New Books in Psychology

We claim to judge people for what they intentionally do, but accidents often influence our judgments. In our justice systems, people can be harshly and unfairly blamed for bad luck—but in our personal lives, taking on blame isn’t always a bad thing.Guests Fiery Cushman, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University Daniel Statman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Cultivating Q Methodology is a collection of essays is in honor of Professor Steven R. Brown, the preeminent scholar of Q methodology. Q methodology, innovated by the British physicist/psychologist William Stephenson (1902-1989), Q methodology is a conceptual framework and set of procedures to systematically and scientifically study the subjective. Professor Brown has dedicated his academic life, more than 50 years and counting, to advancing the methodology and Stephenson's profound ideas. Each of the contributors in this volume are experts in the methodology as well, and the book is divided into 3 sections: 1. Chapters honoring Brown's legacy; 2. Chapters devoted to methodological aspects of Q; and 3. Applications of Q methodology to various topics. Professor Steven R. Brown has directly impacted the work of each of the contributors of this volume, and hundreds more who have sought to use Q methodology to study topics spanning the human sciences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

How does creativity work? In Creativities: The What, How, Where, Who and Why of the Creative Process (Edward Elgar, 2022), Chris Bilton, a Reader at University of Warwick’s Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies, Stephen Cummings, Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Victoria University Wellington, and dt ogilvie, Professor of Urban Entrepreneurship at the Rochester Institute of Technology, use a combination of theoretical analysis and detailed case studies to explain creativity. Using global examples from a diverse range of business, individual, and organisational settings, the book ranges from to critical analysis of creative business scandals such as Weinstein and #MeToo. It will be essential reading across creative industries and management studies, with valuable insights for social science and humanities scholars too.Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett's book Game Theory and Behavior (MIT Press, 2022) is an introduction to game theory that offers not only theoretical tools but also the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. This introductory text on game theory provides students with both the theoretical tools to analyze situations through the logic of game theory and the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. It is unique among game theory texts in offering a clear, formal introduction to standard game theory while incorporating evidence from experimental data and introducing recent behavioral models. Students will not only learn about incentives, how to represent situations as games, and what agents “should” do in these situations, but they will also be presented with evidence that either confirms the theoretical assumptions or suggests a way in which the theory might be updated.Jeffrey Carpenter is the James Jermain Professor of Political Economy at Middlebury College. His research interests include Experimental and Behavioral Economics with applications to Labor, Public and Development Economics. While pursuing these interests he has conducted lab and field experiments in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.Andrea Robbett is an Associate Professor of Economics at Middlebury College. Her research uses laboratory experiments to test canonical theoretical models, new ideas, and conventional wisdom. Her work has addressed topics in public economics, labor, voting, information avoidance, financial decision-making and "attribute overload," trust and cooperation, and auctions.Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

What needs are satisfied in digital gaming? And what does the shift of these need satisfactions into the digital space say about the social realities in which they are embedded?Harald Koberg lets gamers themselves have their say and follows their traces of the described fascinations and passions in his latest book Free Play: Digital Gaming and the Longing for Effectiveness (Freies Spiel: Digitales Spielen und die Sehnsucht nach Wirkmächtigkeit). The answers found aim at experiences of efficacy: digital games and the communication spaces around them offer particular opportunities to experience one's own decisions and actions as relevant and effective. It is not only about narrated stories and interactions with the game, but also about the rules and limits of communication, spaces of unfolding, self-dramatization, and norm-setting.Using the examples of adolescent search for free spaces, insecure masculinity, and achievement society overload, Harald Koberg shows why critique of the medium of video games must focus on people and how much can be determined about larger social contexts along the way.Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. 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 Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman about his book Psyched for Torah (Kodesh Press, 2022). His writings on the weekly parsha exude complete fluency in both traditional Jewish sources like Talmud, Rishonim, and Acharonim, as well twentieth- and twenty-first-century psychological research. Most importantly, his writing presents a stunning and seamless integration between modern and traditional sources, excavating meaningful, transformative, and unexpected insights from the weekly Torah portion.Matthew Miller is a graduate of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah. He studied Jewish Studies and Linguistics at McGill for his BA and completed an MA in Hebrew Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London. He works with Jewish organizations in media and content distribution, such as TheHabura.com and RabbiEfremGoldberg.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Vincenzo Bonaminio, the Italian psychoanalyst and ambassador to the Winnicottian tradition offers us a clinical feast in his new publication, Playing at Work: Clinical Essays in a Contemporary Winnicottian Perspective on Technique (Routledge, 2022).At a moment when, as he argues, much writing in the field is driven by theory and theorizing, this book offers a veritable cornucopia of clinical description. Bonaminio shares his errors and his “almost but not quite” moments with patients. As such, he depicts the psychoanalytic quotidian—the bread and butter, the unexceptional, and the boring that make up most of the clinician’s day—and does so with humor and intelligence.He also shares with us the impact Winnicott has on his thinking in the consulting room and that impact is nothing less than total, from hill to vale. It is interesting to witness what immersion in a way of clinical thinking looks like clinically, and it is hard to discern where DWW begins and Bonaminio ends. It seems he has integrated the entirety of the oeuvre—and not just his more popular ideas like the transitional object, the good enough mother, or hate in the countertransference—yet his own idiom shines through. And in this interview—conducted a bit in Italian and mostly in English—he shows us his way of being with patients as he tells us stories about the people who frequent his office.He challenges us to rethink the notion of confidentiality as well. When you read his cases you can sense that he is not altering identifying details about his patients and so there is a believability at the heart of what he is sharing. Bonaminio takes responsibility for doing as such and shoulders the risk for his rendering of a case, seeing it as reflecting something about himself as an analytic worker. His concern about the paucity of clinical material being presented in the field made me wonder about the impact that functioning in a litigious society, which embraces privacy like a patient embraces his symptom, is having on our thinking, our work, and what we feel free to share with each other?Tracy Morgan is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis and a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC and Rome where she sees individuals, couples and groups. She is also a member of the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in NYC. 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 Roger Blackwell about his new book Objective Prosperity: How Behavioral Economics Can Improve Outcomes for You, Your Business, and Your Nation (Rothstein Publishing, 2022)Contrary to conventional wisdom, about 90% of billionaires are self-made as opposed to people who inherited their wealth. Why did they succeed? That’s the question this book explores at both the individual and at the countrywide level. Values and skills revolving around knowledge, a strong work ethic, delayed gratification, and more, provide much of the answer, as does access to mentors. Or to put it another way, as today’s guest alludes to – you could do worse than follow the advice of Wendy’s founder, Dave Thomas: Work hard, and be nice. Income inequality, immigration, college debt forgiveness are among the topics covered in this wide-ranging conversation with Roger, who has been an exemplary educator across the globe.Roger Blackwell is the author of 40 previous books, and a retired professor from The Ohio State University where he taught in the business school as well as course for the Medical School and as part of the Black Studies faculty. In addition, Roger has taught and done research in 39 countries and for the inmates at the Federal Correction Institution in Morgantown, West Virginia.Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of ten books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His newest book is Emotionomics 2.0: The Emotional Dynamics Underlying Key Business Goals. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

At thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for would be periods of remission. Unfortunately, doctors never mentioned healing as a possibility. In On Learning to Heal or, What Medicine Doesn't Know (Duke UP, 2022), Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, medicine is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility. With this book, Cohen advocates reviving healing’s role for all those whose lives are touched by illness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Annie Reiner’s introduction to Wilfred Bion’s theories of mind presents Bion’s intricate ideas in an accessible, original way without compromising their complexity.Reiner uses comparisons to painting, literature and philosophy, and detailed clinical examples, to provide an experience of Bion’s work that can be felt as well as thought. The book explores many of Bion’s theoretical and clinical innovations, and examines the controversy surrounding his concept of O. Reiner provides evidence of a continuity between Bion’s early ideas and his later, more esoteric work.W. R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022) will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic candidates, as well as students of psychoanalytic and psychological history, and anyone looking for a readable introduction to Bion’s work.Philip Lance, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology