Falling Into the Fire: A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis


Christine Montross - 2013
    A new mother is admitted with incessant visions of harming her child. A recent graduate, dressed in a tunic and declaring that love emanates from everything around him, is brought to A&E by his alarmed girlfriend. These are among the patients new physician Christine Montross meets during rounds at her hospital’s locked inpatient ward – and who we meet as she struggles to understand the mysteries of the mind, most especially when the tools of modern medicine are failing us. Beautifully written and deeply felt, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry and a moving reminder, in the words of the New York Times, of 'our fragile, shared humanity'

Books by Oliver Sacks: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat / An Anthropologist on Mars/Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain


Books LLC - 2010
    Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, An Anthropologist on Mars, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, Seeing Voices, Migraine, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Awakenings, The Island of the Colorblind, . Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales is a 1985 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks describing the case histories of some of his patients. The title of the book comes from the case study of a man with visual agnosia. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat became the basis of an opera of the same name by Michael Nyman, which premiered in 1986. The book comprises 24 essays split into 4 sections which each deal with a particular aspect of brain function such as deficits and excesses in the first two sections (with particular emphasis on the right hemisphere of the brain) while the third and fourth describe phenomenological manifestations with reference to spontaneous reminiscences, altered perceptions, and extraordinary qualities of mind found in "retardates." The individual essays in this book include, but are not limited to: Christopher Rawlence wrote the libretto for a chamber opera, directed by Michael Morris with music by Michael Nyman, based on the title story. "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" was first produced by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1986. A television version of the opera was subsequently broadcast in the UK. Peter Brook adapted Sacks's book into an acclaimed theatrical production, "L'Homme Qui...," which premiered at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, in 1993. An Indian theatre company, performed a play The Blue Mug, based on the book, starring Rajat Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Ranvir Shorey a...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=3371

Finding Sharon


Matt Birkbeck - 2018
    But her horrifying story captured the hearts of readers everywhere and lead to a ten-year search to resolve two great mysteries – what was her true identity, and what became of her young son Michael, who was kidnapped from his first grade classroom and never seen again. The worldwide interest in Sharon’s story prompted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to open a new case file enlisting the FBI – and with A Beautiful Child as a roadmap, two FBI agents set their sights on Sharon’s tormentor to learn the shocking truth. Equal parts memoir and narrative journalism, Finding Sharon picks up where A Beautiful Child left off and brings to a close one of the greatest mysteries in the annals of law enforcement – and a miraculous ending that will leave you in tears.

Hallucinations


Oliver Sacks - 2012
    Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people. People with failing eyesight, paradoxically, may become immersed in a hallucinatory visual world. Hallucinations can be brought on by a simple fever or even the act of waking or falling asleep, when people have visions ranging from luminous blobs of color to beautifully detailed faces or terrifying ogres. Those who are bereaved may receive comforting “visits” from the departed. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one’s own body. Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. As a young doctor in California in the 1960s, Oliver Sacks had both a personal and a professional interest in psychedelics. These, along with his early migraine experiences, launched a lifelong investigation into the varieties of hallucinatory experience. Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.

The Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook: An Integrative Program to Understand and Manage Your BPD


Daniel J. Fox - 2019
    Even worse, you may be tempted to research your diagnosis online, only to find doomsday scenarios and terrible prognoses everywhere you click. Take a deep breath. You can get through this—and this workbook will help guide you.Despite what you may have read or been told, BPD is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Like many mental health issues, it manifests on a spectrum, and while some people may encounter extreme symptoms and consequences on one end, others may be less affected on the other. What do you all have in common? You likely experience difficulty balancing your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. And you may even have trouble seeing yourself clearly—continuously switching from the hero to the villain of the story you’ve written about your life. So, how can you make sense of it all and start on the road to healing?Rather than utilizing a one-size-fits-all treatment, this groundbreaking and comprehensive workbook meets you where you are on your therapeutic journey, and provides an integrative approach to treating BPD drawing on evidence-based dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and interpersonal therapy. With this compassionate workbook, you’ll gain a greater understanding of your BPD, uncover your own emotional triggers, and discover your own personal motivators for positive change.Your BPD has determined how you see and live your life, but it doesn’t have to define you forever. With this workbook as your guide, you’ll be ready to face your diagnosis head-on, and take those important first steps toward lasting wellness.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma


Bessel van der Kolk - 2014
    Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Such experiences inevitably leave traces on minds, emotions, and even on biology. Sadly, trauma sufferers frequently pass on their stress to their partners and children. Renowned trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including neurofeedback, mindfulness techniques, play, yoga, and other therapies. Based on Dr. van der Kolk’s own research and that of other leading specialists, The Body Keeps the Score offers proven alternatives to drugs and talk therapy—and a way to reclaim lives.

It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle


Mark Wolynn - 2016
    Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is compelling: the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score. Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.   As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.

Psychopharmacology: Drugs, the Brain, and Behavior


Jerrold S. Meyer - 2004
    Encompassing recent advances in molecular pharmacology and brain imaging, Drugs, The Brain and Behavior offers a unique breadth of coverage from historical accounts of drug use, through clinical and preclinical behavioural studies, to the latest research on drug effects in transgenic mouse models.

Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych E.R.


Julie Holland - 2009
    Recounts stories from her vast case files that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving, all while she deals with her best friend and fellow doctor's fight with cancer.

Left Brain, Right Brain: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience


Sally P. Springer - 1950
    It reviews the historical context from which the field emerged, focusing on behavioural implications, and intergrating new developments in cognitive neuroscience. The authors cover current neuroimaging techniques such as PET, SPECT, EEG and MEG. This edition has been updated to incorporate present thinking within hemispheric asymmetry.

Personality Disorders & Mental Illnesses: The Truth About Psychopaths, Sociopaths, and Narcissists (Personality Disorders, Mental Illnesses, Psychopaths, Sociopaths, Narcissists)


Clarence T. Rivers - 2014
     Today only, get this Amazon #1 bestseller for just $4.99. Regularly priced at $9.99. Read on your PC, Mac, Smartphone, Tablet, or Kindle device. Nowadays, people often use the term “psychopath” to refer to criminals and people with violent tendencies. However, this abusive use of the word has led people to believe that any two-bit criminal immediately falls under the psychopath category. Regardless of these misconceptions (or perhaps because of them), psychopathy is a fascinating subject for most people. This book aims to set the record straight, once and for all, about psychopathy and how exactly the mind of a psychopath works. Delve into the minds of the world’s most famous psychopaths and discover the twisted logic that makes them commit horrific crimes without showing any signs of remorse. Why do they enjoy inflicting pain and suffering on other people, without qualms or any twinges of conscience? Now, lets switch gears and explore Sociopathy. Is society to be blamed for the negative perception of sociopaths? As serial killers and notorious criminals in history prove sociopaths can be extremely dangerous individuals. Their presence itself is threatening and they must be dealt with great precaution. While they can be fearsome and their existence troubling, they do stir intrigue. We cannot help but wonder about their nature simply because they are different. They are far from normal. In reading this book, you have to keep this in mind: Sociopathy is defined as a syndrome that makes a person incapable to emotionally condition his social experiences. Sociopaths essentially lack the ability to emotionally organize. This is why they do not feel empathy and other feelings which are normal to other people. This segment has four main goals. One is to help you understand the condition beyond the textbook definition of sociopathy. Two, I hope that you can effectively utilize the information presented in this book to spread awareness and help prevent the number of children growing up to become sociopaths. Three, this book is for your own safety and protection. Finally, I’d like to discuss the growing epidemic of Narcissism with you. As you cross the street, you are highly likely to come across a narcissist, and this would only mean one thing: they are common. Of course, there are two sides of the same coin when it comes to this type of personality. This segment will provide you with all the information that you will ever need to understand narcissism and the narcissistic personality disorder. Here you be able to know how to identify someone who is a narcissist, read up on ideas about whether this is a good or a bad thing and how to control the self one is narcissistic. It is amazing what you can learn from the mind of a narcissist or others with a personality disorder or mental illness. You will find many new discoveries within yourself and society when you start reading this book! Here Is A Preview Of What You'll Learn... Personality Disorders and Mental Illnesses Psychopathy Defined Personality Disorders and Psychopathy Crime and Psychopaths Psychopaths vs. Sociopaths Sociopath Defined The Goal of a Sociopath The Weaknesses of a Sociopath Dealing with a Sociopath Is there Hope for a Sociopath? Narcissism Defined The Narcissist in You The Narcissists of Today

