Book picks similar to
The World of Man by Georg Groddeck
psychology
partially-read-certain-chapters
humanity
original-thinkers
The Power in You: How to Accept Your Past, Live in the Present and Shape a Positive Future
Henry Fraser - 2020
Combining his wisdom and insight, Henry shows you that the key to keeping a positive attitude—in the face of difficult and unexpected challenges—is to accept that seemingly negative experiences, such as failures, disappointments, mistakes and misfortunes, are actually the ultimate markers of human success. Sharing the lessons he learned after a freak accident left him paralysed from the neck down, Henry shows us that setbacks are inevitable in life but defeat is optional. He will encourage you to always search for a new perspective if what you see, at first, seems only dark, limiting or frightening. He believes there is always a reason to be grateful. The Power of Acceptance inspires you to accept yourself and to release negative feelings towards things, situations or people that you have no control over and cannot change. Henry reveals the simple words you can say to yourself and the practical changes you can make to become someone who adapts to unpredictable events and obstacles, and who accepts whatever hand they are dealt in this crazy game called life.
Not To Blame - Maggie Hartley ebook short
Maggie Hartley - 2020
Social Services are at a loss as to what to do with the troubled teenager. Prone to violent outbursts and sudden, uncontrollable tantrums, Rebecca has never spent more than a few months in any one placement. When she comes to live with foster carer Maggie Hartley, it seems like there is little hope of Rebecca ever finding a long-term home. Her strange behaviour and sudden flashes of anger present challenges unlike any Maggie has ever seen before.But when a secret from Rebecca's past finally comes to light, it seems that Maggie has finally found the root of this vulnerable girl's out-of-control behaviour.
Can Maggie help Rebecca come to terms with her past and realise she's not to blame?
Dear Sakhi: The Lost Journals of the Ladies of Hastinapur (Mahabharata Companion, #4)
Sharath Komarraju - 2015
Listen in on the words of Ganga, Satyavati, Kunti, Gandhari, Amba and Draupadi as they open their hearts to their companions. - What did Draupadi think during her last moments of life? - How did Kunti feel on the day she abandoned Karna? - Why did Amba burn with revenge so, and did it satiate her when she got it? - What is it like to be mother to the greatest hero of the age? - What is Satyavati's secret? Find out answers to these and many more questions when you read 'Dear Sakhi'. If you're a mythology fan, this is a must-have.
Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization
Derrick Jensen - 2006
Accepting the increasingly widespread belief that industrialized culture inevitably erodes the natural world, Endgame sets out to explore how this relationship impels us towards a revolutionary and as-yet undiscovered shift in strategy. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.
Human Psychology 101: Understanding The Human Mind And What Makes People Tick
Alan G. Fields - 2016
Psychology is the study of the human brain, but it’s so much more than a mere dissection of the gooey gray mass trapped in our skulls; it’s a study of what makes us tick as individuals and as a species.Human Psychology 101: Understanding the Human Mind and What Makes People Tick is meant to show you the facets of a human being and how they work together to make a person tick. It’s not a psychological treatise or a DSM-V. It’s a collection of my own research of psychology and stories from my life and those of my friends and acquaintances that help illustrate the principles I’m going to be telling you about.I will be dividing this book into seven aspects of human psychology: emotions, personality, decision-making, morality, perception, behavior, and relationships.To understand what makes someone tick is to have mastered a sort of psychological sleight of hand, and I hope that this book serves as a useful step on your way to mastery over that brand of magic trick. How human beings think and behave is an unendingly fascinating study, one that reveals how simple and elegant and, on the other hand, complex and mysterious we all are. I hope you are as pumped as I am to think about the inner workings of how people tick.
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis
David M. Friedman - 2001
Here, in an enlightening and entertaining cultural study, is a book that puts into context the central role of the penis within Western civilization. Deified by ancient pagan cultures and demonized by the early Roman church, the penis was later secularized by pioneering anatomists such as Leonardo da Vinci. After being measured 'scientifically' in an effort to subjugate some races while elevating others, the organ was psychoanalysed by Sigmund Freud. Now, after being politicized by feminism and exploited in countless ways by pop culture, Friedman shows how the arrival of erection industry products such as Viagra is more than a health or business story. It is the latest chapter in one of the longest sagas in human history: the story of man's relationship with his penis.
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion
Ken Wilber - 1998
Yet the two are seen as mutually exclusive. 'In The Marriage of Sense and Soul' Ken Wilber brilliantly shows how we can begin to think about science and religion in ways that allow for their reconciliation and union, on terms acceptable to both camps. He proves that science is compatible with the world's religions, and explains why integration is essential for a balanced life. One of the foremost thinkers in the realm of spirituality and mind, Wilber is uniquely qualified to write such a thesis. 'The author's ongoing quest is to unite science and spirituality. Deeply philosophical but with Wilber's staggering talent for making the profound sound perfectly plain.' Spirit Magazine '...rigorous, profound, original and visionary, a landmark in the science-religion debate.' Network Other books by Ken Wilber Grace and Grit A Theory of Everything A Brief History of Everything.
Life with an Autistic Son
B's Dad - 2013
He did not crave my company, cling to and cuddle me endlessly. He showed no need to bond with me, his father, and we did not. He exhausted me, he frustrated me and he scared me. I came to dread coming home from work sometimes, or those moments when it was my turn to wrestle him into bed and begin the long struggle to settle him. I said things that will forever haunt me, like “What is wrong with that child?” and “Is he always going to be this annoying?” What I didn't know then was that he was autistic.When that realisation came, so did the beginning of my mission to understand my son, and to understand autism. This book chronicles that search for understanding and answers. It documents one parent’s attempts to come to terms with, and accept, his child. It is raw and real, sometimes confused and frightened but also, I’d like to think, written with warmth and love and an ability to smile through difficult times.This book is for anyone starting out on a pathway with their child that they did not expect. It’s also for people who, like me, are a little further down that road but still learning, still asking questions and still getting it wrong sometimes. You are not alone.
Righteous Dopefiend
Philippe Bourgois - 2008
For over a decade Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg followed a social network of two dozen heroin injectors and crack smokers in the San Francisco drug scene, accompanying them as they scrambled to generate income through burglary, larceny, panhandling, recycling, and day labor. Righteous Dopefiend interweaves stunning black-and-white photography with vivid dialogue, oral biography, detailed field notes, and critical theoretical analysis to viscerally illustrate the life of a drug addict. Its gripping narrative develops a cast of characters around the themes of violence, racism and race relations, sexuality, trauma, embodied suffering, social inequality, and power relations. The result is a dispassionate chronicle of fixes and overdoses; of survival, loss, caring, and hope rooted in the drug abusers’ determination to hang on for one more day, through a "moral economy of sharing" that precariously balances mutual solidarity and interpersonal betrayal.
Living Deeply: The Art Science of Transformation in Everyday Life
Marilyn Mandala Schlitz - 2008
Each chapter in the book ends with Experiences of Transformation, exercises drawn from wisdom traditions or scientific investigations meant to enhance your direct experience of the material.Opportunities to actively engage in your own transformation and that of our world are woven into the fabric of your everyday life. Learning more about the terrain of consciousness transformation can not only give you a map, but can help you become the cartographer of your own transformative journey. Research over the last decade at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) has systematically surveyed hundreds of people's stories of their own transformations, as well as conducting over 50 in-depth interviews with teachers and masters of the world's spiritual, religious, and transformative traditions.No matter who you are,where you come from, or what your current path is - whether you seek to transform your life completely or simply make adjustments that will add a layer of richness and depth to your life - exploring the many ways that transformation is stimulated and sustained can hold great power. Weaving together cutting-edge science with wisdom from teachers of the world's transformative traditions this book explores how people experience deep shifts in their consciousness, and how those shifts can lead to healing and wholeness.Research over the last decade at the Institute of Noetic Sciences has explored in depth the phenomenon by which people make significant shifts in the way they experience and view the world. Focusing in particular on positive transformations in consciousness, or those that result in improved health, well-being, and sense of meaning, purpose,and belonging, hundreds of people's stories of their own transformations were included in the research, as well as in-depth interviews with over 50 teachers and masters of the world's spiritual, religious, and transformative traditions.Authors Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Ph.D., Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D., and Tina Amorok, Psy.D. - will begin conducting workshops based on the information they have gathered for this book. These workshops will blend the rigors of science with the deep wisdom of the world’s spiritual traditions. Drs. Schlitz, Vieten, and Amorok will offer key insights from the decade-long qualitative and quantitative research study, of how people transform their lives. The workshops will include rigorous inquiry, group dialogue, and direct experience about the kinds of transformations in consciousness that change a person’s worldview to one that is more connected to others.For more information about the Signature Education Workshops, please visit www.livingdeeply.orgAlso available is a companion DVD.
