Psychology: An Introduction


Benjamin B. Lahey - 1978
    Students will master the central concepts of psychology with the new 10th edition of Psychology from Benjamin Lahey. A new chapter on the Interplay of Nature and Nurture highlights the 10th edition's new organization and streamlined content . Lahey weaves scholarship based on empirical research throughout the text, ensuring an accurate portrait of contemporary psychology. The text's student-friendly writing, new chapter openers, and fresh applications make the material more relevant to students than ever before, and the proven learning system ensures that all students will grasp the concepts presented in the book. Lahey's hallmark emphasis on diversity and culture remains integrated throughout the text, making this the text for a well rounded introduction to all areas of psychology.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success


Kevin Dutton - 2012
    Incorporating the latest advances in brain scanning and neuroscience, Dutton demonstrates that the brilliant neurosurgeon who lacks empathy has more in common with a Ted Bundy who kills for pleasure than we may wish to admit, and that a mugger in a dimly lit parking lot may well, in fact, have the same nerveless poise as a titan of industry.Dutton argues that there are indeed “functional psychopaths” among us—different from their murderous counterparts—who use their detached, unflinching, and charismatic personalities to succeed in mainstream society, and that shockingly, in some fields, the more “psychopathic” people are, the more likely they are to succeed. Dutton deconstructs this often misunderstood diagnosis through bold on-the-ground reporting and original scientific research as he mingles with the criminally insane in a high-security ward, shares a drink with one of the world’s most successful con artists, and undergoes transcranial magnetic stimulation to discover firsthand exactly how it feels to see through the eyes of a psychopath.As Dutton develops his theory that we all possess psychopathic tendencies, he puts forward the argument that society as a whole is more psychopathic than ever: after all, psychopaths tend to be fearless, confident, charming, ruthless, and focused—qualities that are tailor-made for success in the twenty-first century. Provocative at every turn, The Wisdom of Psychopaths is a riveting adventure that reveals that it’s our much-maligned dark side that often conceals the trump cards of success.

Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity


Justin Baldoni - 2021
    In this engaging and provocative new book, beloved actor, director, and social activist Justin Baldoni reflects on his own struggles with masculinity. With insight and honesty, he explores a range of difficult, sometimes uncomfortable topics including strength and vulnerability, relationships and marriage, body image, sex and sexuality, racial justice, gender equality, and fatherhood. Writing from experience, Justin invites us to move beyond the scripts we’ve learned since childhood and the roles we are expected to play. He challenges men to be brave enough to be vulnerable, to be strong enough to be sensitive, to be confident enough to listen. Encouraging men to dig deep within themselves, Justin helps us reimagine what it means to be man enough and in the process what it means to be human.

Please Understand Me: Character and Temperament Types


David Keirsey - 1984
    After 30 years of treating hundreds of teaching, parenting, marriage, and management problems, Dr. Keirsey now challenges the reader to "Abandon the Pygmalion Project", that endless and fruitless attempt to change the Other into a carbon copy of Oneself.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil


Philip G. Zimbardo - 2007
    Here, for the first time and in detail, Zimbardo tells the full story of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the landmark study in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week, the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. By illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to how once upstanding American soldiers came to abuse and torture Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. He replaces the long-held notion of the “bad apple” with that of the “bad barrel”—the idea that the social setting and the system contaminate the individual, rather than the other way around.

Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : Society's Betrayal of the Child


Alice Miller - 1981
    The title of Alice Miller's book, first published in Germany in 1981, spells out the unspoken commandment that such abused children - indeed, all of us - have been obeying since early childhood. We have all been made to feel from our earliest days that we are to blame for anything shameful that happens to us, so that our awareness of these inflicted abuses dims. Alice Miller demonstrates that this centuries-old tradition also finds expression in Freud's notions of "the Oedipus complex" and "infantile sexuality" - his drive theory - which put the blame on the child. Freud maintained that his patients who claimed to have been sexually molested as children were only "fantasizing" as a defense against their own sexual desires for their innocent parents. This theory helped to conceal the fact that sexual abuse of children occurs frequently and results in later emotional disturbances in the victims of such abuse - because they are not allowed awareness of it. In fairy tales, works of literature, and dreams, Alice Miller maintains, the truth about childhood can emerge, precisely because it is not recognized as such. Detailed examples from Kafka, Flaubert, Beckett, and Virginia Woolf offer proof of her thesis and illustrate her understanding of human creativity.

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic


Darby Penney - 2008
     It is a remarkable portrait, too, of the life of a psychiatric asylum--the sort of community in which, for better and for worse, hundreds of thousands of people lived out their lives.More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.

Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior


Leonard Mlodinow - 2012
    The latter has long been the subject of speculation, but over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the hidden, or subliminal, workings of the mind. The result of this explosion of research is a new science of the unconscious and a sea change in our understanding of how the subliminal mind affects the way we live.Employing his trademark wit and lucid, accessible explanations of the most obscure scientific subjects, Leonard Mlodinow takes us on a tour of this research, unraveling the complexities of the subliminal self and increasing our understanding of how the human mind works and how we interact with friends, strangers, spouses, and coworkers. In the process he changes our view of ourselves and the world around us.

DSM-5® Made Easy: The Clinician's Guide to Diagnosis


James R. Morrison - 2014
    Demystifying DSM-5 criteria without sacrificing accuracy, the book includes ICD-10-CM codes for each disorder. More than 130 detailed case vignettes illustrate typical patient presentations; down-to-earth discussions of each case demonstrate how to arrive at the diagnosis and rule out other likely possibilities. Providing a wealth of diagnostic pointers, Morrison writes with the wisdom and wit that made his guide to the prior DSM a valued resource for hundreds of thousands of clinicians and students. His website (www.guilford.com/jm) offers additional discussion and resources related to psychiatric diagnosis and DSM-5. See also Morrison's Diagnosis Made Easier, Second Edition, which offers principles and decision trees for integrating diagnostic information from multiple sources; The First Interview, Fourth Edition, which presents a framework for conducting thorough, empathic initial evaluations; and The Mental Health Clinician's Workbook, which uses in-depth cases and carefully constructed exercises to build the reader's diagnostic skills.

The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity


Norman Doidge - 2015
    His revolutionary new book shows, for the first time, how the amazing process of neuroplastic healing really works. It describes natural, non-invasive avenues into the brain provided by the forms of energy around us—light, sound, vibration, movement—which pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain’s own healing capacities without producing unpleasant side effects. Doidge explores cases where patients alleviated years of chronic pain or recovered from debilitating strokes or accidents; children on the autistic spectrum or with learning disorders normalizing; symptoms of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and cerebral palsy radically improved, and other near-miracle recoveries. And we learn how to vastly reduce the risk of dementia with simple approaches anyone can use. For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing. As he did so lucidly in The Brain That Changes Itself, Doidge uses stories to present cutting-edge science with practical real-world applications, and principles that everyone can apply to improve their brain’s performance and health.

Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life: A Psychologist Investigates How Evolution, Cognition, and Complexity are Revolutionizing our View of Human Nature


Douglas T. Kenrick - 2011
    Masterfully integrating cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and complexity theory, this intriguing book paints a comprehensive picture of the principles that govern our lives. As Kenrick divulges, beneath our civilized veneer, human beings are a lot like howling hyenas and barking baboons, with heads full of homicidal tendencies and sexual fantasies. But, in his view, many ingrained, apparently irrational behaviors—such as inclinations to one-night stands, racial prejudices, and conspicuous consumption—ultimately manifest what he calls “Deep Rationality.”Although our heads are full of simple selfish biases that evolved to help our ancestors survive, modern human beings are anything but simple and selfish cavemen. Kenrick argues that simple and selfish mental mechanisms we inherited from our ancestors ultimately give rise to the multifaceted social lives that we humans lead today, and to the most positive features of humanity, including generosity, artistic creativity, love, and familial bonds. And out of those simple mechanisms emerge all the complexities of society, including international conflicts and global economic markets. By exploring the nuance of social psychology and the surprising results of his own research, Kenrick offers a detailed picture of what makes us caring, creative, and complex — that is, fully human. Illuminated with stories from Kenrick’s own colorful experiences — from his criminally inclined shantytown Irish relatives, his own multiple high school expulsions, broken marriages, and homicidal fantasies, to his eventual success as an evolutionary psychologist and loving father of two boys separated by 26 years — this book is an exploration of our mental biases and failures, and our mind’s great successes. Idiosyncratic, controversial, and fascinating, Sex, Murder, and the Meaning of Life uncovers the pitfalls and promise of our biological inheritance.

Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us


Robert D. Hare - 1993
    With their flagrant criminal violation of society's rules, serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy are among the most dramatic examples of the psychopath. Individuals with this personality disorder are fully aware of the consequences of their actions and know the difference between right and wrong, yet they are terrifyingly self-centered, remorseless, and unable to care about the feelings of others. Perhaps most frightening, they often seem completely normal to unsuspecting targets--and they do not always ply their trade by killing. Presenting a compelling portrait of these dangerous men and women based on 25 years of distinguished scientific research, Dr. Robert D. Hare vividly describes a world of con artists, hustlers, rapists, and other predators who charm, lie, and manipulate their way through life. Are psychopaths mad, or simply bad? How can they be recognized? And how can we protect ourselves? This book provides solid information and surprising insights for anyone seeking to understand this devastating condition.

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed


Carl Honoré - 2004
    We strain to be more efficient, to cram more into each minute, each hour, each day. Since the Industrial Revolution shifted the world into high gear, the cult of speed has pushed us to a breaking point. Consider these facts: Americans on average spend seventy-two minutes of every day behind the wheel of a car, a typical business executive now loses sixty-eight hours a year to being put on hold, and American adults currently devote on average a mere half hour per week to making love.Living on the edge of exhaustion, we are constantly reminded by our bodies and minds that the pace of life is spinning out of control. In Praise of Slowness traces the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time and tackles the consequences of living in this accelerated culture of our own creation. Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down? Realizing the price we pay for unrelenting speed, people all over the world are reclaiming their time and slowing down the pace -- and living happier, healthier, and more productive lives as a result. A Slow revolution is taking place.Here you will find no Luddite calls to overthrow technology and seek a preindustrial utopia. This is a modern revolution, championed by cell-phone using, e-mailing lovers of sanity. The Slow philosophy can be summed up in a single word -- balance. People are discovering energy and efficiency where they may have been least expected -- in slowing down.In this engaging and entertaining exploration, award-winning journalist and rehabilitated speedaholic Carl Honoré details our perennial love affair with efficiency and speed in a perfect blend of anecdotal reportage, history, and intellectual inquiry. In Praise of Slowness is the first comprehensive look at the worldwide Slow movements making their way into the mainstream -- in offices, factories, neighborhoods, kitchens, hospitals, concert halls, bedrooms, gyms, and schools. Defining a movement that is here to stay, this spirited manifesto will make you completely rethink your relationship with time.

Katherine, It's Time: The Incredible Journey into the World of a Multiple Personality


Kit Castle - 1989
    

Stolen Tomorrows: Understanding and Treating Women's Childhood Sexual Abuse


Steven Levenkron - 2007
    It illustrates the emotional and psychological devastation inflicted on young girls when they experience childhood sexual abuse, exploring varied situations and settings in which this abuse takes place, focusing on the child's experiences at the time of the assault, as well as the emotional, behavioral, and psychological problems that emerge in adolescence and adulthood. A common theme emerges in therapy sessions: self-hatred, low self-esteem, fearfulness, and an abiding sense of personal debasement. But this book offers an uplifting message. In addition to giving therapists and other helpers an empathic insight, Stolen Tomorrows will enable the survivor to recognize herself in both her personal history and her current struggle to overcome the legacy of abuse.