New Books in Psychology

Today Stephen and I talk with EWP Phd grad and adjunct faculty, Heidi Fraser. She is also the Director of the CIIS Center for Writing and Scholarship, and was a former EWP program manager. We explore aspects of Integral Yoga as taught by Hari Das Chaudhuri and Bahman Shairazi and it’s applications in scholarship and activism. We also discuss approaches to understanding Integral education based on Heidi’s dissertation research on the nature of Integral Education at CIIS.Heidi Fraser Hageman completed her Ph.D. in East-West Psychology (EWP) at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in May 2015. Her doctoral research focused on exploring an integral education at CIIS through surveying and interviewing alumni from the EWP program about the personal and professional value of their non-traditional graduate degree. While completing her dissertation, Heidi spent seven semesters with the Center for Writing and Scholarship working with writers across disciplines to develop reading, writing, and research skills specific to what genre they were studying in, and completed seven teaching assistantships with faculty across the Institute.Currently, Heidi teaches at CIIS, where she also resides as Director of the Center for Writing and Scholarship. Passionate about lifelong learning, teaching that nurtures student development along multiple lines of intelligence simultaneously, research in higher education concerning student learning objectives and outcomes, and progressive models of educating, she aspires to assist students in understanding the value of their integral education and how to effectively communicate that to circles outside CIIS.Connect with EWP: Website • Youtube • Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In Neuromatic: Or, a Particular History of Religion and the Brain (U Chicago Press, 2021), religious studies scholar John Lardas Modern offers a sprawling examination of the history of the cognitive revolution and current attempts to locate all that is human in the brain, including spirituality itself. Neuromatic is a wildly original take on the entangled histories of science and religion that lie behind our brain-laden present: from eighteenth-century revivals to the origins of neurology and mystic visions of mental piety in the nineteenth century; from cyberneticians, Scientologists, and parapsychologists in the twentieth century to contemporary claims to have discovered the neural correlates of religion.What Modern reveals via this grand tour is that our ostensibly secular turn to the brain is bound up at every turn with the religion it discounts, ignores, or actively dismisses. In foregrounding the myths, ritual schemes, and cosmic concerns that have accompanied idealizations of neural networks and inquiries into their structure, Neuromatic takes the reader on a dazzling and disturbing ride through the history of our strange subservience to the brain.This interview was conduced by Alison Renna, a PhD candidate studying the history of ideas at Yale University.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Focusing on your mental health can feel overwhelming, but with this supportive mindfulness journal, you’ll learn how your faith can guide you to a happier, healthier life. Inside you’ll find Biblical quotes and prompts to remind you of God’s unconditional love, plus short, therapeutic practices to help you take charge of your mental well-being.What sets the Mental Health Journal for Christians: Faith-Based Prompts to Improve Your Mind, Body & Spirit (Rockridge, 2022) apart from other guided journals: A holistic approach—Shift your perspective and cultivate positivity by covering every area of your mental health, including your emotional, psychological, and social well-being. Scripture and prompts that inspire—Immerse yourself in Scripture, prayer, and writing exercises that will help you become more resilient and build healthy relationships. Faith and self-care—Feel all the peace and joy God offers, and reflect on what He has to say about your mental health as you learn self-care practices that will nurture you for the rest of your life. Turn to God as you focus on your mental health using the exercises and words of wisdom found in the pages of this journal.Elizabeth Cronin, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher with offices in Brookline and Norwood, MA. You can follow her on Instagram or visit her website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned cognitive psychologist Stephen Kosslyn about how the COVID-19 pandemic influenced, or didn't influence, our understanding of the learning process.Ideas Roadshow's Pandemic Perspectives Project consists of three distinct, reinforcing elements: a documentary film (Pandemic Perspectives), book (Pandemic Perspectives: A filmmaker's journey in 10 essays) and a series of 24 detailed podcasts with many of the film's expert participants. Visit www.ideasroadshow.com for more details.Howard Burton is the founder of Ideas Roadshow and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

