Memoirs of My Nervous Illness


Daniel Paul Schreber - 1903
    In his madness, the world was revealed to him as an enormous architecture of nerves, dominated by a predatory God. It became clear to Schreber that his personal crisis was implicated in what he called a "crisis in God's realm," one that had transformed the rest of humanity into a race of fantasms. There was only one remedy; as his doctor noted: Schreber "considered himself chosen to redeem the world, and to restore to it the lost state of Blessedness. This, however, he could only do by first being transformed from a man into a woman...."

Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality


Margot Waddell - 1998
    Following the major developmental phases from infancy to old age, the author lucidly explores the vital aspects of experience which promote mental and emotional growth and those which impede it. In bringing together a wide range of clinical, non-clinical and literary examples, it offers a detailed and accessible introduction to contemporary psychoanalytic thought and provides a personal and vivid approach to the elusive question of how the personality develops.

The Function of the Orgasm


Wilhelm Reich - 1942
    This book describes Reich's medical and scientific work on the living organism from his first efforts at the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1919 to the laboratory experiments in Oslo in 1939 which revealed the existence of a radiating biological energy, orgone energy.The subject of "sexuality" is basic to this work, and Reich shows clearly its importance for human life and its relevance in understanding the social problems of our time.

Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life


Larry Winget - 2004
    You won't find any motivational platitudes or cute business parables here. This is more of a "get off your butt and get to work" approach that can help you achieve more success, make more money, improve your business, and have more fun. Larry Winget doesn't pull any punches here. He believes that business gets better when businesspeople get better through personal growth. And it works the same way in your personal life-husbands and wives improve each other when they improve themselves, and kids improve when their parents do. In other words, everything in life gets better when you get better, and nothing gets better until you get better. This book can make you better, but it will probably tick you off. Winget is direct, caustic, and controversial. You won't like or agree with everything he has to say. Yet his advice is full of wisdom and truth that can't easily be argued with. Words from Shut Up, Stop Whining & Get a Life that prove that this book is anything but typical: "If you don't have much going wrong in your life, then you don't have much going on in your life." "When you work, work! When you play, play! Don't mix the two." "What you think about, talk about, and do something about is what comes about." "When it quits being fun-quit." "Time management is a joke." And that's just the beginning!

The Impossibility of Sex: Stories of the Intimate Relationship between Therapist and Patient


Susie Orbach - 1999
    On the other hand, the view of the therapist has been that of a neutral listener, emotionally unaffected by the patient. But what really does go on within the sacrosanct space of the therapist's office? Distinguished psychotherapist Susie Orbach provides the answers as she presents six stories of patients, all of whom suffer from such common afflictions as depression, loneliness, compulsive eating, consuming sexual desires, and fear of attachment. In each story, Orbach reveals not just the client's problems, but -- with startling honesty -- the effect the client has on her as therapist. The Impossibility of Sex breaks new ground by taking us into the center of the therapy relationship, one usually shrouded by therapist-client confidentiality. From the unlikely role the therapist plays in the troubled relationship of two lesbians to the unsettling dreams the therapist experiences while treating a man consumed by sexual desire, Orbach illuminates the complex human interactions at the heart of the therapeutic process and the "joint discoveries" that contribute to its effectiveness.

The Emotional Compass: How to Think Better about Your Feelings


Ilse Sand - 2016
    Establishing that emotions are not always as appropriate as they first appear to be, the book encourages you to take a closer look at why you are feeling certain things, and how you can change how you feel. Especially written for highly sensitive people, guidance is included on how to identify the vulnerable feelings that often underlie our more volatile emotional states, and practical activities are suggested to help to embrace or reject sadness, delay impulsive actions, and allow yourself to be happy. Drawing on real-life examples throughout, the book offers you the means to improve your understanding of not only your own emotions and emotional actions, but those of others. The book will be immensely useful not only to people who feel things strongly, but to those who have trouble understanding or interpreting emotions and how to respond to the feelings they provoke.

The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Oriented Deliberation in View of the Dogmatic Problem of Hereditary Sin


Søren Kierkegaard - 1844
    Brilliantly synthesizing human insights with Christian dogma, Kierkegaard presented The Concept of Anxiety as a landmark "psychological deliberation," suggesting that our only hope in overcoming anxiety was not through "powder and pills" but by embracing it with open arms. While Kierkegaard's Danish prose is surprisingly rich, previous translations--the most recent in 1980--have marginalized the work with alternately florid or slavishly wooden language. With a vibrancy never seen before in English, Alastair Hannay, the world's foremost Kierkegaard scholar, re-creates its natural rhythm, eager that this overlooked classic will not only become as celebrated as Fear and Trembling, The Sickness unto Death, and Either/Or but also be revivified as the seminal work of existentialism and moral psychology that it is.

Loss Adjustment


Linda Collins - 2019
    I have let this cowardice envelop me, and I can’t shake it off. I will commit the worst thing you can ever do to someone who loves you: killing yourself. The scary thing is, I’m okay with that.” —Victoria McLeod, Laptop journal, March 30, 2014.Loss Adjustment is a mother’s recount of her 17-year-old daughter’s suicide.In the wake of Victoria McLeod’s passing, she left behind a remarkable journal in her laptop of the final four months of her life. Linda Collins, her mother, has woven these into her memoir, which is at once cohesive, yet fragmented, reflecting a survivor's state of mind after devastating loss.Loss Adjustment involves the endless whys, the journey of Linda Collins and her husband in honouring Victoria, and the impossible question of what drove their daughter to this irretrievable act. A stunningly intimate portrait of loss and grief, Loss Adjustment is a breaking of silence—a book whose face society cannot turn away from.

Dorie: The Girl Nobody Loved


Doris Van Stone - 1979
    God had stood beside me when no one else wanted me. He was not going to abandon me now. God would have to heal the emotional pain that throbbed through my body."As a child, Dorie was rejected by her mother, sent to live in an orphanage where she was regularly beaten by the orphanage director, was beaten time and again by cruel foster parents, and was daily told that she was ugly and unlovable. Dorie never knew love until a group of college students visited the orphanage and told her that God loved her. As she accepted that love, her life began to change.Dorie is a thrilling true account of what God's love can do in a life. Doris Van Stone takes readers through the hard years of her childhood into her fascinating years as a missionary with her husband to the Dani tribe in New Guinea. With the rise of illegitimate births, the increase in divorce statistics, and the frightening escalation of child abuse, this story stands as a reminder that God's love, forgiveness, and grace are greater than human hurt and sorrow.More than 170,000 in print.

The Day the Voices Stopped


Ken Steele - 2001
    In this powerful and inspiring story, Steele tells the story of his hard-won recovery from schizophrenia and how activism and advocacy helped him regain his sanity and go on to give hope and support to so many others like him. His recovery began with a small but intensely dramatic moment. One evening in the spring of 1995, shortly after starting on Risperdal, a new antipsychotic medicine, he realized that the voices that had tormented him for three decades had suddenly stopped. Terrified but also empowered by this new freedom, Steele rose to the challenge of creating a new life. Steele went on to become one of the most vocal advocates of the mentally ill, earning the respect not only of patients and families but also of professionals and policymakers all over America through his tireless devotion to a cause that transformed his life and that of countless others. The Day the Voices Stopped will endure as Ken Steele's testament for all who struggle with this heartbreaking disease.

The Sound of Sch: A Mental Breakdown, A Life Journey


Danielle Lim - 2014
    The story takes place between 1961 and 1994, backdropped by a fast-globalising Singapore where stigmatisation of persons afflicted with mental illness nevertheless remains deep-seated. Unflinchingly raw and honest in its portrayal of living with schizophrenia, The Sound of Sch is a moving account of human resiliency and sacrifice in the face of brokenness.

Wild Magic


Cat Weatherill - 2007
    A world as cruel as it is beautiful. And all the time, they are being stalked by a fearsome beast, who needs one of the children to break a centuries-old curse.But the price of breaking the curse is a terrible one . . . A spellbinding and wild adventure, full of unexpected magic and danger.

Mind What You Wear: The Psychology of Fashion


Karen J. Pine - 2014
    Why do your choose the clothes you do; do they express your true personality and can they really determine the course your day will take? Or even your life?In this book Karen Pine goes ‘behind the seams’, revealing the hidden secrets contained in the clothes we wear. She uncovers startling evidence for how our clothes have the power to change our minds. And she shows how making a simple tweak to what you wear can literally be life-changing.Karen unmasks how the right outfit can make you a better thinker. Or more likely to get the right job. She shows how clothes can boost your confidence, bolster your self-esteem or lift your mood. And the impact a colour change can have on your sex appeal.Karen combines new insights from scientific psychology with years of research into nonverbal communication, as well as impressions gained from her passion for clothes and behaviour change.The book will appeal to anyone curious about the psychology of fashion and will be invaluable to fashion students, designers and marketers. It gives the reader an expert and close-up view of what lies beneath our wardrobe habits and how our fashion identity emerges. And it contains practical advice on how to create an individual style, banishing fashion anxiety and sartorial monotony from your life forever.

New Orleans Legacy


Alexandra Ripley - 1987
    Nothing in sixteen-year-old Mary MacAllistair's years in a convent school had prepared her for the mysterious box left to her by the mother she had never known. The name and address carved beneath the lid and its enigmatic contents were her only clues to her real identity, but enough to light a ragging desire to find her family and her past. Thus Mary would begin an unforgettable journey to that town of irrepressible hopes and dangerous dreams --- New Orleans. Here from an exotic bordello to an antebellum plantation to a sultry Quadroon Ball, she would ultimately expose the darkest secrets of the city itself. Here she would meet the seductive and irresistibly handsome Valmount Saint-Brevin, a man with the power to ruin her. And here she would have the chance to find the greatest legacy of all: the fulfillment of love.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving


Pete Walker - 2013
    I also wrote it from the viewpoint of someone who has discovered many silver linings in the long, windy, bumpy road of recovering from Cptsd. I felt encouraged to write this book because of thousands of e-mail responses to the articles on my website that repeatedly expressed gratitude for the helpfulness of my work. An often echoed comment sounded like this: At last someone gets it. I can see now that I am not bad, defective or crazy…or alone! The causes of Cptsd range from severe neglect to monstrous abuse. Many survivors grow up in houses that are not homes – in families that are as loveless as orphanages and sometimes as dangerous. If you felt unwanted, unliked, rejected, hated and/or despised for a lengthy portion of your childhood, trauma may be deeply engrained in your mind, soul and body. This book is a practical, user-friendly self-help guide to recovering from the lingering effects of childhood trauma, and to achieving a rich and fulfilling life. It is copiously illustrated with examples of my own and my clients’ journeys of recovering. This book is also for those who do not have Cptsd but want to understand and help a loved one who does. This book also contains an overview of the tasks of recovering and a great many practical tools and techniques for recovering from childhood trauma. It extensively elaborates on all the recovery concepts explained on my website, and many more. However, unlike the articles on my website, it is oriented toward the layperson. As such, much of the psychological jargon and dense concentration of concepts in the website articles has been replaced with expanded and easier to follow explanations. Moreover, many principles that were only sketched out in the articles are explained in much greater detail. A great deal of new material is also explored. Key concepts of the book include managing emotional flashbacks, understanding the four different types of trauma survivors, differentiating the outer critic from the inner critic, healing the abandonment depression that come from emotional abandonment and self-abandonment, self-reparenting and reparenting by committee, and deconstructing the hierarchy of self-injuring responses that childhood trauma forces survivors to adopt. The book also functions as a map to help you understand the somewhat linear progression of recovery, to help you identify what you have already accomplished, and to help you figure out what is best to work on and prioritize now. This in turn also serves to help you identify the signs of your recovery and to develop reasonable expectations about the rate of your recovery. I hope this map will guide you to heal in a way that helps you to become an unflinching source of kindness and self-compassion for yourself, and that out of that journey you will find at least one other human being who will reciprocally love you well enough in that way.