Transformative Experience
L.A. Paul - 2014
When choosing whether to start a family, or deciding on a career, we often think we can assess the options by imagining what different experiences would be like forus. L. A. Paul argues that, for choices involving dramatically new experiences, we are confronted by the brute fact that we can know very little about our subjective futures. This has serious implications for our decisions. If we make life choices in the way we naturally and intuitively want to--byconsidering what we care about, and what our future selves will be like if we choose to have the experience--we only learn what we really need to know after we have already committed ourselves. If we try to escape the dilemma by avoiding an experience, we have still made a choice.Choosing rationally, then, may require us to regard big life decisions as choices to make discoveries, small and large, about the intrinsic nature of experience, and to recognize that part of the value of living authentically is to experience one's life and preferences in whatever way they mayevolve in the wake of the choices one makes.Using classic philosophical examples about the nature of consciousness, and drawing on recent work in normative decision theory, cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, Paul develops a rigorous account of transformative experience that sheds light on how we should understandreal-world experience and our capacity to rationally map our subjective futures.
The Accidental Species: Misunderstandings of Human Evolution
Henry Gee - 2013
Yet, the metaphor has lodged itself in the contemporary imagination, and new fossil discoveries are often hailed in headlines as revealing the elusive transitional step, the moment when we stopped being “animal” and started being “human.” In The Accidental Species, Henry Gee, longtime paleontology editor at Nature, takes aim at this misleading notion, arguing that it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how evolution works and, when applied to the evolution of our own species, supports mistaken ideas about our own place in the universe. Gee presents a robust and stark challenge to our tendency to see ourselves as the acme of creation. Far from being a quirk of religious fundamentalism, human exceptionalism, Gee argues, is an error that also infects scientific thought. Touring the many features of human beings that have recurrently been used to distinguish us from the rest of the animal world, Gee shows that our evolutionary outcome is one possibility among many, one that owes more to chance than to an organized progression to supremacy. He starts with bipedality, which he shows could have arisen entirely by accident, as a by-product of sexual selection, moves on to technology, large brain size, intelligence, language, and, finally, sentience. He reveals each of these attributes to be alive and well throughout the animal world—they are not, indeed, unique to our species. The Accidental Species combines Gee’s firsthand experience on the editorial side of many incredible paleontological findings with healthy skepticism and humor to create a book that aims to overturn popular thinking on human evolution—the key is not what’s missing, but how we’re linked.
Say Goodbye to Crazy: How to Get Rid of His Crazy Ex and Restore Sanity to Your Life
Tara Palmatier - 2015
It will give you the answers you need to live a life free of chaos, anger and frustration. Say Goodbye to Crazy is one of the few books that addresses how to cope with a hostile, angry ex-wife whose destructive behavior is overlooked by the courts, the society and sometimes, even your own husband. It is a life-saver. Helen Smith, PhD, forensic psychologist and author of Men on Strike
Mind Games: The True Story of a Psychologist, His Wife, and a Brutal Murder
Carlton Smith - 2007
Dr. Felix Polk was a married psychologist living in Berkeley, California. At forty years old, he had a successful practice and a towering reputation until he began a scandalous affair with one of his patients- Susan Bolling. She was fifteen years old. A troubled teenage girl. After divorcing his first wife, Felix married Susan. Susan would later claim that her marriage was built on lies, manipulation, and psychological abuse. She tried to divorce Felix, but no settlement could be reached. Susan seemed to believe that Felix had stashed up to $40 million in a secret bank account in the Caribbean. She wanted her half or else. A case that stunned the nation. In October 2002, Felix was found stabbed to death in his own home. Susan insisted she acted in self-defense. But what would a jury think when Susan claiming she was the victim of Felix's manipulation became her own defense attorney? This is the true story of marriage, murder, and mind games.
The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics
Arthur W. Frank - 1995
That book ended by describing the existence of a "remission society," whose members all live with some form of illness or disability. The Wounded Storyteller is their collective portrait.Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine; they are wounded storytellers. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering; when they turn their diseases into stories, they find healing.Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known—Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer—to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilties. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic.Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new.