This installment of the EWP podcast will conclude our double episode feature on Haridas Chaudhuri and the roots of the California Institute of Integral Studies. This episode features a talk by Jim Ryan, who started teaching at CIIS in 1981, and became core faculty in 1986. He is the former Director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program in the Philosophy and Religion department. Jim takes us on a deep historical and cultural journey, recounting Haridas Chaudhuri coming from Kolkata to San Francisco with the dream of cultivating East-West dialogue and how he established the California Institute of Asian Studies- later becoming the California Institute of Integral Studies. He also speaks of the origins of the East-West Psychology department in those early days of the institution.Jim Ryan received his Ph.D. (1985) in South Asian Literature (Tamil) from the University of California, Berkeley. He began teaching at CIIS in 1981, and became core faculty in 1986. He is the former Director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program in the Philosophy and Religion department.Jim's general interests are in the culture, history, and philosophies of India. He is specifically interested in the various forms of Hindu tantra, particularly the Kashmir Shaiva traditions, the tradition of Sri Aurobindo, and the "modernized" tantra of Haridas Chaudhuri.A secondary interest is in Jainism and the historical interplay between the non-theistic philosophical traditions and Hinduism.He is currently working with G. Vijayavenugopal on the third volume of his complete translation of Cīvakacintāmaṇi: The Hero Cīvakaṉ, the Gem that Fulfills All Wishes, by Tiruttakkatēvar, the first time this highly revered 9th century Tamil epic has been translated into any language.Connect with EWP: Website Youtube FacebookHosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Realize your fullest leadership potential, claim your boldest vision, and prioritize the well-being of your team and world with this new science-based approach to leadership. In Boundless Leadership: The Breakthrough Method to Realize Your Vision, Empower Others, and Ignite Positive Change (Shambhala, 2021), psychotherapist Joe Loizzo and executive coach Elazar Aslan offer science-based vision of leadership to help leaders cultivate clarity, compassion and fearlessness for themselves and throughout their organization.In the podcast, our host Leo explores the main themes of the book, disciplines of heart, mind, and body, and how leaders can evolve from their survival instinct to their thriving instinct. They discuss real-world examples and real-world applications of how executives, entrepreneurs, and individuals, all seeking to get the best out of themselves, develop to better lead themselves and others. Joe explains the underlying philosophy and psychology behind Boundless Leadership; Elazar shares his story as a former C-suite executive to unleash and control his thriving instinct; the pair are an engaging duo, synced up after many years of collaboration, and the podcast is an helpful introduction to the book and captivating record of their journey and message.Visit Leo's blog at empoweredbelonging.substack.com to read his overview of the book and participate in the discussion. He writes about how leadership can build societies fit for the 21st century and would love to hear your feedback about the podcast at bit.ly/Feedback-Leo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Why failure is part of the hidden curriculum Why you can’t be creative or innovative without failing [sometimes a lot] How to learn from it, instead of sweeping it under the rug A failure our guest and our host each faced A discussion of the Museum of Failure Our guest is: Dr. Samuel West, a licensed psychologist (cognitive behavioral therapy) with a PhD in Organizational Psychology. His research focuses on creating climates for innovation by encouraging experimentation and exploration. In 2017 he founded the Museum of Failure showcasing over a 100 innovation failures from around the world. The aim of the museum is to stimulate productive discussions about the important role of failure for innovation and to increase organizational acceptance of failure.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator and co-producer of the Academic Life. She previously worked in Museum Education at a small museum in New York; and as a PhD student worked for a professor who was a Smithsonian curator.Listeners to this episode might also be interested in: The Museum of Failure The Museum of Broken Relationships The remote control referred to in this podcast The marshmallow candy referred to in this podcast TedTalk on Failing “Mindfully” Podcast on fear and failure Podcast on the role of failure in student success Failosophy: A Handbook for When Things Go Wrong, by Elizabeth Day Dr. Manu Kapur’s work on Productive Failure You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Prisons operate according to the clockwork logic of our criminal justice system: we punish people by making them “serve” time. The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison (Columbia UP, 2022) combines the perspectives of K. C. Carceral, a formerly incarcerated convict criminologist, and Michael G. Flaherty, a sociologist who studies temporal experience. Drawing from Carceral’s field notes, his interviews with fellow inmates, and convict memoirs, this book reveals what time does to prisoners and what prisoners do to time.Carceral and Flaherty consider the connection between the subjective dimensions of time and the existential circumstances of imprisonment. Convicts find that their experience of time has become deeply distorted by the rhythm and routines of prison and by how authorities ensure that an inmate’s time is under their control. They become obsessed with the passage of time and preoccupied with regaining temporal autonomy, creating elaborate strategies for modifying their perception of time. To escape the feeling that their lives lack forward momentum, prisoners devise distinctive ways to mark the passage of time, but these tactics can backfire by intensifying their awareness of temporality. Providing rich and nuanced analysis grounded in the distinctive voices of diverse prisoners, The Cage of Days examines how prisons regulate time and how prisoners resist the temporal regime.Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. Her book, Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press) was published in 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake?In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioral science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow’s challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday’s solutions – often in the most unexpected ways.Just as millions of years of evolution have helped craft the wing and dorsal fin, thousands of engineers, designers, marketers, and advertisers have toiled to solve many of the problems you face today. Over time, through intent, design, social learning and sheer luck, we have found what works.Armed with an enhanced ability to see these patterns in human innovation, we can now systematically approach the creative process to develop more effective ideas more readily and rapidly.Sam Tatam's book Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking Ancient Innovation to Solve Tomorrow's Challenges (Harriman House, 2022) explores five of the most critical challenges we face today, and we learn how to ‘breed’ more effective solutions from those that have survived. The result is a dynamic and exciting way of solving problems and supercharging creativity – for anyone in any endeavor.John Emrich has worked for decades in corporate finance, business valuation and fund management. He has a podcast about the investment advisory industry called Kick the Dogma. john@ktdpod.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

When Mark Henick was a teenager in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety that led to a series of increasingly dangerous suicide attempts. One night, he climbed onto a bridge over an overpass and stood in the wind, clinging to a girder. Someone shouted, "Jump, you coward!" Another man, a stranger in a brown coat, talked to him quietly, calmly and with deep empathy. Just as Henick's feet touched open air, the man in the brown coat encircled his chest and pulled him to safety. This near-death experience changed Henick's life forever.So-Called Normal: A Memoir of Family, Depression and Resilience (HarperCollins, 2021) is Henick's memoir about growing up in a broken home and the events that led to that fateful night on the bridge. It is a vivid and personal account of the mental health challenges he experienced in childhood and his subsequent journey toward healing and recovery.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology