Committed Action in Practice: A Clinician’s Guide to Assessing, Planning, and Supporting Change in Your Client (Context Press, 20187). Dr. Moran discusses obstacles to behavior change, taking committed action toward one’s values, and how mindfulness can help people make lasting changes. Dr. Daniel J. Moran is the founder and executive director of the MidAmerican Psychological Institute, and founder of Pickslyde Consulting. He co-authored ACT in Practice and Committed Action in Practice – two books using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to help people reduce suffering and improve quality of living. Dr. DJ has appeared on The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, and the Oprah Winfrey Network discussing behavioral health concerns. He also received the Outstanding Mentor Award from the Association for Behavior Analysis International. Dr. DJ is a Recognized ACTrainer, Board Certified Behavior Analyst, and the past president of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, the worldwide Acceptance and Commitment Therapy organization. Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a 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

Essentialism is a systematic discipline designed to support making life decisions that help you to make your highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews Greg McKeown , author of the best-selling book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. They discuss the importance of distinguishing the essential from the nonessential, how to identify what is most essential, and strategies to support the disciplined pursuit of what is essential to you. Greg McKeown is the author of the best-selling book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He is also afrequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, a sought after keynote speaker, a repeating guest on the Steve (Harvey) show, and his work on Essentialism is regularly written about in media (see Resources). Greg is also founder/CEO of McKeown, Inc., a strategy design center. Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a 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

Emotional Intelligence involves self awareness, self control, relationship management and social awareness. Being emotionally intelligent can make you a better leader, parent, friend and partner. In this episode, interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Goleman, a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, about the neuroscience of emotions and why it is important to foster emotional intelligence in kids and leaders. Dr. Goleman also explores how meditation can result in permanent trait changes so that we are better able to regulate emotions and survive an “amygdala highjack.” Daniel Goleman, best known for his worldwide bestseller Emotional Intelligence, is most recently co-author (with Richard Davidson) of Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body(Avery, 2017). A frequent speaker to businesses of all kinds and sizes, Goleman has worked with leaders around the globe, examining the way social and emotional competencies impact the bottom-line. Goleman’s articles in the Harvard Business Review are among the most frequently requested reprints of all time: his article there, “The Focused Leader”won the 2013 HBR McKinsey Award for best article of the year. Goleman has been ranked among the 25 most influential business leaders by several business publications including TIME and The Wall Street Journal. Apart from his writing on emotional intelligence, Goleman has written books on topics including self-deception, creativity, transparency, meditation, social and emotional learning, ecoliteracy and the ecological crisis. Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a 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

Increasing self-compassion and compassion for others, may just be the key to your well-being. In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Christopher Germer, leader in the integration of mindfulness in therapy and co-developer of the international Mindful Self Compassion Program. Germer discusses “Self-Compassion 101” while also exploring how they practice self-compassion on and off the couch. Chris Germer, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice and lecturer on psychiatry (part-time) at Harvard Medical School. He teaches on the faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion, both based in Cambridge, MA. He is a co-developer (with Kristin Neff) and popular teacher of the Mindful Self-Compassion program (which has been taught to over 50,000 people around the world), author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, co-author of The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook (which is consistently the #3 book in Social work on Amazon since its release) and co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy.His next book, written for professionals, Teaching the Mindful Self Compassion Program will be released in Summer 2019. Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a 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

When Susie Orbach set out to depict how psychotherapy sessions really work, she did not want to go the conventional route—that is, taking real case material and distorting and disguising it into a form with minimal resemblance to the original. Such depictions are inevitably filtered through the therapist-author’s biases, and Susie wanted to share psychotherapy’s rawness and spontaneity. So she recorded a radio series involving actors playing patients who come into her real office to discuss fictional yet unscripted problems for which she has no preparation. And then she turned that series into a book, In Therapy: How Conversations with Psychotherapists Really Work(Profile Books, 2016). She joined me on New Books in Psychology to discuss the making of the show and the book and share her thoughts on what real therapy is like. In our interview, she walks us through what she was thinking and feeling during challenging clinical moments in the book, as well as what such moments can teach us about the magic of therapy. This interview is a must for anyone who has always wanted to know what therapists really think and how they think about what they do. Dr. Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist with a practice seeing individuals and couples and, also, consulting to organizations. She co-founded The Women’s Therapy Centre in London in 1976 and The Women’s Therapy Center Institute in New York City in 1981. She is author of twelve books, including Fat is a Feminist Issue, and co-editor of a further volume. She has also published many papers and she frequently writes for the press. She wrote a column in The Guardian for ten years. Her book Bodies won the Women in Psychology award for best book. She is the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award for Psychoanalysis given by the British Psychoanalytical Society. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst practicing in Miami and university psychologist at Florida International University. He treats individuals and couples with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate of the psychoanalytic training program at William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The opioid crisis in America is considered by many to be the worst national public health crisis in the last 100 years. In his new book, The Opioid Crisis Wake Up Call: Health Care is Stealing the American Dream. Here is How We Take It Back (Health Rosetta Media, 2018), Dave Chase dives into the history and causes of the crisis and outlines a path towards fixing it. Dave takes a thoughtful look at our dysfunctional healthcare system and sees ways it can be fixed using technologies and strategies that are already in use at some organizations. He talks about ways to eliminate waste and corruption while restoring hope to the American public. Jeremy Corr is the co-host of the hit Fixing Healthcare podcast along with industry thought leader Dr. Robert Pearl. A University of Iowa history alumnus, Jeremy is curious and passionate about all things healthcare, which means he’s always up for a good discussion! Reach him 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

With Paris as the organizing locus of his new book, Du moyen âge à nos jours, expériences et représentations de la folie à Paris [From the Middle Ages to Today, Experiences and Representations of Madness in Paris], Benoît Majerus uses an impressively wide range of visual sources, from religious images and architectural photographs to neuroleptic advertisements and administrative maps. These images are integrated into the text and function not only as illustrations, but also as images with their own story to tell. Majerus’ narrative arc follows the twists and turns of madness in a city long associated with mental pathogens and their cures and reveals how the history of psychiatry can be told differently through the lens of visual culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Much of the debate about the roles of nature vs. nurture in the development of individual people has settled into accepting that it's a bit of both, although what each contributes to a given trait or feature, how much, and they interact are still matters of dispute. In What's Left of Human Nature? A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist, and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept(MIT Press, 2018), Maria Kronfeldner critically examines instead the 'nature' side of this dichotomy: what exactly is a human "nature"? Is it some kind of fixed human essence, a statistical norm, a normative ideal of how a human being ought to be? Kronfeldner, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Central European University in Budapest, argues against an essentialist view of nature, and replaces it with three concepts – descriptive, classificatory, and explanatory natures – that can do the various jobs that we want a "nature" concept to do without contributing to dehumanization, as the essentialist concept frequently has. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World(Scribner Books, 2018), Dr. Michele Gelfand leverages cultural psychology research to examine social norms and their implications on individuals, organizations, and nations. Dr. Gelfand examines how the threat environment shapes a nation’s culture, as well as how organizations, such as the military, are shaped by cultural forces. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers is written for a broad audience and includes research that national security readers will find particularly noteworthy. For example, Dr. Gelfand’s research on the Arab Spring in Egypt is an interesting case study of culture’s broader role in politics and national security. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. 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, cross-posted from from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun takes a dive into evolutionary psychology with professor and author, Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams. Steve’s recent book, The Ape That Understood the Universe: How Mind and Culture Evolve (Cambridge University Press, 2018) offers an opportunity to step away from our held understanding of human nature by taking on the alien perspective. Steve’s vast knowledge and wonderful sense of humor will give you new perspectives on emotions and drives, and new ideas to guide values and behaviors. This interview explores such topics as: How Knowledge Of Our “Human Design” Can Help Us To Make Better Choices In Our Everyday LivesHow And Why Men And Women Differ In Our Desire For Casual Sex, Our Preferences In Partners, And In Our Preferred Levels Of Parental InvestmentHow Knowing That We Are Not Blank Slates Can Empower Us To Be More Effective In Building Value-Driven LivesSteve Stewart-Williams is an associate professor of psychology at Nottingham University, Malaysia Campus. His research explores how evolutionary biology can offer insights into the human mind and human behavior and he focuses, in particular, on sex differences and altruism. Steve has written two books, most recently The Ape That Understood the Universe. Go to Steve’s university website or personal website to find out more about his work. Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a 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

