Book picks similar to
Mad Matters: A Critical Reader for Canadian Mad Studies by Brenda A. LeFrançois
non-fiction
madness
nonfiction
psychology
Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self
Sara Shandler - 1999
"Horror stories of eating disorders, self-mutilation, abusive relationships floated across the page," Shandler writes of Pipher's book on adolescent girls. "Pipher equated our contemporary adolescent experiences to Shakespeare's ill-fated Ophelia." Shandler identified with the emotional experiences described in the book. "However," she explains, "I did not feel simply spoken to, I felt spoken for."With courage and unselfconscious audacity, Shandler decided to speak for herself. She had her friends write reflections on subjects such as eating disorders, sex, drugs, and child abuse, and scored a book deal. With the help of her publisher, HarperPerennial, Shandler sent queries for firsthand adolescent accounts to high school principals across the country, asking them to enlist the help of English teachers, parents associations, school psychologists, etc. (This letter appears as Appendix A in the book.) Not too shabby for a kid who only recently started getting serious about studying, and drinking lots of coffee.Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self is the result of Sara Shandler's crusade. Her goal was to bring real voice to Reviving Ophelia. She succeeds. The voices are raw and young and jarring -- sometimes adult-like, sometimes childlike, and more often both, like Shandler's voice.Shandler introduces each chapter -- "Intoxication," "Rape and Sexual Abuse," "Questions of Faith," "Diverse Sexualities," "Mothers, Feminist Pride," etc.-- with personal anecdotes of her own. Through these introductions, it becomes clear that Shandler is like any modern American teenager: She has experimented lightly with drugs, had sex at an early age (one month shy of 15), is mildly infatuated with her weight, and was at one point pretty depressed (as in, the thought of suicide once crossed her mind). Pretty run-of-the-mill teen stuff. Somehow it is surprising that nothing "worse" ever happened to Shandler. It seems too simple that her only motivation to complete this project was to help other teens feel less alone. Then again, maybe it is too simple to think that all books of this kind must be written by damaged teens or once-damaged teens.By definition, Shandler's carefully selected contributions are young words for young ears. But they are also an intense reminder for older ears: When all you have lived is 16 years, thinking once of suicide feels like the biggest thing ever. This is not to belittle Shandler's impressive compilation or her honesty. She is very, very honest. In a chapter entitled "Broken-Hearted Independence," she explains how she got through the tragedy of breaking up with her first love. "[W]ith our separation I forced myself to face the dependence that left me alone and broken with our breakup. That confrontation was frightening. I was not brave in the usual sense. I cried often and hard. But instead of lonely isolation, I read and wrote and thought and thought. I buried myself in Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker, Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison, and I wondered why women I had never met knew me so well. With these women I was not so alone anymore."Each entry in this book is this bare, this open. Which is why Ophelia Speaks works as a book for teens by teens, but also as a tool for parents who want to know -- or remind themselves -- of what lies just around the corner. (Alexandra Zissu)
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.
Playing and Reality
D.W. Winnicott - 1971
In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before.
Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment
Charles Zastrow - 1987
Now available with a personalized online learning plan, this social work-specific book looks at lifespan through the lens of social work theory and practice. The authors use an empowerment approach to cover human development and behavior theories within the context of family, organizational, and community systems. Using a chronological lifespan approach, the authors present separate chapters on biological, psychological, and social impacts at the different lifespan stages with an emphasis on strengths and empowerment.
Theory and Practice of Counseling and Psychotherapy
Gerald Corey - 2004
Reviewed by 27 of the field's leading experts, Corey's Seventh Edition covers the major concepts of counseling theories, shows students how to apply those theories in practice, and helps them learn to integrate the theories into an individualized counseling style. Incorporating the thinking, feeling, and behaving dimensions of human experience, Corey offers an easy-to-understand text that helps students compare and contrast the therapeutic models. This book is the center of a suite of products that include a revised student manual, a revised casebook, a companion text, and an all-new CD-ROM.
Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life
Sari Solden - 1995
This book includes a chapter on friendship for women with ADHD.
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
Esmé Weijun Wang - 2019
Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esme Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the "collected schizophrenias" but to those who wish to understand it as well. Opening with the journey toward her diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, Wang discusses the medical community's own disagreement about labels and procedures for diagnosing those with mental illness, and then follows an arc that examines the manifestations of schizophrenia in her life. In essays that range from using fashion to present as high-functioning to the depths of a rare form of psychosis, and from the failures of the higher education system and the dangers of institutionalisation to the complexity of compounding factors such as PTSD and Lyme disease, Wang's analytical eye, honed as a former lab researcher at Stanford, allows her to balance research with personal narrative. An essay collection of undeniable power, The Collected Schizophrenias dispels misconceptions and provides insight into a condition long misunderstood.
The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling
Arlie Russell Hochschild - 1983
But what happens when this system of adjusting emotions is adapted to commercial purposes? Hochschild examines the cost of this kind of "emotional labor." She vividly describes from a humanist and feminist perspective the process of estrangement from personal feelings and its role as an "occupational hazard" for one-third of America's workforce.
Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
Judith Butler - 2004
In her most impassioned and personal book to date, Judith Butler responds in this profound appraisal of post-9/11 America to the current US policies to wage perpetual war, and calls for a deeper understanding of how mourning and violence might instead inspire solidarity and a quest for global justice.
The Psychology of Intelligence
Jean Piaget - 1947
His theory of learning lies at the very heart of the modern understanding of the human learning process, and he is celebrated as the founding father of child psychology. A prolific writer, is the author of more than fifty books and several hundred articles. The Psychology of Intelligence is one of his most important works. Containing a complete synthesis of his thoughts on the mechanisms of intellectual development, it is an extraordinary volume by an extraordinary writer. Given his significance, it is hardly surprising that Psychology Today pronounced Piaget the Best Psychologist of the twentieth century.
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States
Seth Holmes - 2013
An anthropologist and MD in the mold of Paul Farmer and Didier Fassin, Seth Holmes shows how market forces, anti-immigrant sentiment, and racism undermine health and healthcare. Holmes’s material is visceral and powerful. He trekked with his companions illegally through the desert into Arizona and was jailed with them before they were deported. He lived with indigenous families in the mountains of Oaxaca and in farm labor camps in the U.S., planted and harvested corn, picked strawberries, and accompanied sick workers to clinics and hospitals. This “embodied anthropology” deepens our theoretical understanding of how health equity is undermined by a normalization of migrant suffering, the natural endpoint of systemic dehumanization, exploitation, and oppression that clouds any sense of empathy for “invisible workers.” Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies is far more than an ethnography or supplementary labor studies text; Holmes tells the stories of food production workers from as close to the ground as possible, revealing often theoretically-discussed social inequalities as irreparable bodily damage done. This book substantiates the suffering of those facing the danger of crossing the border, threatened with deportation, or otherwise caught up in the structural violence of a system promising work but endangering or ignoring the human rights and health of its workers.All of the book award money and royalties from the sales of this book have been donated to farm worker unions, farm worker organizations and farm worker projects in consultation with farm workers who appear in the book.
Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Lauren Slater - 2004
F. Skinner and the legend of a child raised in a box, Slater takes us from a deep empathy with Stanley Milgram's obedience subjects to a funny and disturbing re-creation of an experiment questioning the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. Previously described only in academic journals and textbooks, these often daring experiments have never before been narrated as stories, chock-full of plot, wit, personality, and theme.
My Lobotomy: A Memoir
Howard Dully - 2007
Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?“October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. “December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested [they] not tell Howard anything about it.”Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.
Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment
Martin E.P. Seligman - 2002
Real, lasting happiness comes from focusing on one’s personal strengths rather than weaknesses—and working with them to improve all aspects of one’s life. Using practical exercises, brief tests, and a dynamic website program, Seligman shows readers how to identify their highest virtues and use them in ways they haven’t yet considered. Accessible and proven, Authentic Happiness is the most powerful work of popular psychology in years.
The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
Susannah Cahalan - 2019
Forced to remain inside until they'd "proven" themselves sane, all eight emerged with alarming diagnoses and even more troubling stories of their treatment. Rosenhan's study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever. But, as Cahalan's new research shows, very little in this saga is exactly as it seems. What really happened behind those closed asylum doors, and what does it mean for our understanding of mental illness today?