New Books in Psychology

In Are Men Animals? How Modern Masculinity Sells Men Short (Basic Books, 2019), Matthew Gutmann examines how cultural expectations viewing men as violent and sex driven becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dubious interpretations of the scientific study of the effects of testosterone, comparisons to the animal kingdom and the persistence of sex segregation reinforces ideas about what is natural. The idea that masculinity is the result of biology allows the “boys will be boys” excuse and reinforces patriarchal values harmful to women and setting false limits for male behavior. Presenting a cross-cultural survey Gutmann demonstrates how the variations across culture from Mexico to China contradict notions of a fixed masculinity. Seeing masculinity as a product of culture and malleable allows us to reimagine fathering, who is capable of leadership and offers new possibilities for how men and women will relate to each other.Matthew Gutmann is professor of anthropology at Brown University.Lilian Calles Barger, www.lilianbarger.com, is a cultural, intellectual and gender historian. Her most recent book is entitled The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her current writing project is on the intellectual history of feminism seen through the emblematic life and work of Simone de Beauvoir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Activists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their new book, Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (Polity, 2018), Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider use psychoanalysis and psychology as frameworks for understanding the vexingly enduring power of this social structure. They offer a cogent and eye-opening theory addressing the fear of loss against which patriarchy aims to protect us, and the consequent impingements on our ability to enter into genuine relationships. In our interview, Carol and Naomi talk about how this book came about and what their ideas offer for our understanding of current political events.Carol Gilligan is a writer, activist, University Professor at New York University, and the author of In a Different Voice, one of the most influential feminist books of all time.Naomi Snider is a research fellow at New York University, co-founder of NYU’s Radical Listening Project, and a candidate in psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute.Eugenio Duarte is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

David Adger is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London, where he is Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. He has served as President of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain since 2015, and has authored a number of monographs on syntactic theory, in addition to the widely used undergraduate textbook Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach (Oxford University Press, 2003).In his book, Language Unlimited: The Science Behind Our Most Creative Power (Oxford University Press, 2019), Adger brings foundational ideas in the cognitive science of language to a popular audience. The book moves quickly from an engaging call to linguistics to the three deep explanatory features of human language that frame the rest of the book, namely: our “sense” of syntactic structure; compositionality; and recursivity. Adger explores these deep aspects of language in areas such as how children learn languages, why some kinds of languages are unlearnable, and the apparent uniqueness of human linguistic ability, but also in less familiar territory such as constructed languages, the relationship between formal linguistics and sociolinguistics, and the difference between human learning and machine learning. In typically infectious and energetic style, the book even devotes two chapters to making binding theory and Merge accessible to a general audience.John Weston is a University Teacher of Academic English in the Language Centre at Aalto University, Finland. His research focuses on the relationships between language variation, knowledge and ethics. He can be reached at john.weston@aalto.fi and @johnwphd. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you.Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague or too ambiguous, this book corrects that by outlining not just how to figure out what you might want to do, but critically, how you might go about accomplishing that.Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