Most of us can be self-critical about our bodies sometimes. At the extreme, painful thoughts and emotions about body image can lead to emotional suffering and even impact quality of life. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Debbie Sorensen interviews Dr. Emily Sandoz about her acceptance-based approach to working with clients on body image and eating disorders. Dr. Sandoz explores the concept of “Body Image Inflexibility,” her values- and acceptance-based clinical approach to working with eating disorders, and cultural influences that can contribute to how we feel about our physical bodies. Dr. Emily K. Sandoz is the Emma Louise LeBlanc Burguieres/BORSF Endowed Professor of Social Sciences in the Psychology Department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Emily is the Director of the Louisiana Contextual Science Research Group and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. She has co-authored three books on acceptance and commitment therapy for struggles with eating and body image, along with chapters and journal articles on ACT, Relational Frame Theory, values, the therapeutic relationship, and psychological flexibility. Emily has led more than 70 professional training workshops around the world, and serves as a peer-reviewed ACT trainer. She also practices as a Clinical Psychologist, focusing on clinical behavior analysis of body-related difficulties. Debbie Sorensen, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Denver, Colorado and a 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

In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Stephan J. Guyenet, neurobiologist and obesity researcher, about the unconscious systems that lead to overeating and weight gain. Dr. Guyenet discusses why dietary guidelines alone are not enough to change our eating behavior. In The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat (Flatiron Books, 2017), hee explores the biological and evolutionary reasons for overeating and offers concrete strategies to “outsmart” our hungry brains. This episode is a perfect accompaniment to go with the holidays, when we are bombarded with tasty food cues and stress induced overeating. Stephan Guyenet is a researcher, science consultant, and science communicator. He earned a BS in biochemistry at the University of Virginia and a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Washington, where he continued as a postdoctoral fellow studying the brain mechanisms that regulate body fatness and eating behavior. His scientific publications have been cited more than 2,000 times by his peers. His book, The Hungry Brain, was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly and called “essential” by the New York Times Book Review. He is currently a Senior Fellow at GiveWell and scientific reviewer for the Examine.com Research Digest. He grows much of his own food and brews a mean hard cider. Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a 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

What is learning? There is a robust body of literature that seeks to tell us what the most effective classroom techniques and strategies are, but Joshua Eyler goes further. In his new book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (West Virginia UP, 2018), Eyler digs deeply into research from a broad range of disciplines to help us understand the act of learning itself, and then showing us how that deeper understanding can translate into more effective teaching and learning in our own classrooms. It’s an important book for all college instructors. Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the body politic.” There are significant implications of these ideas for how we live and work at the contemporary university, and we discussed some of those in our conversation. This is a great book to read and to teach with! Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. 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 this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Kelly Wilson about kindness and the common humanity of feeling inadequate and broken. Dr. Wilson describes the evolutionary science behind suffering and how “evolutionary mismatch” plays an important role in modern day physical and psychological illness. Dr. Wilson, co-founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), demonstrates acceptance and compassion as he describes his personal path to self-care and the regular self-care practices he engages in. On the eve of his retirement, Dr. Wilson shares what’s next for him on his ongoing journey towards kindness and meaning. Kelly G. Wilson, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology at the University at Mississippi. He is past and founding President of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). Dr. Wilson is one of the founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and has devoted himself to the development and dissemination of ACT and its underlying theory and philosophy for nearly 30 years. Dr. Wilson has published more than 90 articles and chapters, as well as 11 books including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change(Guilford Press, 2016), Mindfulness for Two, and Things Might Go Terribly, Horribly Wrong. He has central interests in the application of behavioral principles to understanding topics such as health and well-being, purpose, meaning and values, therapeutic relationship, and mindfulness. Dr. Wilson is the founder of Onelife Education and Training, LLC and has presented workshops and provided consultancy in 32 countries. Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a 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

We’re all familiar with cases where one attributes certain psychological states or capacities to creatures and systems that are not human persons. For example, your cat might prefer a certain variety of cat food, and maybe your houseplants enjoy a certain corner of the room they’re in. In many cases, these attributions pass by without much notice. However, in certain regimented scientific contexts, the attribution of psychological states and capacities to non-human things has become indispensable in our best models of their behavior. For examples, complex explanatory accounts of fruit flies and certain plants involve claims about them making decisions. And our best science has it that neurons anticipate certain stimuli. What are we to make of these attributions? In Pieces of Mind: The Proper Domain of Psychological Predicates (Oxford University Press, 2018), Carrie Figdor defends Literalism, the view that in regimented scientific contexts, the attribution of psychological states and capacities to nonhuman and sub-personal systems should be taken literally. 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, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun talks with expert and author Dr. Eckhard Roediger about the ins and outs of contextual schema therapy. In his recent book, Contextual Schema Therapy: An Integrative Approach to Personality Disorders, Emotional Dysregulation and Interpersonal Functioning (Context Press, 2018), Dr. Roediger describes an integrative approach to schema therapy that incorporates the latest advances in contextual behavioral psychology. This episode offers an introduction to many of the concepts and practices employed in contextual schema therapy. Dr. Eckhard Roediger is the director of the Schema Therapy Training Center in Frankfurt, Germany, and was President of the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST) from 2014-2016; he is currently the ISST treasurer. Dr. Roediger has been a schema therapy trainer and supervisor and has authored numerous books, book chapters, and articles on schema therapy. Link here to a access recordings from a contextual schema therapy workshop with Dr. Roediger. Dr. Yael Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist in private practice, an assistant professor at Brown University, and a 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

Sigmund Freud may have been the first to popularize the study of dreams, but several scholars since Freud have advanced our understanding of dreams in revolutionary ways. Among them is Mark Blechner, an interpersonal/relational psychoanalyst who first published his theories on dreams in his 2001 book The Dream Frontier. With his new book, The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation (Routledge, 2018), Blechner draws upon his clinical experience over the past 17 years to update and extend his already cutting-edge original ideas on dreams. In our interview, he explains why dreams, with their imagery and metaphors, may do a better job of expressing our deepest feelings and experiences compared to verbal communication, and why the mind and the brain should be thought of as one. He answers questions about how non-therapists can use their own dreams to understand themselves more meaningfully and how therapist can make use of dreams in clinical work in new and exciting ways. This interview will interest those who want to more fully engage with their dreamlife but don’t yet know how. Mark J. Blechner is a training and supervising psychoanalyst at William Alanson White Institute and has taught at Columbia University, Yale University, and New York University. His prior books include Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis (2009), The Dream Frontier (2001), and Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV (1997). He is former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the founder and former director of the HIV Clinical Service at the White Institute. Dr. Blechner is in practice in New York City as a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, supervisor, and leader of private dream groups. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst practicing in Miami and university psychologist at Florida International University. He treats individuals and couples with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate of the psychoanalytic training program at William Alanson White Institute and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade debate over race, class, and IQ. In The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Michael E. Staub, Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York, investigates neuropsychological studies published between Brown and the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve. In doing so, he illuminates how we came to view race and intelligence today. In tracing how research and experiments around such concepts as learned helplessness, deferred gratification, hyperactivity, and emotional intelligence migrated into popular culture and government policy, Staub reveals long-standing and widespread dissatisfaction—not least among middle-class whites—with the metric of IQ. He also documents the devastating consequences—above all for disadvantaged children of color—as efforts to undo discrimination and create enriched learning environments were recurrently repudiated and defunded. By connecting psychology, race, and public policy in a single narrative, Staub charts the paradoxes that have emerged and that continue to structure investigations of racism even into the era of contemporary neuroscientific research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Steven Shaviro’s book Discognition (Repeater Books, 2016) opens with a series of questions: What is consciousness? How does subjective experience occur? Which entities are conscious? What is it like to be a bat, or a dog, a robot, a tree, a human being, a rock, a star, a neutrino? Discognition looks at a series of fascinating science fiction narratives – in some cases reading philosophical or scientific literature as speculative fiction – to raise important questions about consciousness and sentience and to help readers understand the significance of those questions for how we live with ourselves and each other. In addition to opening up some wonderfully thoughtful and provocative works of science fiction, the book also models a transdisciplinary mode of scholarship that is as inspiring as it is effective. Carla Nappi is the Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh. You can learn more about her and her work here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Listeners familiar with our recent podcasts exploring the remarkable legacy of William T. Powers revolutionary Perceptual Control Theory of human behaviour, including its contribution to cognitive behavioural therapy through the development of the Method of Levels approach, may be wondering about the empirical evidence for such a sweeping repudiation of classical behaviourism. Prepare to have those questions answered with this episode’s return visit of Richard S. Marken; this time to discuss his 2014 book, Doing Research on Purpose: A Control Theory Approach to Experimental Psychology (New View Publications, 2014). In a remarkable collection of papers, Marken traces, not only the steadily accruing empirical validation of PCT, but also, the evolution of a new methodology for experimental psychology itself given the need to assess the impact of phenomena that exist only inside the minds of individual organisms; namely, the preferred reference values for sensory experience. Emerging from this methodological renovation is the bedrock of PCT investigation; the Test for the Controlled Variable, a robust experimental procedure opening a window on the dynamics of varied forms of behaviour including the science of fly-ball catching in baseball players and Frisbee catching by “man’s best friend”. In his book and in our conversation, Marken offers us a glimpse of experimental psychology, and the world at large, through “control theory glasses” and muses upon the possible social and ethical nature of a world that accepted PCT as the ground of our behaviour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons periodically, and occasionally providing consultations for policymakers. In Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (Teachers College Press, 2018), renowned critical psychologist Michelle Fine challenges us to imagine social research radically differently. According to Fine, if a researcher’s social justice work was only targeted at top politicians of this era, she probably would feel our era had never been darker. Fine argues that social research can do far more than that: It could create new solidarities across multiple marginalized groups, democratize the knowledge production process, disrupt the reproduction of oppressive social structure, and ultimately, sow the seed of positive social changes. Just Research in Contentious Times documents Fine’s long-term grounded research efforts at the frontline of the battle for social justice. She and her research team work with dropout students, female prisoners, Muslim youths, LGBTQ teachers, and many other marginalized social groups to bear the witness of their sufferings, probe the inequality of the current system, and raise the public’s consciousness on pressing social issues. By doing that, she champions a research approach which emphasizes the participation of community members as co-researchers, one that she terms as critical participatory action research (CPAR). Just Research in Contentious Times blends her passion for CPAR with highly personal yet profoundly touching self-reflection, rigorous data analysis, and innovative theoretical discussions. It is a compelling and inspiring read for anyone who is interested in social justice work. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of critical social psychology, women’s studies, and urban education at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban High School (1991), Disruptive Voices: The Possibilities of Feminist Research (1992), Working Method: Research and Social Justice (with Lois Weis, 2004), and Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods (with Selcuk Sirin, 2008). Pengfei Zhao holds a doctoral degree in Inquiry Methodology from Indiana University-Bloomington. Among her research interests are youth culture, identity formation, qualitative research methods, and comparative sociological and educational studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript studying the coming of age experience of rural Chinese youth during and right after the Cultural Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence other people. The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition–the theory-theory and the simulation theory–have provided focused accounts of mindreading, the more specific practice of ascribing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others in order to predict and explain their behavior. In How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition (Routledge, 2018), Shannon Spaulding draws on social psychological research and kindred spirits in philosophy to argue for an expansion of this traditional focus. In her Model Theory, mindreading includes other methods we use to understand others, such as stereotypes and scripts, and other goals of these practices, such as strengthening our in-group social relationships. Spaulding, who is assistant professor of philosophy at Oklahoma State University, also explores some of the implications of her view for understanding issues in epistemology and ethics, in particular epistemic injustice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Human beings have long seen themselves as the center of the universe, as specially-created creatures who are anointed as above and beyond the natural world. Professor and noted scientist David P. Barash calls this viewpoint a persistent paradigm of our own unique self-importance and argues that it is as dangerous as it is false. In his recent book, Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are (Oxford University Press, 2018), Barash explores the process by which science has, throughout time, cut humanity “down to size,” and how we have responded. A good paradigm is a tough thing to lose, especially when its replacement leaves us feeling vulnerable and less important. Barash models his argument around a set of “old” and “new” paradigms that define humanity’s place in the universe. The new emerge from provocative revelations about whether human beings are well designed, whether the universe has somehow been established with our species in mind (the so-called anthropic principle), whether life itself is inherently fragile, whether Homo sapiens might someday be genetically combined with other species, and what this means for our self-image. Rather than seeing ourselves through a glass darkly, as he puts it, science enables us to perceive our strengths and weaknesses brightly and accurately at last, so that paradigms lost become wisdom gained. The result is a bracing, remarkably hopeful view of who we really are. David P. Barash is an evolutionary biologist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington. He has written more than 280 peer-reviewed articles and nearly 40 books in addition to penning numerous op-eds in the LA Times, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and other highly recognizable titles. He’s joined me today to talk about his latest book … Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD student at Université Laval in Quebec City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Humans are the only animals that can use language processes to create abstract, symbolic thoughts. This is both a blessing and a curse. Although symbolic processes have many benefits to humans, they can also lead us to great suffering. We worry about the future, fret over the past, get stuck in rigid rules, and create problems for ourselves that exist only in our minds. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Debbie Sorensen talks to Dr. Matthieu Villatte, an expert on a theory of language and cognition called Relational Frame Theory, about how language processes can contribute to human suffering. Dr. Villatte describes how these same language processes can be harnessed to help people build motivation find meaning in their lives. Dr. Matthieu Villatte PhD is an Assistant Professor at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of numerous books and chapters on mindfulness, acceptance, experiential therapies, and contextual behavioral science, including Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention (Guilford Press, 2015), co-authored by Jennifer Villatte and Steven Hayes. As a peer-reviewed trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy recognized by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), he has facilitated over one hundred clinical trainings around the world as well as dozens of online trainings. Debbie Sorensen, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Denver, Colorado and a 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