New Books In Psychology

Overcoming Challenges in the Mental Capacity Act 2005: Practical Guidance for Working with Complex Issues (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) both delivers on what promises and more: it gives practical and ethical guidance for mental health law practitioners, and applicable tools to apply the Mental Capacity Act 2005. It also provides the ethical and philosophical justifications for doing so. This very useful book sets out the legal framework and within that shows how relationships can impact in both positive and negative ways. It demonstrates how autonomy can be supported within existing laws and practices and how to achieve excellent ethical standards in assessments of mental capacity and best interests.  In navigating the complexities of mental capacity law and practice, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners of law, and for those who work in medicine, mental health services and social care. It is also of great significance for those interested in the task of law reform - legislators

The laws that govern psychiatric treatment under coercion have remain largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. But this is not because of their effectiveness, rather, these laws cling to outdated notions of disability, mental illness and mental disorder why deny the fundamental rights of this category of people on an equal basis with all others. In Men in White Coats: Treatment Under Coercion (Oxford University Press, 2017) Professor George Szmukler examines the violation of these rights, such as the right to autonomy, self-determination, liberty, and security and integrity of the person in the context of the domestic laws which themselves perpetuate ongoing discrimination against people with mental impairments. Tracing first the history of the medical coercion and involuntary treatment of people with mental illnesses and mental disorders, Professor Szmukler offers a potential path which he argues would end discrimination against this category of people. He puts forward a legal framework which is non-d

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives—identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic—celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass (Chelsea Green, 2021): three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high. Smoke Hole is a passionate call to arms and an invitation to use these stories to face the complexities of contemporary life, from fake news, parenthood, climate crises, addictive technology and more. Shaw urges us to reclaim our imagination and untangle ourselves from modern menace, letting these tales be our guide. Dr Martin Shaw is a writer and one of the most widely regarded teachers of the mythic imagination. He is the author of the award winning A Branch From The Lightning Tree, Snowy Tower, and Scatterlings

Neil Altman’s White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (Routledge, 2020) is a slip (80 pages including references and the index) of a book that reads as both addendum and antidote to some of the literature aimed at waking white people (Ta-Nahesi-Coates’ “dreamers”) up to the realities of racism. I say antidote as some of that literature (the work of Robin Di Angelo and Ibram X. Kendi come to mind) seems to depend on commands from the super ego to shed the scales from white eyes. On finishing Di Angelo’s White Fragility (which was required reading last summer) I felt both paranoid and ashamed and had to wonder how self-policing was going diminish my racism? Altman’s book intervenes precisely in this potentially deleterious cycle arguing that anti-racist thinking that relies on “should” and “oughts”, are potentially doomed to fail. By attacking the defenses rather than softening them, such efforts run the risk of hardening the racism they set out to transform. Humans hate. Freud tells us it is our first fee

The phenomenon of friendship is universal and elemental. Friends, after all, are the family we choose. But what makes these bonds not just pleasant but essential, and how do they affect our bodies and our minds? In Friendship: The Evolution, Biology and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond (Bloomsbury, 2020), science journalist Lydia Denworth takes us in search of friendship's biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. She finds friendship to be as old as early life on the African savannas--when tribes of people grew large enough for individuals to seek fulfillment of their social needs outside their immediate families. Denworth sees this urge to connect reflected in primates, too, taking us to a monkey sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a baboon colony in Kenya to examine social bonds that offer insight into our own. She meets scientists at the frontiers of brain and genetics research and discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, our genomes, and our cardiovascular and immu

When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron (Routledge, 2020) offers a sampling of Lewis Aron's most important contributions to relational psychoanalysis. One of the founders of relational thinking, Aron was an internationally recognized psychoanalyst, sought after teacher, lecturer, and the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His pioneering work introduced and revolutionized the concepts of mutuality, the analyst's subjectivity, and the paradigm of mutual vulnerability in the analytic setting. During the last few years of his life, Aron was exploring the ethical considerations of writing psychoanalytic case histories and the importance of self-reflection and skepticism not only for analysts with their patients, but also as a stance towards the field of psychoanalysis itself. Aron is known for his singular, highly compelling teaching and writing style and for an unparalleled ability to convey complex, often comparative theoretical concepts in a uniquely in

In this interview, I talked with Professor Sonia Livingstone about her book Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children’s Lives (Oxford UP, 2020). The book is co-authored with Alicia Blum-Ross who is the Public Policy Lead for Kids & Families at Google. Professor Livingstone is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published 20 books on media audiences, specifically focusing on children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy and rights in the digital environment. Professor Livingstone currently directs the Digital Futures Commission with the 5Rights Foundation and the Global Kids Online project with UNICEF along with various other prestigious affiliations. Najarian R. Peters is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kansas and a Fa

Today I talked to Carla Diana about her new book My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). Carla Diana is a robot designer responsible for the creative aspects of Diligent Robotics’ new hospital service robot named Moxi. She created and leads the 4D Design masters program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, wrote the world’s first children’s book on 3D printing, LEO the Maker Prince, and she cohosts the Robopsych Podcast. The author is intrigued by where technology is headed—the “electronic guts” of high-tech offerings--at the same time that she never loses focus on what kind of gut reaction a user will have in interacting with a product. This episode therefore ranges from discussing modalities central to Diana’s work (sound, movement, and lighting) to addressing how important it is for designers and engineers alike to engage in “bodystorming” exercises that align everyone around what the user’s experience will be like. Delight and ease of use are

Jeanne Simons devoted her career as a social worker and educator to the study, treatment, and care of children with autism. In 1955, she established the Linwood Children's Center in Ellicott City, Maryland, one of the first schools dedicated to children with autism. Her Linwood Model, developed there, was widely adopted and still forms the basis for a variety of autism intervention techniques. Incredibly—although unknown at the time—Jeanne was herself autistic. Behind the Mirror: The Story of a Pioneer in Autism Treatment and Her Work with Children on the Spectrum (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021) reveals the remarkable tale of Simons. In this interview I speak with Dr. Sabine Oishi, who co-author this book with Simons and also the book, the hidden child. Sabine Oishi, PhD, was educated first as a teacher and then as a child psychologist at the University of Geneva. She earned her PhD in child development and family therapy from the University of Maryland. She has worked as a teacher, researcher, and therapist both in

In The Power of Artistic Thinking: Think Like an Artist and Innovate (Common Ground, 2019; 2021 paperback), Marisol D’Andrea, PhD explores the potential of artistic thinking and shares practical guidance to help us all harness the power of artistic thinking. Through in-depth interviews and conversations with artists, scholars, and thought leaders, she has arrived at core commonalities in artistic thinking: passion and obsession; imagination and belief; observation and connection; visualization and pondering; learning and exploration; and practice and repetition. In this book, she examines these elements and translates them into practical exercises. D’Andrea writes, “Through the arts, I learned—and I hope you will learn, too—how to prioritize your thinking (i.e., follow your passions), how to think (e.g., imagine), when to think (e.g., explore), and to discover who you are (e.g., self-transform) … It was artistic thinking that empowered me and spurred me on to write this book.” Marisol D'Andrea, PhD is a visua

To many mathematicians and math enthusiasts, the word "innumeracy" brings to mind popular writing like that of John Allen Paulos. But inequities in our quantitative reasoning skills have received considerable interest and attention from researchers lately, including in psychology, development, education, and public health. Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers (Oxford University Press, 2020) is a unified treatment of these broad-ranging studies, from the ways more and less numerate people differ in our perceptions of risk and our number-based decisions to the roots of our numeric faculties and how we can make the best of them. Dr. Ellen Peters has made significant contributions to the subject and brings her expertise and an exceptional clarity to its presentation. Precious little of the research surveyed in her book could fit into this interview! We discussed the three components of numeric ability—objective numeracy, subjective numeracy, and the innate number sense—and how they vary w

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

In The Analyst’s Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice (Bloomsbury, 2020), Mitchell Wilson explores the fundamental role that lack and desire play in psychoanalytic interpretation by using a comparative method that engages different psychoanalytic traditions: Lacanian, Bionian, Kleinian, Contemporary Freudian. Investigating crucial questions Wilson asks: What is the nature of the psychoanalytic process? How are desire and counter-transference linked? What is the relationship between desire, analytic action, and psychoanalytic ethics? Mitchell Wilson is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, USA. While in medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, he obtained a postgraduate degree in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied the early English novel and Lacanian theory. He has been a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, and has served on the editorial boards of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and the

Why do I feel bad? There is real power in understanding our bad feelings. With his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he returns with Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry (Dutton, 2019), a book that transforms our understanding of mental disorders by exploring a fundamentally new question. Instead of asking why certain people suffer from mental illness, Nesse asks why natural selection has left us all with fragile minds. Drawing on revealing stories from his own clinical practice and insights from evolutionary biology, Nesse shows how negative emotions are useful in certain situations yet can become overwhelming. Anxiety protects us from harm in the face of danger, but false alarms are inevitable. Low moods prevent us from wasting effort in pursuit of unreachable goals, but they often escalate into pathological depression. Other mental disorders, such as addiction and anorexia, result from the

Freedom of choice lies at the heart of American society. Every day, individuals decide what to eat, which doctors to see, who to connect with online, and where to educate their children. Yet, many Americans don't realize that these choices are illusory at best. By the start of the 21st century, every major industrial sector in the global economy was controlled by no more than five transnational corporations, and in about a third of these sectors, a single company accounted for more than 40 percent of global sales. The available options in food, healthcare, education, transportation, and even online presence are largely constructed by corporations, whose sweeping influence have made them the public face and executive agents of 21st-century capitalism.  At What Cost: Modern Capitalism and the Future of Health (Oxford UP, 2021) confronts how globalization, financial speculation, monopolies, and control of science and technology have enhanced the ability of corporations and their allies to overwhelm influences of

Michelle Schwarze’s engaging new book, Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge UP, 2020), delves into the idea and role of resentment within the political environment and how spectatorial resentment can work to support the pursuit of justice within society and political systems. Schwarze argues that resentment, as an emotion, recognizes the humanity in others, and, if realized appropriately, can help integrate emotions into political life. The liberal political project focuses so much on rationality and eliding the emotions, the turn to resentment and, from it, sympathy can seem at odds both with the modern liberal approach and with our general understanding of resentment. Schwarze’s research centers around three thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment, Bishop Joseph Butler, Adam Smith, and David Hume. Recognizing Resentment also integrates work by Thomas Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, Samuel von Pufendorf, as all of these thinkers were considering the role of senti

We often think the key to success and satisfaction is to get more: more money, time, and possessions; bigger budgets, job titles, and teams; and additional resources for our professional and personal goals. It turns out we're wrong. Using captivating stories to illustrate research in psychology and management, Rice University professor Scott Sonenshein examines why some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much. People and organizations approach resources in two different ways: "chasing" and "stretching." When chasing, we exhaust ourselves in the pursuit of more. When stretching, we embrace the resources we already have. This frees us to find creative and productive ways to solve problems, innovate, and engage our work and lives more fully. Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined (HarperCollins, 2017) shows why everyone--from executives to entrepreneurs, professionals to parents, athletes to artists--performs better with constraints; why

Marc Brackett is a professor in Yale University's Child Study Center and founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. In his 25 years as an emotion scientist, he has developed a remarkably effective plan to improve the lives of children and adults - a blueprint for understanding our emotions and using them wisely so that they help, rather than hinder, our success and well-being. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. He was the first adult who managed to see Marc, listen to him, and recognize the suffering, bullying, and abuse he'd endured. And that was the beginning of Marc's awareness that what he was going through was temporary. He wasn't alone, he wasn't stuck on a timeline, and he wasn't "wrong" to feel scared, isolated, and angry. Now, best of all, he could do something about it. In the decades since, Marc has led large research teams and raised tens of millions of dollars to investigate the roots of emotional we

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience", typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella-- astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields "pseudo" is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience from genuine science. Given the virulence of contemporary disputes over the denial of climate change and anti-vaccination movements--both of which display allegations of "pseudoscience" on all sides-- there is a clear need to better understand issues of scientific demarcation. On the Fringe: Where Science Meets Pseudoscience (Oxford UP, 2021) explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address this problem of demarcation. This book argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to scie

In The Healing Otherness Handbook: Overcome the Trauma of Identity-Based Bullying and Find Power in Your Difference (New Harbinger, 2021), Stacee Reicherzer—a nationally known transgender psychotherapist and expert on trauma, otherness, and self-sabotage—shares her own personal story of childhood bullying, and how it inspired her to help others heal from the same wounds. Drawing from mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Reicherzer will help you gain a better understanding of how past trauma has limited your life, and show you the keys to freeing yourself from self-defeating, destructive beliefs.  Stacee L. Reicherzer, PhD, is a Chicago, IL-based transgender counselor, educator, and public speaker for the stories of the bullied, forgotten, and oppressed. The San Antonio, TX, native serves as clinical faculty of counseling at Southern New Hampshire University, where she received the distinguished faculty award in 2018. She travels the globe to teach and engage audiences around diverse topics of