New Books in Psychology

In 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 other popular media. Collins examines the different ways that Brothers created a career for herself for over 50 years, looking at her role as psychologist, as well as her roles as guest star, actor, and media celebrity. She looks at the ways Brothers used her savvy business sense to create a multilayered career that made vital contributions to psychology, television, and U.S. cultural history. Collins uses Brothers’ personal papers and her published interviews as well as her own interviews with Brothers’ daughter and colleagues to create a well-researched and informative exploration into this television icon. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Psychological 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), organizational consultant and researcher Michael Diamond explores the complex role of organizational identity in the life and success of organizations. In our interview, he explains what an organizational identity is and how its identification and articulation can help heal long-standing splits and enhance reflection and communication in even the most troubled organizations. His wisdom from 35 years of experience in this field is relevant for anyone who starts, leads, or works in an organization. Dr. Michael Diamond is Professor Emeritus of Public Affairs and Organization Studies, University of Missouri, Columbia. His more than 35 years of writing and research are focused on the nexus of psychoanalysis, organizational politics, and culture. His prior books include The Unconscious Life of Organizations: Interpreting Organizational Identity (1993, Praeger) and Private Selves in Public Organizations (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). Listen to the interview by clicking below. To subscribe to the New Books in Psychology podcast, click here. Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

April 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 conducted with sexual abusers to identify typical patterns of sexual abuse, and behaviors parents should look for in adults who are around their children. She provides some basic information about who is at risk, and suggests strategies that empower adults to do what they can to prevent childhood sexual abuse. She also provides advice about how to talk to children about their bodies and teach them Body Safety rules. She discusses the relationship between educating children about sexual development and reducing the risk of childhood sexual abuse. This is an important episode for anyone who wants to help prevent Childhood Sexual Abuse. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The 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 Knafo and Rocco Lo Bosco’s new book, The Age of Perversion: Desire and Technology in Psychoanalysis and Culture (Routledge, 2016). In my interview with Knafo, we explore her redefinition of perversion and her view on its current and future manifestations and what it implies for the survival of humanity. Danielle Knafo is a professor in the clinical psychology doctoral program at Long Island University and faculty member and supervisor in New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. She has lectured internationally and published extensively, including her prior book, Dancing with the Unconscious, published in 2012 also by Routledge. Listen to the interview by clicking below. To subscribe to the New Books in Psychology podcast, click here. Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Many 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 Craighead, Professor of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta,has published extensively in the areas of eating disorders and weight concerns. In her well-regarded book, The Appetite Awareness Workbook: How to Listen to Your Body and Overcome Binge Eating, Overeating and Preoccupation with Food (New Harbinger Publications, 2006),Dr. Craighead teaches people how to develop appetite awareness and mindful eating as a cognitive behavioral approach to eating and weight problems. Craighead describes a method of self-monitoring she developed to teach individuals how to tune into internal signals of hunger and fullness and use this heightened awareness to make conscious decisions about eating. Unlike dieting or monitoring calories/food, which increase preoccupation with food, Appetite Awareness Training teaches people how to use appetite cues and mindful eating to reestablish a normal relationship with food. In this interview, Dr. Craighead talks about why this flexible approach t​​o eating is effective for people with eating disorders as well as other people who tend to have some maladaptive eating behavior patterns. She also discusses her current work on modifying and applying appetite awareness for children and adolescents, particularly as a tool to prevent or intervene early in the development of obesity. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Robert 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 power, and psychological pressures can lead them to take unusually high risks. How Statesmen Think also looks at how deterrent threats and counterpart promises often fail because they are misperceived. You can read an introduction to the book here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Literature 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 also key. Their book contains contributions from various experts describing how they navigate the divide of difference, with patient, everyday people, and within themselves. In our interview, we delve into these topics and discuss clinical and non-clinical examples to illustrate how these concepts come to life. Our discussion, and the book, are timely and relevant to our universal struggle to understand and connect with one another. Brent Willock is president of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Board Member of the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and on the faculty of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology. Lori Bohm is Supervising Analyst and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, and former Director of their Center for Applied Psychoanalysis and Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Programs. Rebecca Curtis is Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University, as well as Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In 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 and his belief that what is seen is more important than what we say. After his early death, Rorschach’s Test found its way to America being used by the military, to test job applicants, to evaluate defendants and parents in custody battles and people suffering from mental illness. In addition, it has been used throughout advertising and incorporated in Hollywood and popular culture. A tragic figure, and one of the most influential psychiatrists in the twentieth century, The Inkblots allows readers to better understand how Rorschach and his test impacted psychiatry and psychological testing. Searls’ work is eloquently written and detailed, pulling in unpublished letters, diaries and interviews with family, friends and colleagues. Searls’ well researched text presents insight into the ways that art and science have impacted modern psychology and popular culture. Rebekah Buchanan is an Assistant Professor of English at Western Illinois University. Her work examines the role of narrative–both analog and digital–in people’s lives. She is interested in how personal narratives produced in alternative spaces create sites that challenge traditionally accepted public narratives. She researches zines, zine writers and the influence of music subcultures and fandom on writers and narratives. You can find more about her on her website, follow her on Twitter @rj_buchanan or email her at rj-buchanan@wiu.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Developmental 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 research pertaining to societies treatment of children and argues that Western practices around child-rearing are out of step with those of the rest of the world. In our interview, he explains how our neontocratic orientation differs from most other societies gerontocratic values and offers some fresh ways of thinking about aspects of everyday family life. David F. Lancy is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Utah State University, and author/editor of several books on childhood and culture, including Playing on the Mother Ground: Cultural Routines for Childrens Learning (1996), Studying Children and Schools (2001), and The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood (2010). He also authors the Psychology Today blogpost Benign Neglect. Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Psychotherapy 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 Diverse Approaches while Exploring Psychotherapy, she uses anecdotes and lessons from her years of clinical practice to clarify how psychotherapy differs from psychiatry, social work, counseling, and other treatments, and she offers a compelling argument for the unique rewards of a well-conducted psychotherapeutic treatment. In our interview, we discuss what motivated her to put these convictions into book form and her suggestions for how to find high-quality, effective treatments. Jo Frasca is a psychotherapist in private practice in Sydney, Australia, combining Transactional Analysis and the relational model in her work, informed by psychoanalytic theory and thinking. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology