Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psychology. Show all posts
May 3, 2018
Dec 1, 2017
Nov 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2015
Man's search for meaning - Frankl
Summary: Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America.
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Jun 1, 2014
David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell
Summary: Drawing upon examples from the world of business, sports, culture, cutting-edge psychology and an array of unforgettable characters around the world, the author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers looks at the complex and surprising ways in which the weak can defeat the strong, how the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Gladwell's best-sellers, such as The Tipping Point (2000) and Outliers (2008), have changed the way we think about sociological changes and the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Here he examines and challenges our concepts of "advantage" and "disadvantage" in a way that may seem intuitive to some and surprising to others. Beginning with the classic tale of David and Goliath and moving through history with figures such as Lawrence of Arabia and Martin Luther King Jr., Gladwell shows how, time and again, players labeled "underdog" use that status to their advantage and prevail through the elements of cunning and surprise. He also shows how certain academic "advantages," such as getting into an Ivy League school, have downsides, in that being a "big fish in a small pond" at a less prestigious school can lead to greater confidence and a better chance of success in later life. Gladwell even promotes the idea of a "desirable difficulty," such as dyslexia, a learning disability that causes much frustration for reading students but, at the same time, may force them to develop better listening and creative problem-solving skills. As usual, Gladwell presents his research in a fresh and easy-to-understand context, and he may have coined the catchphrase of the decade, "Use what you got." Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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Mar 1, 2013
The female brain - Brizendine
The female brain - Brizendine, Louanne
Summary: The founder of the first clinic in the country to study and treat women's brain functions provides a comprehensive look at the way women's minds work, combining two decades of research and real-life stories.
Choice Reviews
Brizendine (Univ. of California at San Francisco) uses the neuroanatomical and physiological development of the female brain from the prenatal period through adulthood as a framework for her thesis that women's unique brain structures, functions, and chemistry create a biological imperative. The author employs anecdotes from her practice as a neuropsychiatrist and concepts such as the "mommy brain," "high-octane estrogen," and "neurological love circuits" to illustrate her theory that female-typical responses and behaviors originate in uniquely female brain structures and brain wiring. Such a singular focus on biological inevitability contrasts with the approach of scholars of gender, such as Ann Fausto Sterling, who acknowledge the developmental effects upon behavior that might result from human interaction and environmental influences. Brizendine's writing style is lively and accessible. She simplifies complex biological and neurological concepts, and her material is unencumbered by in-text citations, although extensive references are included in a separate section. Readers predisposed to views about innate differences between women and men will find much to support their beliefs in this book. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. Copyright 2006 American Library Association.
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Dec 1, 2012
Far from the tree - Andrew Solomon
Summary: Solomon tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Solomon, who won the National Book Award for The Noonday Demon (2001), tackles daunting questions involving nature versus nurture, illness versus identity, and how they all affect parenting in his exhaustive but not exhausting exploration of what happens when children bear little resemblance to their parents. He begins by challenging the very concept of human reproduction. We do not reproduce, he asserts, spawning clones. We produce originals. And if we're really lucky, our offspring will be enough like us or our immediate forebears that we can easily love, nurture, understand, and respect them. But it's a crapshoot. More often than not, little junior will be born with a long-dormant recessive gene, or she may emerge from the womb with her very own, brand-new identifier—say, deafness, physical deformity, or homosexuality. Years of interviews with families and their unique children culminate in this compassionate compendium. Solomon focuses on the creative and often desperate ways in which families manage to tear down prejudices and preconceived fears and reassemble their lives around the life of a child who alters their view of the world. Most succeed. Some don't. But the truth Solomon writes about here is as poignant as it is implacable, and he leaves us with a reinvented notion of identity and individual value. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
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Jun 1, 2011
Inside of a dog: What dogs see, smell, and know - Alexandra Horowitz
Inside of a dog: What dogs see, smell, and know - Horowitz, Alexandra
Summary: What do dogs know? How do they think? The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human.
LJ Express Reviews
Dogs have no sense of time; don't see in color; don't learn by observation-or do they? Cognitive scientist Horowitz (psychology, Barnard Coll.) explains that to understand the dog, we must understand his umwelt, his perception of his surroundings based upon anatomy, physiology, experience, and evolution. Debunking long-held misconceptions about the dog's sensory and emotional life, Horowitz gives dog lovers who have always believed that dogs can learn through example or anticipate an owner's return a wealth of current scientific information to confirm their perceptions. Verdict An essential read for pet owners and students of animal behavior who have followed developments in the emerging field of comparative psychology in Stanley Coren's How Dogs Think, Temple Grandin's Animals Make Us Human, and Patricia B. McConnell's Tales of Two Species.-Florence Scarinci, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
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Nerve - Taylor Clark
Summary: Draws on a variety of case studies to explain why some people thrive under pressure while others fail miserably, and explains how to build confidence and steady shaky nerves.
Booklist Reviews
Clark, author of Starbucked (2007), maintains his light, frequently humorous tone in this (mostly) serious look at the psychology of stress. Drawing on various forms of research, and numerous real-life stories, the author explores the reasons why we feel stress, our responses to it, and what we can do to deal with it constructively. Clark takes us through the history of stress research, from early breakthroughs (Walter Cannon's 1915 elucidation of the fight-or-flight response) to experimental research ("most of what we know about the science of fear comes from tormenting rats," Clark wryly observes) to today's cutting-edge explorations of the workings of the human brain. The subjects of his real-life stories of dealing with stress under intense pressure range from Russian sub commanders to game-show contestants to tsunami survivors to pro athletes to musicians. The author makes some shrewd observations (for example, that Cannon's fight-or-flight response leaves out a third F: freeze), and, unlike many authors of popular-science books, he really knows how to write, too: the book is informative, engaging, and, in quite a few places, funny. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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Apr 1, 2011
The sociopath next door - Martha Stout
Summary: "[The author] reveals [in this book] that a shocking 4 percent of ordinary people--one in twenty-five--has an often undetected mental disorder, the chief symptom of which is that that person possesses no conscience. He or she has no ability whatsoever to feel shame, guilt, or remorse. ... They can do literally anything at all and feel absolutely no guilt. ... Fundamentally, sociopaths are different because they cannot love. Sociopaths learn early on to show sham emotion, but underneath they are indifferent to others' suffering. They live to dominate and thrill to win. ... To arm us against the sociopath, [the author] teaches us to question authority, suspect flattery, and beware the pity play. Above all, she writes, when a sociopath is beckoning, do not join the game."--BooksInPrint.
Kirkus Reviews
From the author of The Myth of Sanity (2001), a remarkable philosophical examination of the phenomenon of sociopathy and its everyday manifestations.Readers eager for a tabloid-ready survey of serial killers, however, will be disappointed. Instead, Stout (Psychiatry/Harvard Medical School) busies herself with exploring the workaday lives and motivations of those garden-variety sociopaths who are content with inflicting petty tyrannies and small miseries. As a practicing therapist, she writes, she has spent the past 25 years aiding the survivors of psychological trauma, most of them "controlled and psychologically shattered by individual human perpetrators, often sociopaths." Antisocial personality disorder, it turns out, occurs in around four percent of the population, so it's not too surprising that treating their victims has kept Stout quite busy for the past quarter-century. Employing vivid composite character sketches, the author introduces us to such unsavory characters as a psychiatric administrator who specializes in ingratiating herself with her office staff while making her patients feel crazier; a captain of industry who killed frogs as a child and is now convinced he can outsmart the SEC; and a lazy ladies' man who marries purely to gain access to his new wife's house and pool. These portraits make a striking impact, and readers with unpleasant neighbors or colleagues may find themselves paying close attention to Stout's sociopathic-behavior checklist and suggested coping strategies. In addition to introducing these everyday psychopaths, the author examines why the rest of us let them get away with murder. She extensively considers the presence or absence of conscience, as well as our discomfort with questioning those seen as being in power. Stout also ponders our willingness to quash our inner voice when voting for leaders who espouse violence and war as a solution to global problems-pointed stuff in a post-9/11 political climate. Deeply thought-provoking and unexpectedly lyrical.Agent: Susan Lee Cohen Copyright Kirkus 2004 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Aug 3, 2010
The biology of belief: unleashing the power of consciousness, matter, and miracles - Bruce H. Lipton
The biology of belief: unleashing the power of consciousness, matter, and miracles - Lipton, Bruce H.
Summary: Author Lipton is a former medical school professor and research scientist. His experiments, and those of other leading-edge scientists, have examined in great detail the processes by which cells receive information. The implications of this research radically change our understanding of life. It shows that genes and DNA do not control our biology; that instead DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including the energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics is being hailed as a breakthrough, showing that our bodies can be changed as we retrain our thinking.--From publisher description. - (Baker & Taylor)
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