All of These People: A Memoir


Fergal Keane - 2006
    As one of the BBC's leading correspondents, he recounts extraordinary encounters on the front lines. Alongside his often brutal experiences in the field, he also describes unflinchingly the challenges and demons he has faced in his personal life growing up in Ireland.Keane’s existence as a war reporter is all that we imagine: frantic filing of reports and dodging shells, interspersed with rest in bombed-out hotels and concrete shelters. Life in such vulnerable areas of the globe is emotionally draining, but full of astonishing moments of camaraderie and human bravery. And so this is also a memoir of the human connections, at once simple and complex, that are made in extreme circumstances. These pages are filled with the memories of remarkable people. At the heart of Fergal Keane's story is a descent into and recovery from alcoholism, spanning two generations, father and son; a different kind of war, but as much part of the journey of the last twenty-five years as the bullets and bombs.

Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are


Sebastian Seung - 2012
    Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how?Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections between the brain’s neurons, which change slowly over time as we learn and grow. The connectome, as it’s called, is where our genetic inheritance intersects with our life experience. It’s where nature meets nurture.Seung introduces us to the dedicated researchers who are mapping the brain’s connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. It is a monumental undertaking—the scientific equivalent of climbing Mount Everest—but if they succeed, it could reveal the basis of personality, intelligence, memory, and perhaps even mental disorders. Many scientists speculate that people with anorexia, autism, and schizophrenia are "wired differently," but nobody knows for sure. The brain’s wiring has never been clearly seen.In sparklingly clear prose, Seung reveals the amazing technological advances that will soon help us map connectomes. He also examines the evidence that these maps will someday allow humans to "upload" their minds into computers, achieving a kind of immortality.Connectome is a mind-bending adventure story, told with great passion and authority. It presents a daring scientific and technological vision for at last understanding what makes us who we are. Welcome to the future of neuroscience.

The Man Who Wasn't There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self


Anil Ananthaswamy - 2015
    These individuals all lost some part of what we think of as our self, but they then offer remarkable, sometimes heart-wrenching insights into what remains. One man cut off his own leg. Another became one with the universe.We are learning about the self at a level of detail that Descartes (“I think therefore I am”) could never have imagined. Recent research into Alzheimer’s illuminates how memory creates your narrative self by using the same part of your brain for your past as for your future. But wait, those afflicted with Cotard’s syndrome think they are already dead; in a way, they believe that “I think therefore I am not.” Who—or what—can say that? Neuroscience has identified specific regions of the brain that, when they misfire, can cause the self to move back and forth between the body and a doppelgänger, or to leave the body entirely. So where in the brain, or mind, or body, is the self actually located? As Ananthaswamy elegantly reports, neuroscientists themselves now see that the elusive sense of self is both everywhere and nowhere in the human brain.

Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry


Catherine M. Pittman - 2015
    The amygdala acts as a primal response, and oftentimes, when this part of the brain processes fear, you may not even understand why you are afraid. By comparison, the cortex is the center of “worry.” That is, obsessing, ruminating, and dwelling on things that may or may not happen. In the book, Pittman and Karle make it simple by offering specific examples of how to manage fear by tapping into both of these pathways in the brain. As you read, you’ll gain a greater understanding how anxiety is created in the brain, and as a result, you will feel empowered and motivated to overcome it. The brain is a powerful tool, and the more you work to change the way you respond to fear, the more resilient you will become. Using the practical self-assessments and proven-effective techniques in this book, you will learn to literally “rewire” the brain processes that lie at the root of your fears.