New Books In Psychology

In Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice (Palgrave Macmillan), Merrick D. Pilling urges those invested in social justice for 2SLGBTQ people to interrogate the biomedical model of mental illness beyond the diagnoses that specifically target gender and sexual dissidence. In this first comprehensive application of Mad Studies to queer and trans experiences of mental distress, Pilling advances a broad critique of the biomedical model of mental illness as it pertains to 2SLGBTQ people, arguing that Mad Studies is especially amenable to making sense of queer and trans madness. Based on empirical data from two qualitative research studies, this book includes analyses of inpatient chart documentation from a psychiatric hospital and interviews with those who have experienced distress. Using an intersectional lens, Pilling critically examines what constitutes mental health treatment and the impacts of medical strategies on mad queer and trans people.  Ultimately, Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for S

In this podcast Owen Bennett-Jones and psychoanalyst Daniel Pick discuss brainwashing, thought control and group think. In the case of totalitarian political systems, do dissidents prove that brainwashing cannot be guaranteed to work? Or do the techniques used by advertisers and political leaders in fact mean people are being manipulated and can do nothing about it? Pick is the author of Brainwashed: A New History of Thought Control (Wellcome Collection, 2020).  Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. 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 of High Theory, Tung-Hui Hu talks with Júlia Irion Martins about Digital Lethargy, as part of our High Theory in STEM series. As a modern ailment, digital lethargy is a societal pathology, like earlier forms of acedia, otium, and neurasthenia, but also a disease of performing selfhood within the disposable identities of contemporary, digital service work. In this episode, Tung-Hui Hu makes the argument that digital lethargy helps us turn away from the demand to constantly “be ourselves” and see the potential of quieter, more ordinary forms of survival in the digital age such as collective inaction. In the episode he discusses Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate (Semiotexte/Native Agents, 2018, trans. Katy Derbyshire). He also references the film Sleeping Beauty (dir. Julia Leigh, 2011), Douglas A. Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (Anchor, 2008), Heike Geissler’s Seasonal Associate (Semiotexte/Native Agents, 2018, trans

If you've experienced long-term or repeated trauma--such as childhood abuse or neglect, domestic violence, betrayal, or prolonged emotional abuse--you may struggle with intense feelings of sadness, anger, anxiety, shame, and distrust toward others. You should know that you aren't alone, your pain is real, and there are ways to improve your mental health and begin to heal. This compassionate and evidence-based workbook can help you get started. Tamara McClintock Greenberg's The Complex PTSD Coping Skills Workbook (New Harbinger, 2022) offers an integrative approach for coping with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), mindfulness, mentalization, and relational therapy. You'll learn the most effective strategies to manage symptoms, overcome painful memories, and build self-confidence. Most importantly, you'll find validation that your feelings aren't "crazy" or "outsized," and discove

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews co-authors Lara and Stephen Sheehi about their book, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2021). As they discuss in the interview, the book represents years of research, engagement, and relationship-building with and alongside psychoanalytically oriented Palestinian clinicians working throughout historic Palestine. These relationships and solidarities form the base from which the authors start to think about the intersection of psychoanalysis, decoloniality, and liberatory practice. J.J. Mull is a poet, training clinician, and fellow in the Program for Psychotherapy at Cambridge Health Alliance. Originally from the west coast, he currently lives and bikes in Somerville, MA. He can be reached at: jay.c.mull@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Entering the world of psychedelic drugs can be challenging, and many aren't sure where to start. As research continues to expand and legalization looms on the horizon for psychedelics like psilocybin, you may need a guide to navigate what psychedelics are, how they work, and their potential benefits and risks. The Psychedelic Handbook: A Practical Guide to Psilocybin, LSD, Ketamine, MDMA, and DMT/Ayahuasca (Ulysses Press, 2022) is a complete manual that is accessible to anyone with an interest in these "mind-manifesting" substances. Packed with information on psilocybin, LSD, DMT/ayahuasca, mescaline/peyote, ketamine, MDMA, ibogaine, 5-methoxy-DMT ("the toad"), and Salvia divinorum/salvinorin A, this book is your ultimate reference for understanding the science and history of psychedelics; discovering their potential to treat depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and other disorders, as well as to increase wellness, creativity, and meditation; learning how to safely trip and explaining what we know about microdo

In Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams, and Other Imaginary Refrains (Duke UP, 2022) Eldritch Priest questions the nature of the imagination in contemporary culture through the phenomenon of the earworm: those reveries that hijack our attention, the shivers that run down our spines, and the songs that stick in our heads. Through a series of meditations on music, animal mentality, abstraction, and metaphor, Priest uses the earworm and the states of daydreaming, mind-wandering, and delusion it can produce to outline how music is something that is felt as thought rather than listened to. Priest presents Earworm and Event as a tête-bêche—two books bound together with each end meeting in the middle. Where Earworm theorizes the entanglement of thought and feeling, Event performs it. Throughout, Priest conceptualizes the earworm as an event that offers insight into not only the way human brains process musical experiences, but how abstractions and the imagination play key roles in the composition and expression of o

Victor Frankl was a leader in 20th century psychiatry. In 1942, Frankl was sent to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic. Frankl was already influential in the field of psychiatry by the time World War II started, but his experiences in the camps would come to define his work. When the war ended, he returned back to Vienna, where he wrote his best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning, a reflection on his time in the concentration camps. Arthur Kleinman is an anthropologist and a psychiatrist. He has been a professor at Harvard for 43 years where he teaches about global mental health, social medicine, and social suffering. He is a leader in the field of medical anthropology, and author of many books, such as Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture and What Really Matters. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.support

“Perhaps psychoanalysis survives because it obstinately carries a torch of wild freedom and reverence for the unknowable in a world of rational epistemology and increasingly rigid sociopolitical control. Psychoanalysis does not scream its sociopolitical agenda, waving signs and shouting slogans, but may be a fundamentally political project nonetheless, and one of a subversive nature.” In her book Psychoanalysis as a Subversive Phenomenon: Social Change, Virtue Ethics, and Analytic Theory (Lexington Books, 2020) Amber Trotter teases out the radical legacy of psychoanalysis. Contrary to some attempts in the field to tone down the disruptive potential of psychoanalysis to make it respectable, she champions psychoanalysis as a force of radical change of the individual and collective psychic functioning. A central question of the book seems to be why psychoanalysis rarely delivers on its subversive promise. How might the discipline need to develop to counter its hypermarginalization and position it in optimal and

Can genetics play a role in crafting left social policy? Or should we not touch those ideas ever again–even with a 10 foot pole? Paige Harden’s book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality” makes a forceful case for an egalitarian politics informed by DNA. However, geneticist Joseph Graves critiqued the book, arguing that we do not need sophisticated genetic knowledge to make a more socially just world. On this episode managing producer Marc Apollonio guest hosts, talking to both. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too. ——————-ABOUT THE SHOW—————— For a full list of credits, contact

In 1930, Sigmund Freud wrote Civilization and its Discontents and laid out his theory of civilization: civilization’s a problem, and it makes us unhappy. Freud felt humans were aggressive creatures by nature, that we delight in exercising our aggression and hurting one another. He claimed that civilization, with its laws and mores, prevents us from gratifying that aggressiveness. Elizabeth Lunbeck is a professor in the History of Science Department and Director of Graduate Studies at Harvard University, specializing in the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology. Her written works include The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America and The Americanization of Narcissism. See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Using data from the writers' groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic (Harry N. Abrams, 2021) charts new pathways to prevention and innovative ways to stop the social contagion of violence. Frustrated by reactionary policy conversations that never seemed to convert into meaningful action, special investigator and psychologist Jill Peterson and sociologist James Densley built The Violence Project, the first comprehensive database of mass shooters. Their goal was to establish the root causes of mass shootings and figure out how to stop them by examining hundreds of data points in the life histories of more than 170 mass shooters--from their childhood and adolescence to their mental health and motives. They've also interviewed the living perpetrators of mass shootings and people who knew them, shooting survivors, victims' families, first responders, and leading experts to gain a comprehen

Carl Waitz and Theresa Clement Tisdale offer to us a complex and scholarly text in their new book: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Eastern Orthodox Christian Anthropology in Dialogue (Routledge, 2021). Psychoanalyst Marilyn Charles says of this text, in today’s world, we need faith, but one that is grounded in the essential mysteries that mark the human journey. In this volume, Waitz and Tisdale make a plea for the place of the inexplicable in both psychoanalysis and religion, inviting a reading of each that advocates for, not knowledge, but rather a learning that can continue to enrich our lives and spirits rather than closing down possibilities. For those attempting to move beyond pleasure and fear towards an ethic of personal responsibility, this is an important volume. This book vigorously engages Lacan with a spiritual tradition that has yet to be thoroughly addressed within psychoanalytic literature―the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. Waitz and Tisdale seek to offer the reader a unique engagement with

We are in the middle of a 'desirevolution' - a fundamental and political transformation of the way we desire as human beings. Perhaps as always, new technologies - with their associated and inherited political biases - are organising and mapping the future. What we don’t seem to notice is that the primary way in which our lives are being transformed is through the manipulation and control of desire itself. Our very impulses, drives and urges are 'gamified' to suit particular economic and political agendas, changing the way we relate to everything from lovers and friends to food and politicians. Digital technologies are transforming the subject at the deepest level of desire – re-mapping its libidinal economy - in ways never before imagined possible. From sexbots to smart condoms, fitbits to VR simulators and AI to dating algorithms, the 'love industries' are at the heart of the future smart city and the social fabric of everyday life. Alfie Bown's Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships (Pluto Press,

We’ll save the Moby Dick puns for the episode itself, but suffice it to say that sinister game developers are on a whale hunt. This episode, originally published last fall, is about the sophisticated psychological tactics they use to hunt and capture their prey. Free to play mobile games as glorified slot machines, in-game purchases even for triple-A titles, game design that keep gamers hooked to their rigs. These practices are often exploitative and, for some who fall victim to them, devastating. Some countries, like China, are pushing back. But their restrictions are overbearing and unlikely to work as people skirt the restrictions. There are better ways. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we take a journey to save the whales. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a

The first collection of essays from the author of the Life and Death of Psychoanalysis, Stay, Illusion! with Simon Critchley and Conversion Disorder, Disorganisation & Sex (Divided Publishing, 2022) is as much about our resistance to sexuality as it is about sex itself. Jamieson Webster continues to excite and disturb, turning to Lacan and the autotheoretical in her exploration of the deep roots of our libidinal ties and the ways in which we keep desire at bay in our efforts to lead tidier, more coherent lives. Part theory, part manifesto and part testimony, Webster calls for us as analysts to reinvent ourselves with our patients, as patients to take part in the poetry of our symptoms, and as institutions to create the conditions for something radical to happen in the transmission of psychoanalysis. While many in theory have turned toward the soma and the exterior, Webster has not given up on psychic interiority, her writing an attempt to avoid the trap of idealizing one while diminishing the other, or gettin

It is not terribly controversial to say that castration fear is one of the key conceptual engines driving the psychoanalytic project overall. Whether one thinks of it manifesting as a looming, retributive threat for incestuous longings or as a struggle to face one’s shortcomings, contending with what we are at risk of losing or what has already gone missing animates both the field and the consulting room. Imagine the profession if it didn’t contend with this subject: without castration we would have neither Oedipal conflict nor a theory of repression. As such, it is noteworthy to consider the paucity of writing about circumcision in psychoanalysis, especially when you remember that circumcision and castration both involve cutting male genitalia. And before you protest that a penis is not a testicle, it should not come as a surprise that in the unconscious the bits and bobs of male genitalia might not be represented as separately as they are in medical discourse—in the unconscious sometimes a penis is a scrota

If you have ever been skeptical about whether neuroscience has anything to teach psychoanalysis, or vice-versa, you will be stimulated by this book which engages the two disciplines in a fascinating dialogue with each other. How does the mind connect to the body? Why does it feel like something to be us? For one of the boldest thinkers in neuroscience, solving this puzzle has been a lifetime's quest. Now at last, the man who discovered the brain mechanism for dreaming appears to have made a breakthrough. The very idea that a solution is at hand may seem outrageous. Isn't consciousness intangible, beyond the reach of science?  Yet Mark Solms shows how misguided fears and suppositions have concealed its true nature. Stick to the medical facts, pay close attention to the eerie testimony of hundreds of neurosurgery patients, and a way past our obstacles reveals itself. Join Solms on a voyage into the extraordinary realms beyond. More than just a philosophical argument, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source o

How well do we understand our relationship to sex? According to Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, authors of the new book Hatred of Sex (University of Nebraska Press, 2022), we tend to overlook the “unpleasurable pleasures” that are integral to sex. Sex undoes us, destabilizes us, takes us out of ourselves. Many of our 21st century cultural products—Queer Theory, traumatology, intersectional studies—secretly “hate” sex for these very reasons and build such hatred into their ideas. In our interview, Davis and Dean explain why a full understanding and experience of sex require our reckoning with these truths, and they offer conceptual tools for undertaking such a reckoning. This interview is a must-listen for anyone curious about the unspoken dimensions of sex. Oliver Davis is a professor of French studies at the University of Warwick. He is the author of Jacques Rancière and editor of Rancière Now. Tim Dean is James M. Benson Professor in English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of 

In The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains, and the Search for Our Psyches (Ecco, 3033), Daniel Bergner examines these and other by describing three riveting case studies in the context of the history of psychiatry and psychopharmacology. Alongside the story of his brother Bob’s struggle with bipolar disorder, we learn about Caroline, who is besieged by the hallucinations of psychosis, and David, an attorney who is engulfed by anxiety and depression. In telling their stories while describing the frontiers of brain research, Bergner shows how the pharmaceutical industry has played a key role in perpetuating a biological view of the mind and drug-based cures for its disorders – despite mediocre drug effectiveness, many challenging side effects, and questionable patient outcomes. The Mind and the Moon addresses fundamental issues of selfhood and identity in ways that will challenge basic beliefs about who we are and who we might be. Steve Beitler’s work in the history of medicine foc