New Books in Psychology

In this eye-opening chronicle of scientific research on the brain in the early Cold War era, the acclaimed historian Andreas Killen traces the complex circumstances surrounding the genesis of our present-day fascination with this organ.The 1950s were a transformative, even revolutionary decade in the history of brain science. Using new techniques for probing brain activity and function, researchers in neurosurgery, psychiatry, and psychology achieved dramatic breakthroughs in the treatment of illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia, as well as the understanding of such faculties as memory and perception. Memory was the site of particularly startling discoveries. As one researcher wrote to another in the middle of that decade, “Memory was the sleeping beauty of the brain—and now she is awake.” Collectively, these advances prefigured the emergence of the field of neuroscience at the end of the twentieth century.But the 1950s also marked the beginning of the Cold War and a period of transformative social change across Western society. These developments resulted in unease and paranoia. Mysterious new afflictions—none more mystifying than “brainwashing”—also appeared at this time. Faced with the discovery that, as one leading psychiatrist put it, “the human personality is not as stable as we often assume,” many researchers in the sciences of brain and behavior joined the effort to understand these conditions. They devised ingenious and sometimes transgressive experimental methods for studying and proposing countermeasures to the problem of Communist mind control. Some of these procedures took on a strange life of their own, escaping the confines of the research lab to become part of 1960s counterculture. Much later, in the early 2000s, they resurfaced in the War on Terror.These stories, often told separately, are brought together by the historian Andreas Killen in this chronicle of the brain’s mid-twentieth-century emergence as both a new research frontier and an organ whose integrity and capacities—especially that of memory—were imagined as uniquely imperiled in the 1950s. Nervous Systems: Brain Science in the Early Cold War (Harper, 2023) explores the anxious context in which the mid-century sciences of the brain took shape and reveals the deeply ambivalent history that lies behind our contemporary understanding of this organ.Paul Lerner is Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He can be reached at plerner@usc.edu and @PFLerner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The climate crisis and its resulting eco-anxiety is the biggest challenge of our time. The anxiety that comes with worrying about how environmental harm will impact our—and our children’s—lives can be overwhelming. Learn how to balance practicing daily sustainability actions while caring for your own eco-anxiety in this revolutionary book from noted environmentalist Heather White.In One Green Thing: Discover Your Hidden Power to Help Save the Planet (Harper Horizon, 2022), White shows you how to contribute to the climate movement through self-discovery and self-care. Utilizing the Service Superpower Profile Assessment included in the text, you’ll discover how your personality, interests, and strengths can be of service to others and the planet. This book will serve as your guide to: Begin a 21-Day Kickstarter Plan that shares specific sustainable actions you can take Track your progress with journal prompts and exercises that’ll help you measure mental health benefits Listen and talk with loved ones about their climate anxiety Commit to being an eco-aware individual and inspire your family, friends, and community to work toward a regenerative, sustainable world Setting the intention each day to take a small step— a "one green thing" to care for the planet—can help ease your eco-anxiety, push the culture toward climate solutions, and create a sense of joy.Heather White is a changemaker, an environment policy expert, an environmental lawyer, a writer, a motivational speaker, a nonprofit executive, and has been a Senate staffer.Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Imagine the astonishment felt by neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga when he found a fantastically precise interpretation of his research findings in a story written by the great Argentinian fabulist Jorge Luis Borges fifty years earlier. Quian Quiroga studies the workings of the brain—in particular how memory works—one of the most complex and elusive mysteries of science. He and his fellow neuroscientists have at their disposal sophisticated imaging equipment and access to information not available just twenty years ago. And yet Borges seemed to have imagined the gist of Quian Quiroga's discoveries decades before he made them.The title character of Borges's "Funes the Memorious" remembers everything in excruciatingly particular detail but is unable to grasp abstract ideas. Quian Quiroga found neurons in the human brain that respond to abstract concepts but ignore particular details, and, spurred by the way Borges imagined the consequences of remembering every detail but being incapable of abstraction, he began a search for the origins of Funes. Borges's widow, María Kodama, gave him access to her husband's personal library, and Borges's books led Quian Quiroga to reread earlier thinkers in philosophy and psychology. He found that just as Borges had perhaps dreamed the results of Quian Quiroga's discoveries, other thinkers—William James, Gustav Spiller, John Stuart Mill—had perhaps also dreamed a story like "Funes."With Borges and Memory, Quian Quiroga has given us a fascinating and accessible story about the workings of the brain that the great creator of Funes would appreciate.Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, a native of Argentina, is Professor and Director of the Bioengineering Research Centre at the University of Leicester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In 2006, Jennifer Michael Hecht spoke to the Institute about her book, The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong. Hecht is a poet and historian, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of science/European cultural history from Columbia University. She has published four books of nonfiction and three books of poetry. She has taught in the MFA programs at Columbia University and the New School.Since 1977, the New York Institute for the Humanities has brought together distinguished scholars, writers, artists, and publishing professionals to foster crucial discussions around the public humanities. For more information and to support the NYIH, visit nyihumanities.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

It is common to think that rational agency involves acting in ways that, given one’s options, maximize the satisfaction of one’s preferences. This intuitive understanding has generated a wide-ranging literature about the ways in which individuals routinely fail to be rational in the proposed sense: they make choices that not only do not maximize their preference satisfaction, but actually undermine or defeat their aims. Maybe we’re not rational animals after all?In Choosing Well: The Good, The Bad, and The Trivial (Oxford University Press 2023), Chrisoula Andreou explores certain cases of purported irrationality and argues that they involve disorderly preferences but need not involve irrationality on the part of agents. Chrisoula argues that there are cases where, although our preferences may be disorderly, we can preserve our practical rationality by taking care to attend to the patterns of choice we instantiate. Along the way, Chrisoula proposes intriguing ideas about how we assess our choices, how to understand temptation, and when it’s rational to regret our choices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Why do women in contemporary western societies experience contradiction between their autonomous and maternal selves? What are the origins of this contradiction and the associated ‘double shift’ that result in widespread calls to either ‘lean in’ or ‘opt out’? How are some mothers subverting these contradictions and finding meaningful ways of reconciling their autonomous and maternal selves?In Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Identities: Rewriting the Sexual Contract (Routledge, 2018), Petra Bueskens argues that western modernisation consigned women to the home and released them from it in historically unprecedented, yet interconnected, ways. Her ground-breaking formulation is that western women are free as ‘individuals’ and constrained as mothers, with the twist that it is the former that produces the latter.Bueskens’ theoretical contribution consists of the identification and analysis of modern women’s duality, drawing on political philosophy, feminist theory and sociology tracking the changing nature of discourses of women, freedom and motherhood across three centuries. While the current literature points to the pervasiveness of contradiction and double-shifts for mothers, very little attention has been paid to how (some) women are subverting contradiction and ‘rewriting the sexual contract’. Bridging this gap, Bueskens’ interviews ten ‘revolving mothers’ to reveal how periodic absence, exceeding the standard work-day, disrupts the default position assigned to mothers in the home, and in turn disrupts the gendered dynamics of household work.Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Mental health is positioned as the cure-all for society’s discontents, from pandemics to terrorism. But psychology and psychiatry are not apolitical, and neither are Muslims. This book unpacks where the politics of the psy-disciplines and the politics of Muslims overlap, demonstrating how psychological theories and practices serve State interests and perpetuate inequality—especially racism and Islamophobia. Viewing the psy-disciplines from the margins, The Muslim, State, and Mind: Psychology in Times of Islamophobia (Sage, 2022) illustrates how these necessarily serve the State in the production of loyal, low-risk and productive citizens, offering a modern discussion of three paradigms underlying the psy-disciplines: neoliberalism, security and the politics of mental health.Dr Tarek Younis is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Middlesex University, and a registered psychologist. He researches and writes on Islamophobia, racism in mental health, the securitisation of clinical settings and the politics of psychology; and teaches on the impact of culture, religion, globalisation and security policies on mental health interventions.Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London. She is currently researching the US Passport Office's role in governing Cold War travel, and broadly interested in questions of security, surveillance and mobility. She can be reached by email, Mastodon or Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I talked to Gabe Howard about his book Mental Illness Is an Asshole: And Other Observations (DGC Press, 2018).Howard has an interesting story to tell. He is an award-winning podcast host, author, and sought-after speaker, but he says he wouldn’t be any of these things today if he hadn’t found himself in a psychiatric hospital diagnosed with a bipolar disorder in 2003.What is particularly rewarding is the fact that Howard is frank, open and honest about his problems and dislikes speakers who only discuss success. He shares very personal stories because he wants his listeners and readers to know that his recovery isn't a perfectly curated social media event but has ups and downs with symptoms and setbacks.For years, Howard's entertaining articles and essays have been educating people about living with mental illness. His observations cover everything from practical advice to family relationships to the fears that people with mental illness experience.In essays such as "Anxiety Says Everyone Hates Me," "I Have Bipolar and I'm a Hypocrite," and, yes, "Mental Illness Is an Asshole," Howard makes mental illness less scary and more understandable.Karyne Messina is a psychologist and a psychoanalyst with the Baltimore Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. She is on the medical staff at Suburban Hospital of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is author of Resurgence of Global Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In Indian philosophical traditions, a reflection in a mirror frequently serves as a metaphor, suggesting that just as a face in a mirror appears where it is not, so does consciousness. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self: Mirror of Self: Models of Consciousness in Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Advaita Vedānta (Oxford UP, 2023) utilizes this metaphor to address metaphysical, epistemological, and theological problems within non-reductionist approaches to consciousness. Author Dimitry Shevchenko contends that consciousness and its properties--such as the sense of self, subjectivity, and experience of qualia--stand in falsely perceived relations to cognitive and perceptive processes. This book explores models of interaction between consciousness, the mind-body complex, and the world in the philosophical schools of Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Advaita-Vedant. In a dialogue with psychoanalytical theory and analytic philosophy of mind, Shevchenko defends a new model of consciousness, integrating consciousness-mind dualism, mind naturalism, and representationalism about consciousness.Despite the overwhelming presence of pratibimbavadas, or "theories of reflection", in major philosophical traditions in India, they have received little scholarly attention. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self is the first systematic exploration of mirror models of consciousness across traditions. By grounding these theories in their historical intellectual context, Shevchenko contributes to an intense philosophical conversation between Indian reductionists and non-reductionists about consciousness. The book explores the impact of Indian mirror models on theories of mental representation, theories of knowledge, philosophy of language, debates on illusory causality and the relationship between noumena and phenomena, as well as soteriological and theological theories. Finally, by comparing mirror models of consciousness in Indian philosophy with Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage and by engaging with theories of consciousness in analytic philosophy, this study contributes to contemporary debates across philosophical disciplines.In Indian philosophical traditions, a reflection in a mirror frequently serves as a metaphor, suggesting that just as a face in a mirror appears where it is not, so does consciousness. Mirror of Nature, Mirror of Self utilizes this metaphor to address metaphysical, epistemological, and theological problems within non-reductionist approaches to consciousness.The book is available open access here. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

From phishing scams to Ponzi schemes, fraudulent science to fake art, chess cheaters to crypto hucksters, and marketers to magicians, our world brims with deception. In Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do about It (Basic Books, 2023), psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris show us how to avoid being taken in. They describe the key habits of thinking and reasoning that serve us well most of the time but make us vulnerable--like our tendency to accept what we see, stick to our commitments, and overvalue precision and consistency. Each chapter illustrates their new take on the science of deception, describing scams you've never heard of and shedding new light on some you have. Simons and Chabris provide memorable maxims and practical tools you can use to spot deception before it's too late.Informative, illuminating, and entertaining, Nobody's Fool will protect us from charlatans in all their forms--and delight us along the way.Debbie Sorenson is a psychologist in Denver and the host of the excellent 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