With today's furious political and cultural divisions, it's easy to shake our heads in exasperation at those who disagree with us.In this episode with Australian writer and philosopher, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, we take a journey to the limits of human reason. Her compelling new book, Stop Being Reasonable: How We Really Change Our Minds (PublicAffairs, 2019) features six high-stakes personal stories of successful persuasion that illustrate what most of us get wrong about rationality."Hearing the story of how somebody changes their mind is hearing the story of how they change their life," Eleanor tells us. "Why, when we know that changing our minds is as tangled and difficult and messy as we are, do we stay so wedded to the thought that rational debate is the way to go about it?"The book and our podcast begin with Eleanor interviewing men who catcalled her in the street and made obscene gestures. Did she convince these guys to change their behavior? Find out what happened...Richard Davies and Jim Meigs are the host of the terrific podcast “How Do We Fix It?,” on which they talk to the world’s most creative thinkers about, well, how to fix things. Lots of things. Important ones. Highly recommended. You can find “How Do We Fix It” on Apple Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The old mantra “if it bleeds it leads” is alive and well in today’s media landscape. In fact, social media and up-to-the-second news have made it easier than ever to ingest a constant stream of information about the world. In her book, You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change The World (Unbound, 2019), Jodie Jackson argues that this type of news consumption leads to feelings of anger and helplessness. The book, and this conversation, outline how solutions journalism provides an alternative that focuses on what working and aims to inspire readers instead of angering them.Jackson is not a journalist by training and became interested in the media after feeling overwhelmed by the news herself. She earned a master’s degree in psychology and now works with news organizations around the world to advocate for a solutions-oriented approach. Jodie talk about how a news consumer might go about changing their habits, and how solutions journalism does not equal fluffy or overly positive news coverage. Her book makes a compelling argument about re-evaluating media consumption that’s worth considering for journalism educators and news consumers alike.Jenna Spinelle is a journalism instructor at Penn State and host of the Democracy Works podcast, produced by Penn State’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Today I’m speaking with author Christina Adams, and Adams has something of a surprising muse: camels. That’s right, camels. One hump, two humps, crossing the Egyptian desert or the Siberian tundra. Adams’ muse is surprising, because she lives, like many of us, in North America—Orange County, California, to be exact. That’s not the place where you’d expect someone to develop a deep fascination and a deep respect for camels. And yet this improbability makes Adams’ new book Camel Crazy (New World Library, 2019) all the more intriguing, as she becomes, by turns, a smuggler, an activist, a scientist, a world traveler, and, in the end, an advocate, not just for camels, but for our public health, our environment, and for her son. He’s a child on the autistic spectrum, and Adam’s love for him becomes a beautiful and passionate engine that ultimately leads her to start a movement that may just transform how we see camels and how we see and treat autism.Eric LeMay is on the creative writing faculty at Ohio University. His work ranges from food writing to electronic literature. He is the author of three books, most recently In Praise of Nothing: Essay, Memoir, and Experiments (Emergency Press, 2014). He can be reached at eric@ericlemay.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Dementia provokes profound moral questions about our society and the meaning of life itself. How much are we connected to one another? In what ways are we distant and separated? What does it mean to have a self? How can we offer dignity to those who suffer from Alzheimer's and other forms of this terrible disease?Worldwide around 50 million people have dementia. The US Centers for Disease Control estimates that the U.S. total is more than five million. The numbers are growing with the aging of the population. The incidence of Alzheimers increased more than 50% in the past 15 years. People over the age of 85 are the largest growing share of the population.British journalist and author Nicci Gerrard is our guest. Her father's long struggle with dementia led Gerrard to investigate what the disease does to those who live with it and to their caregivers. She writes with deep wisdom, kindness and empathy in her new book, The Last Ocean A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting (Penguin, 2019).In modern, developed nations, "we so value being young, healthy, vigorous, successful, purposeful, and autonomous," says Nicci. "In dementia all these things gradually unravel."Following her father's death in 2014, Gerrard cofounded John's Campaign, which seeks to make care more compassionate for those who are vulnerable and powerless.In this episode, we discuss her journey, what's she learned, and ways to improve dementia care, including the need for open an unrestricted visiting hours at hospitals-- still a controversial topic-- and dementia villages, a fairly new way to help people with memory loss improve quality of life.Richard Davies and Jim Meigs are the host of the terrific podcast “How Do We Fix It?,” on which they talk to the world’s most creative thinkers about, well, how to fix things. Lots of things. Important ones. Highly recommended. You can find “How Do We Fix It” on Apple Podcasts.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In this episode, Jana Byars talks with Rachel Chrastil, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences and member of the history department at Xavier University, about her newest book, How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children (Oxford University Press, 2019). This book is, at its heart, a history book, exploring the most personal of women’s decisions from the 1500s on. It also makes a stab at providing childless women with a narrative to support their own choices. From the introduction, “Childless women may think that they are alone in this experience, but, in fact, they can draw on a long history of childlessness that extends for centuries. With the exception of the baby boom, widespread childlessness has been a long-standing reality in northwestern European towns and cities from around 1500 onward.” This books attempts the difficult task of marrying scholarship with modern cultural study. The work is excellent, and the conversation fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Imagination is one of the most important elements of being human, but is most often assumed we know what it is, while rarely being analyzed. Here with me today is Jonathan Erickson to discuss his recent book Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience (Routledge, 2019). The book looks at various theories of imagination through history, and then looks at what neuroscience can tell us about the functioning of imagination, as well as looking at what the functioning of imagination can tell us about neuroscience.Jonathan Erickson is a writer and educator, and holds a BA in English literature from UC Berkeley and a PhD in depth psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California.Stephen Dozeman is a freelance writer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology