New Books in Psychology
1,038 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 44 ratingsInterviews with Psychologists about their New Books
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Episodes
Kristina Musholt, “Thinking About Oneself: From Nonconceptual Content to the Concept of a Self” (MIT Press, 2015)
August 15, 2017 04:00 - 1 hourWhen Descartes famously concluded “I think, therefore I am”, he took for granted his ability to use the first person pronoun to refer to himself. But how do we come to have this capacity for self-conscious thought? We aren’t born with it, and while we may not be the only creatures that can think thoughts about ourselves, this ability does not seem to be very widespread. For starters, to be able to think of oneself, it seems one must first possess a concept of the self of what the “I” refers t...
Patricia Gherovici, “Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference” (Routledge, 2017)
August 06, 2017 14:31 - 51 minutesPsychoanalysis is transitioning. Its history of pathologizing deviant sexuality is giving way to curiosity about the universal complexities and contradictions inherent in sex and gender. Yet it could use some pushing along, and Patricia Gherovici’s new book, Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge, 2017), does just that. In it, she draws inspiration and courage from her clinical work with transgender patients in order to challenge long-standing essen...
Sophie Egan, “Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are” (William Morrow, 2017)
July 24, 2017 15:17 - 54 minutesIn Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are (William Morrow Books, 2017), food writer and Culinary Institute of America program director Sophie Egan takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the American food psyche, examining the connections between the values that define our national character—work, freedom, and progress—and our eating habits, the good and the bad. Egan explores why these values make for such an unstable, and often unhealthy, food culture and, paradoxically, why ...
Gualtiero Piccinini, “Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account” (Oxford UP, 2016)
July 15, 2017 04:00 - 1 hourA popular way of thinking about the mind and its relation to physical stuff is in terms of computation. This general information-processing approach to solving the mind-body problem admits of a number of different, often incompatible, elaborations. In Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account (Oxford University Press, 2016), Gualtiero Piccinini integrates research in mechanistic and psychological explanation, computability theory, and other areas to provide a detailed account of the sense i...
Mark Solms, “The Feeling Brain: Selected Papers in Neuropsychoanalysis” (Karnac, 2015)
July 03, 2017 13:19 - 56 minutesIf you steered yourself away from books about brain science because you were interested in something completely different–psychoanalysis–then this is the book for you! This book will renew your appreciation for the revolutionary discovery and urgent need for psychoanalysis, as argued by one of the world’s leading neuroscientists. Mark Solms invented the word “neuropsychoanalyis” twenty years ago because he believed that brain science at that time was still in a primitive state of learning ab...
Daniel P. Keating, “Born Anxious: The Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity” (St. Martin’s Press, 2017)
July 03, 2017 12:30 - 58 minutesAnxiety has become a social epidemic. People feel anxious all the time about nearly everything: their work, families, and even survival. However, research shows that some of us are more prone to chronic anxiety than others, due in large part to experiences in utero and during the first year of life. My guest, psychologist Dr. Daniel Keating, explores these biological and genetic mechanisms in his new book, Born Anxious: The Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity–and How to Break the Cycle (S...
Kees van Deemter, “Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science” (MIT Press, 2016)
June 22, 2017 21:46 - 55 minutesSometimes we have to depend on philosophy to explain to us why something apparently simple is in fact extremely complicated. The way we use referring expressions – things that pick out the entities we want to talk about, such as “Mary”, or “that guy over there” – falls into this category, but is no longer just a matter for the philosophers; it’s complicated enough to require highly interdisciplinary explanation. In his book, Computational Models of Referring: A Study in Cognitive Science (MI...
Theodore Burnes and Jeanne Stanley, “Teaching LGBTQ Psychology: Queering Innovative Pedagogy and Practice” (APA, 2017)
June 19, 2017 10:00 - 52 minutesDespite the prominence of LGBTQ issues in our current social consciousness, many people still know little about the LGBTQ community, which means that teaching about this community and its issues is an important job. It’s also a difficult one that’s been handled with varying degrees of effectiveness and sensitivity over the past few decades. Many of us can recall during our undergrad or graduate training having a single class day devoted to the topic, or our instructors trying to squeeze it in...
Bongrae Seok, “Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame: Shame of Shamelessness” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
June 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourShame is a complex social emotion that has a particularly negative valence; in the West it is associated with failure, inappropriateness, dishonor, disgrace. But within the Confucian tradition, there is in addition a distinct, positive variety of moral shame a virtue that, as Bongrae Seok writes, “is not for losers but for self-reflective moral leaders”. In Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame: Shame of Shamelessness (Rowman and Littlefield), Seok draws on textual evidence from Confucius, Menc...
Shelvy Haywood Keglar, “Underdog to Top Dog: An Improbable Rise” (IBJ, 2017)
June 14, 2017 19:26 - 54 minutesMost psychology books are written by experts with knowledge deriving from professional experience–for which we are grateful. Occasionally, a psychologist ventures to write a book that draws from intimate personal experience to illuminate important psychological phenomena. Such is the case with our guest this week, Shelvy Haywood Keglar. In his book Underdog to Top Dog: An Improbable Rise (published in 2017 in association with IBJ Book Publishing), Dr. Keglar describes his journey from povert...
Oscar Fernandez, “The Calculus of Happiness” (Princeton UP, 2017)
June 11, 2017 12:35 - 53 minutesThe book discussed here is entitled The Calculus of Happiness: How a Mathematical Approach to Life Adds Up to Health, Wealth, and Love (Princeton University Press, 2017) by Oscar Fernandez. If the thought of calculus makes you nervous, don’t worry, you won’t need calculus to enjoy and appreciate this book. Its actually an intriguing way to introduce some of the precalculus topics that will later be needed in a calculus class, through the examination of some of the basic mathematical ideas tha...
Beau Lotto, “Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently” (Hatchette Books, 2017)
May 30, 2017 10:00 - 46 minutesWe may think we see the world as it is, but neuroscience proves otherwise. Which is a good thing, according to neuroscientist and author Beau Lotto. In his new book Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently (Hatchette Books, 2017), Lotto explains the mechanisms underlying our difficulty apprehending the world accurately, their implications for our relationships with one another and the world, and the creative potential that is unleashed when we embrace uncertainty and doubt. These issues com...
Jon Mills, “Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality” (Routledge, 2016)
May 21, 2017 12:57 - 54 minutesThere are many fronts in the argument against the existence of a god or gods and veracity of religious narratives. Some familiar approaches are to critique the philosophical underpinnings of religious ideology or to make a case from the perspective of scientific evidence and the physical laws of reality. Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality (Routledge, 2016), written by Dr. Jon Mills, argues from the perspective of psychology and posits that god is a psycho...
David Danks, “Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models” (MIT Press, 2014)
May 15, 2017 10:00 - 1 hourFor many cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of mind, the best current theory of cognition holds that thinking is in some sense computation “in some sense,” because that core idea can and has been elaborated in a number of different ways that are or at least seem to be incompatible in at least some respects. In Unifying the Mind: Cognitive Representations as Graphical Models (MIT Press, 2014), David Danks proposes a version of this basic theory that links the mind closely wi...
Jill Gentile, “Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire” (Karnac, 2016)
May 08, 2017 10:00 - 52 minutesPsychoanalysis has a reputation for insularity, often limiting its interest and scope to events in the consulting room. But the origins of Freud’s notion of free speech bear meaningful similarities to the Founding Fathers’ conception of free speech, sparking curiosity about how psychoanalysis and democracy might speak to one another. In her recent book, Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire (Karnac, 2016), author Jill Gentile starts up such a conversation and makes a cogen...
Michael and Sarah Bennett, “F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship” (Touchstone, 2017)
May 01, 2017 16:41 - 51 minutesMost books on the psychology of love relationships emphasize feelings, but Michael and Sarah Bennett‘s new book F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship (Touchstone, 2017) takes a uniquely business-like approach to the topic. In so doing, these authors make a compelling argument for why long-lasting relationships depend more on quality of partnership than romance, and they offer concrete, practical guidelines for establishing and maintaining solid partnership...
Carrie Jenkins, “What Love is: And What it Could Be” (Basic Books, 2017)
April 25, 2017 11:35 - 1 hourCarrie Jenkins‘ new book is a model for what public philosophy can be. Beautifully written, thoughtful, and compellingly and carefully argued, What Love Is: And What it Could Be (Basic Books, 2017) invites us to think openly and critically about romantic love: what it is, what it could be, and why it is crucial for us to ask these questions and come to our own answers. Engaging the work of bell hooks, Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, and more, Jenkins argues that love has a dual nature b...
Kathleen Collins, “Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
April 22, 2017 17:47 - 53 minutesIn her book, Dr. Joyce Brothers: The Founding Mother of TV Psychology (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), Kathleen Collins presents an extensive history of the woman who is arguably the most famous television psychologist. Starting with Brothers’ appearance as a boxing expert on the $64,000 Question in the 1950s, and bringing readers through her decades-long career in television and radio, Collins argues that Brothers created the personal approach to psychology that became the norm for television...
Michael Diamond, “Discovering Organizational Identity: Dynamics of Relational Attachment” (U. of Missouri, 2016)
April 10, 2017 17:05 - 44 minutesPsychological and psychoanalytic principles are often associated with individuals and therapist-client pairs, though they have plenty to bear on understanding and helping organizations in trouble. In particular, a psychoanalytic lens can uncover unconsciously-held beliefs members hold, about one another and about the organization as a whole, that impede effective functioning. In his new book, Discovering Organizational Identity: Dynamics of Relational Attachment (University of Missouri, 2016)...
Feather Berkower and Sandy Wurtele, “Off Limits: A Parents Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse” (Safer Society Press, 2010)
April 05, 2017 11:33 - 52 minutesApril is “Child Abuse Prevention Month,” and parents and child professionals may be curious to know what they can do to help keep their children safe from childhood sexual abuse. Feather Berkower is a renowned expert on sexual abuse prevention and the founder of Parenting Safe Children. Along with Dr. Sandy K. Wurtele, she has written the book Off Limits: A Parents Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse (Safer Society Press, 2010). In this interview, she discusses interviews she has con...
Danielle Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco, “The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture” (Routledge, 2016)
March 27, 2017 14:00 - 50 minutesThe wish to transcend one’s mortality, and the anxiety associated with being unable to do so, are universal human experiences. People deal with these in their idiosyncratic ways, often by transgressing rules and boundaries that serve as the parameters of civilized human coexistence. Technological advances expand our capacities for transcending our limitations, especially when they allow us to objectify other humans and humanize our objects. Such forms of perversion are the subject of Danielle...
Linda Craighead, “The Appetite Awareness Workbook: How to Listen to Your Body and Overcome Bingeing, Overeating, and Obsession with Food” (New Harbinger, 2006)
March 23, 2017 12:48 - 45 minutesMany people who either overeat, chronically diet, or feel a loss of control over food, have reduced awareness of their body’s internal signals of hunger and fullness. As children, most of us tend to eat when we are hungry and stop eating when we are starting to feel full. But by adulthood, many of us have lost this ability and instead establish unhelpful eating patterns, such ignoring hunger, mistaking certain emotional states for hunger, and eating past the point of feeling full. Dr. Linda C...
Robert Jervis, “How Statesmen Think: The Psychology of International Politics” (Princeton UP, 2017)
March 20, 2017 15:38 - 18 minutesRobert Jervis is the author of How Statesmen Think: The Psychology of International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2017). Jervis is the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University. Drawing on the increasing attention researchers in the field of psychology are paying to emotions, Jervis shows how emotional needs structure beliefs. For example, the desire to conserve cognitive resources can cause policy-makers to look at misleading indicators of military...
Brent Willock, et.al. “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide” (Routledge, 2017)
March 13, 2017 10:00 - 57 minutesLiterature and training in diversity and multiculturalism typically emphasize cultural differences–how to identify them, and the importance of honoring them. But does such an emphasis neglect other important dimensions of cross-cultural relating? Brent Willock, Lori Bohm, and Rebecca Curtis, editors of the book Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Identity and Difference: Navigating the Divide (Routledge, 2017), argue that finding similarities in our universal human longings and experiences are als...
Damion Searls, “The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and the Power of Seeing” (Crown, 2017)
March 07, 2017 11:10 - 56 minutesIn his new book The Inkblots: Hermann Rorschach, His Iconic Test, and The Power of Seeing (Crown, 2017), Damion Searls presents the first biography of Hermann Rorschach and the history of the Rorschach Test. A story that is largely untold, Searls starts with the childhood of Rorschach and brings readers through his growth as a psychiatrist as he created an experiment to probe the mind using a set of ten inkblots. As a visual artist, Rorschach incorporated his ability to think about visuals an...
David F. Lancy, “The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
March 06, 2017 11:05 - 48 minutesDevelopmental psychology seems to tell us how to best to raise our children into competent and decent adults. However, comparing our theories and practices to those of other cultures raises questions about whether our ideas are ethnocentric. This topic is at the center of anthropologist David F. Lancy’s latest book, The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In his book, he offers a comprehensive review of cross-cultural resea...
Jo Frasca, “Delving Deeper: Understanding Diverse Approaches while Exploring Psychotherapy” (Jo Frasca Pubs, 2016)
February 27, 2017 10:58 - 55 minutesPsychotherapy is a form of treatment for human suffering that is increasingly misunderstood by the people who seek it. Once the dominant force in psychology, it now gets confused with or supplanted by shorter, more symptom-focused treatments preferred by health insurance companies. True psychotherapy, according to author and psychotherapist Jo Frasca, takes its time in unraveling and healing the archaic wounds that cause our most troubling symptoms. In her book Delving Deeper: Understanding D...
Mical Raz, “What’s Wrong with the Poor: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty” (UNC Press, 2016)
February 17, 2017 22:15 - 37 minutesIn What’s Wrong with the Poor: Psychiatry, Race, and the War on Poverty (University of North Carolina Press, 2016), Mical Raz offers a deep dive into the theoretical roots of the Head Start program, and offers a fascinating story of unexpected policy origins and of the interplay between psychiatric theory, race, and U.S. social welfare policy. 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...
Berit Brogaard, “On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion” (Oxford UP, 2015)
February 13, 2017 11:00 - 51 minutesWhy is falling in love so exciting and painful at the same time? And what explains our longing for people who are bad for us or no longer love us back? In her book On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2015), philosopher and cognitive scientist Berit Brogaard tackles these and other difficult questions through the lenses of biochemistry, philosophy, and psychology. She argues that love is an emotion to which humans can become addicted but which they...
Alison Miller, “Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control” (Karnac, 2011)
February 09, 2017 17:29 - 1 hourHealing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (Karnac, 2011) is a practical, task-oriented, instructional manual designed to help therapists provide effective treatment for survivors of these most extreme forms of child abuse and mental manipulation. “If you do not have a patient who has gone through these experiences, this is initially a deeply frightening book, as well as a crucial book. It is not a book that soft-soaps the reader along the grades of obscene hierarchy be...
Polly Buckingham, “The Expense of a View” (U. North Texas Press, 2016)
February 06, 2017 11:00 - 49 minutesMental illness and other emotional troubles are relatable experiences for Polly Buckingham, author of the new collection of short stories, The Expense of a View (University of North Texas Press, 2016). In this collection, Polly channels her experiences into rich stories that capture the essence of mental illness and the humans who deal with it. She speaks with me about the healing that can come from writing–and reading–these stories and about her unique views on life, writing, and consciousne...
Andrew Scull, “Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity” (Princeton UP, 2015)
January 20, 2017 17:37 - 54 minutesThe wish to understand mental suffering is universal and requires an appreciation for its history. Since Biblical times, humans have understood madness, or other deviations from normal mental functioning, in diverse and unique ways. These have included belief in divine origins, biological causation, and environmental influences. And treatments for mental illness have undergone a similar evolution. In his book Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity (Princeton University Press,...
Jennifer Greenwood, “Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality” (MIT, 2016)
January 18, 2017 18:55 - 1 hourPsychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories: the basic emotions, like fear or happiness, and the higher cognitive emotions, like shame or pride. In her new book, Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality (MIT Press, 2016), Jennifer Greenwood challenges this standar...
Philip Rosenbaum, “Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis” (Information Age Publishing, 2015)
January 04, 2017 02:17 - 50 minutesPragmatism, as a philosophical concept, is often misunderstood and misapplied. Fortunately, I had the chance to speak with Philip Rosenbaum, psychoanalyst and editor of the book Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis (Information Age Publishing, 2015)about what pragmatism really is and how it informs clinical theory and praxis. We discuss how pragmatisms influence reaches far back to the beginnings of psychoanalysis, in Sigmund Freud’s original ideas, and up through the ways cli...
Claudia Malacrida, “A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Albertas Eugenic Years” (U of Toronto Press, 2015)
December 29, 2016 17:17 - 4 minutesIn A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Claudia Malacrida explores the practices of the Michener Center in Red Deer, Northern Alberta, to uncover a close relationship between the institutionalization of persons with disabilities and eugenics. Canadian province of Alberta was infamous for its eugenics program, which lasted until the 1970s with a significant number of people being involuntary sterilized. Malacrida has opened many imp...
Ann Bracken, “Mind, Body, Baby” (Yellow Kite Books, 2016)
December 29, 2016 13:41 - 48 minutesWhen trying to conceive doesn’t go as planned, many women and couples are faced with difficult decisions about which interventions to pursue. Treatment of infertility, whether natural or high-tech, comes with stress and feelings of isolation when your friends or relatives seem to fall pregnant without much effort. Mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills can be useful for reducing the stress and anxiety associated with fertility problems and ...
Scott Selisker, “Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
December 18, 2016 15:09 - 59 minutesIn Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Scott Selisker offers readers a fascinating new history of American anxieties along the borderland between the machine and the human mind. Demonstrating the way that a variety of fields influence and coproduce one another, Human Programming follows the metaphor of the automaton through news media, fiction, psychology, cybernetics, film, law and back again. Along the way, Selisker enga...
Andy Clark, “Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and Embodied Mind” (Oxford UP, 2016)
December 15, 2016 11:00 - 1 hourThe predictive processing hypothesis is a new unified theory of neural and cognitive function according to which our brains are prediction machines: they process the incoming sensory stream in the light of expectations of what those sensory inputs ought to be. On this view, only prediction errors are fed forward into the processing stream, and these are used to update subsequent predictions and guide action. In Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University ...
Alisha Brosse, “End the Insomnia Struggle” (New Harbinger, 2016)
December 12, 2016 11:00 - 45 minutesEvery night around the world, millions of people lie in bed at night, struggling to fall asleep. Experts suggest that about one in three people struggle with at least mild insomnia. Paradoxically, their efforts to control their sleep may actually result in digging them in even deeper into insomnia. Fortunately for people with insomnia, and the therapists and medical professionals who treat them, some behavioral interventions are helping many people to end the pattern of sleeplessness. In thi...
Joe Solmonese, “The Gift of Anger: Use Passion to Build Not Destroy” (Berrett-Koehler, 2016)
December 10, 2016 14:16 - 1 hourAnger has acquired a bad reputation in our culture. It is an emotional state that can lead us to say and do things we later regret, particularly when our emotion overrides reason. But anger has the potential for being used productively, as energy for positive change. Such is among the many lessons former Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese learned during his many years fighting for equal rights for LGBTQ people. He shares these lessons, and the personal experiences in which he learn...
Sherry Amatenstein, “How Does That Make You Feel?: True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch” (Seal Press, 2016)
November 14, 2016 11:20 - 41 minutesIf you have ever wondered what your therapist is really thinking, then my interview with Sherry Amatenstein will satisfy your curiosity. She sat down with me to discuss her new book, How Does That Make You Feel?: True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch (Seal Press, 2016). This unique anthology of confessional essays, written by therapists as well as patients, gives readers a behind-the-scenes look into the world of psychotherapy. In our interview, Amatenstein reflects on what th...
Orna Ophir, “On the Borderland of Madness: Psychosis, Psychoanalysis, and Psychiatry in Postwar USA” (Routledge, 2015)
November 07, 2016 22:18 - 1 hourWhen it comes to the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatry in the United States, to paraphrase Luce Irigaray, one never stirs without the other. While Freud sent Theodore Reik across the ocean to promote lay analysis, A.A. Brill, president of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, was preparing to divorce the International Psychoanalytic Association. Brill, driven by a fear that psychoanalysis might be seen as quackery and so discredited, sought to guarantee that the only people allowed to...
Claudia Kalb, “Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s Great Personalities” (Natl Geographic, 2016)
October 27, 2016 17:50 - 57 minutesAll humans endure their private struggles, but rarely do we know what troubles our most famous public figures until now. In her recent book, Andy Warhol was a Hoarder: Inside the Mind of History’s Great Personalities (National Geographic, 2016), award-winning journalist Claudia Kalb shares her research into the mental health histories of several well-known and much-loved people. She discusses Princess Diana’s struggle with eating disorder and severe loneliness; the impact of Frank Lloyd Wrigh...
Gail Hornstein, “To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann” (Other Books, 2005)
October 13, 2016 17:29 - 59 minutesThe life of the German-born, pioneering American psychoanalyst, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, is intriguing enough in itself, but in the biography, To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann (Other Books, 2005), we learn that Fromm-Reichmann played an integral role in mid-century psychoanalysis. In this interview, with the author, psychologist, and historian, Gail Hornstein, we trace not only Fromm Reichmann’s many accomplishments, but also the history of Chestn...
Adam Benforado, “Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice” (Penguin Random House, 2016)
October 08, 2016 16:44 - 1 hourWhy is our criminal justice system so unfair? How do innocent men and women end up serving long sentences while the guilty roam free? According to law professor and scholar Adam Benforado, our systems problems stem from more than occasional bad apples; they start with deeply rooted biases we all hold and which influence the course of justice. Eugenio Duarte sat with him to discuss how these biases shape every step along the way, from how a crime is initially investigated, through the process ...
Daniel Rechtschaffen, “The Way of Mindful Education: Cultivating Well-Being in Teachers and Students” (W.W. Norton, 2014)
October 07, 2016 21:39 - 47 minutesTime and resources are scarce for many teachers. Often times, these same teachers are under immense pressure to produce higher test scores and severely constrained with the actions they can take in their own classrooms. What are the consequences of working under conditions in which you have increasing responsibilities without sufficiently corresponding support and professional autonomy? Teachers may only prioritize the content that appears on standardized assessments and rarely address other ...
James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth, “Opening Up by Writing it Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain” (Guilford Press, 2016)
September 19, 2016 18:34 - 56 minutesMany people carry around unresolved feelings and thoughts tied to difficult experiences, with no idea what to do with them. When left unattended for too long, these pent up feelings can lead to a variety of physical and mental health issues: sleep problems, depression, and even physical illness. Therapy can help, but its not always available for various reasons. Fortunately, long-time researchers and writers James Pennebaker and Joshua Smyth have developed expressive writing as an innovative ...
Kenneth Schaffner, “Behaving: What’s Genetic, What’s Not, and Why Should We Care?” (Oxford UP, 2016)
September 15, 2016 10:00 - 1 hourIn the genes vs. environment debate, it is widely accepted that what we do, who we are, and what mental illnesses we are at risk for result from a complex combination of both factors. Just how complex is revealed in Behaving: What’s Genetic, What’s Not, and Why Should We Care? (Oxford University Press, 2016), Kenneth Schaffner’s assessment of the impact of recent biological research on the genetic contribution to behavior. Among the developments he considers are the sequencing of the human ge...
Greg Eghigian, “The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth-Century Germany” (U. of Michigan Press, 2015)
September 09, 2016 12:39 - 49 minutesWhen I first read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish as an undergrad, I remember wondering, “What does this look like, though? How might the disciplining of the body play out in different places?” Greg Eghigian, author of The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in Twentieth-Century Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2015) and Associate Professor of History at Pennsylvania State University, answers that question and more about the evolution of incarceration in...
Andrew Schulman, “Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Picador 2016)
September 08, 2016 18:53 - 49 minutesWhat do the musical compositions of Bach, Gershwin, and the Beatles all have in common? Besides being great pieces of music, according to Andrew Schulman, they promote healing in intensive care (ICU) settings. Schulman is a classical guitar player and performer and author of Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Picador, 2016). Schulman did not receive training as a music therapist and only began working in ICUs after he had a near-death experience at one. Waki...