A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind


David J. Helfand - 2016
    Yet how much of this is mis- or even disinformation? A lot of it is, and your search engine can't tell the difference. As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging threats to public health. This book provides an inoculation against the misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. Anyone can do it--indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to survive on this crowded and finite planet.This survival guide supplies an essential set of apps for the prefrontal cortex while making science both accessible and entertaining. It will dissolve your fear of numbers, demystify graphs, and elucidate the key concepts of probability, all while celebrating the precise use of language and logic. David Helfand, one of our nation's leading astronomers and science educators, has taught scientific habits of mind to generations in the classroom, where he continues to wage a provocative battle against sloppy thinking and the encroachment of misinformation.

DYING TO LIVE: THE END OF FEAR: A Direct Approach To Freedom From Psychological And Emotional Suffering


David Parrish - 2019
    This is a presentation of the essential teaching of this direct path to freedom that focuses on the recognition and realization of the True Self. This book identifies the root cause of suffering as the identification with the mind and the belief that the psychological construct that is considered the "person" is actual. It is shown that this idea we have of who we are is an illusion that has been taken to be real and thus creates all forms of psychological suffering and confusion. The freedom from this illusion is shown to be available to anyone who is willing to recognize and realize the truth of who they are. This is a non-dual approach to psychological treatment that is becoming a new approach that has the potential to bring an end to all psychological disorders.

Human Universals


Donald E. Brown - 1991
    The text is divided into three parts: the problems posed for anthropology by universals; six important studies that have forced anthropologists to rethink; and the distinctions between linguistic, cultural and social universals.

A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud & Sabina Spielrein


John Kerr - 1993
    Six years later they were bitter antagonists, locked in a savage struggle that was as much personal and emotional as it was theoretical and professional. Between them stood a young woman named Sabina Spielrein, who had been both patient and lover to Jung and colleague and confidante to Freud before going on to become an innovative psychoanalyst herself.A solid new interpretation of the short-lived but oft-analyzed collaboration between Freud and Jung, in which the mysterious Sabina Spielrein figures prominently. Using Spielrein's correspondence and journals--discovered in the 1970's and first appearing in Aldo Carotenuto's A Secret Symmetry (1982)--Kerr traces a fascinating, credible web of influence and cross-fertilized ideas that he weaves skillfully into a record of psychoanalytic history.

Stop Chasing Carrots: Healing Self-Help Deceptions With a Scientific Philosophy of Life


Chris Masi - 2015
    Yet psychologists and philosophers agree that these commonplace approaches to creating happiness, success, and fulfillment make critical mistakes. Stop Chasing Carrots reveals how these mistakes begin with misconceptions about happiness and then presents a philosophy of life to achieve better results.Here is the rare book that creates a philosophy of life based on scientific evidence. Replacing self-help materialism, Eastern spiritualism/minimalism, and complex but insightful psychological studies with an accessible, balanced, and realistic concept, Stop Chasing Carrots empowers readers to lead lives based on proven ideas.

Making Sense


Sam Harris - 2013
    With over one million downloads per episode, these discussions have clearly hit a nerve, frequently walking a tightrope where either host or guest - and sometimes both - lose their footing, but always in search off a greater understanding of the world in which we live. for Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress.This book includes a dozen of the best conversations from 'MAKING SENSE', including talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically. Together they shine a light on what it means to "make sense" in the modern world.RUNNING TIME ⇒ 22hrs.©2020 Sam Harris (P)2020 HarperAudio

The Fall: The Evidence for a Golden Age, 6,000 Years of Insanity, and the Dawning of a New Era


Steve Taylor - 2005
    It draws on the increasing evidence accumulated over recent decades that prehistoric humanity was peaceful and egalitarian, rather than war-like and crude. It is not natural for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for individuals to accumulate massive wealth and power, or to abuse nature. The worldwide myths of a Golden Age or an original paradise have a factual, archaeological basis.

Pavlov's Dog: Groundbreaking Experiments in Psychology


Adam Hart-Davis - 2015
    Whether you’re interested in memory or prejudice, learning or schizophrenia, you’ll find something to interest you in this essential guide to the science of the mind.

Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis


George Makari - 2008
    In a sweeping narrative, George Makari demonstrates how a new way of thinking about inner life coalesced and won followers who spread this body of thought throughout the West. Along the way he introduces the reader to a fascinating array of characters, many of whom have been long ignored or forgotten.Amid great ferment, Sigmund Freud emerged as a creative, interdisciplinary thinker who devised a riveting new theory of the mind that attracted acolytes from the very fields the Viennese doctor had mined for his synthesis. These allies included Eugen Bleuler, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, all of whom eventually broke away and accused the Freudian community of being unscientific. Makari reveals how in the wake of these crises, innovators like Sándor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Melanie Klein, and others reformed psychoanalysis, which began to gain wide acceptance only to be banished from the continent and sent into exile due to the rise of fascism.Groundbreaking, insightful, and compulsively readable, Revolution in Mind goes beyond myth and polemic to give us the story of one of the most controversial intellectual endeavors of the twentieth century.

Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness


Christopher David Carter - 2012
    Focusing on three key phenomena--reincarnation, apparitions, and communications from the dead--Carter reveals 125 years of documented scientific studies by independent researchers and the British and American Societies for Psychical Research that rule out hoaxes, fraud, and hallucinations and prove these afterlife phenomena are real.The author examines historic and modern accounts of detailed past-life memories, visits from the deceased, and communications with the dead via medium and automatic writing as well as the scientific methods used to confirm these experiences. He explains how these findings on the afterlife have been ignored and denied because they are incompatible with the prevailing doctrine of materialism. Sharing messages from the dead themselves describing the afterlife, Carter reveals how consciousness exists outside the parameters of biological evolution and emerges through the medium of the brain to use the physical world as a springboard for growth. After death, souls can advance to higher planes of consciousness or manifest once again on Earth. Carter’s rigorous argument proves--beyond any reasonable doubt--not only that consciousness survives death and continues in the afterlife, but that it precedes birth as well.

Conscious Robots: Facing up to the reality of being human.


Paul Kwatz - 2005
    Conscious Robots challenges us to face up to the reality of being human: just because we're conscious doesn't mean we're not robots. So what would we do with free will if we really had it? And how does “being a robot” explain why life, as Buddha suggested, is “inherently unsatisfactory”, despite our luxurious homes, successful careers and loving families? Conscious Robots shows why we’re so convinced that we’re in charge, when we’re really just carrying out our evolved pre-programmed instructions. And reveals the inevitable future, how one day humans will take control of their conscious minds, get happy and stay happy. But it will come too late for you, Dear Reader… so no point buying the book. Unless you’re extremely rich, of course. Then you can pay for the neurochemical research yourself. “Easy to understand and persuasive” “Reminded me of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett”

Our Dreaming Mind


Robert L. Van De Castle - 1994
    If it inspires you to remember your dreams, this book will change your life. If it inspires you to act on your dreams, this book will change the world."--Henry Reed Author of Getting Help from Your Dreams and Dream SolutionsIn this brilliantly researched and thorough study, internationally recognized dream authority Robert L. Van de Castle examines the vital role that dreams have played throughout history, from the dreams of ancient Sumerian kings to the pioneering dream research of nineteenth-century psychologists. Our Dreaming Mind delves into the most provocative experiments that scientists are conducting on the dreaming mind in this century and surveys ongoing dream experiments: dreams and sexual arousal, the impact of pregnancy on dreams, the connection between dreams and creativity, and the possibility of paranormal dreams. "In Our Dreaming Mind, Robert Van de Castle pulls decades of accumulated wisdom together in a sweeping panorama unsurpassed in the literature for its scope, its insight, and its ability to captivate its readers.--Stanley Krippner Director of The Saybrook Institute Editor of Dream Time and Dream Work"IMMENSELY READABLE...A monumental history of dreams."--Publishers Weekly"Our Dreaming Mind is really a dream come true--the most comprehensive, authoritative, and inspiring book on dreams I know about. At heart, this book is about human consciousness and our place in the universe. A magnificent contribution."--Larry Dossey, M.D. Author of Meaning & Medicine: A Doctor's Tales of Breakthrough and HealingAN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB

The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers


Andrea Tone - 2008
    In 2006, the National Institute of Mental Health estimated that 40 million adult Americans suffer from an anxiety disorder in any given year: more than double the number thought to have such a disorder in 2001. Anti-anxiety drugs are a billion-dollar business. Yet as recently as 1955, when the first tranquilizer—Miltown—went on the market, pharmaceutical executives worried that there wouldn’t be interest in anxiety-relief. At mid-century, talk therapy remained the treatment of choice.But Miltown became a sensation—the first psychotropic blockbuster in United States history. By 1957, Americans had filled 36 million prescriptions. Patients seeking made-to-order tranquility emptied drugstores, forcing pharmacists to post signs reading “more Miltown tomorrow.” The drug’s financial success and cultural impact revolutionized perceptions of anxiety and its treatment, inspiring the development of other lifestyle drugs including Valium and Prozac.In The Age of Anxiety, Andrea Tone draws on a broad array of original sources—manufacturers’ files, FDA reports, letters, government investigations, and interviews with inventors, physicians, patients, and activists—to provide the first comprehensive account of the rise of America’s tranquilizer culture. She transports readers from the bomb shelters of the Cold War to the scientific optimism of the Baby Boomers, to the “just say no” Puritanism of the late 1970s and 1980s.A vibrant history of America’s long and turbulent affair with tranquilizers, The Age of Anxiety casts new light on what it has meant to seek synthetic solutions to everyday angst.

A Brief History of Modern Psychology


Ludy T. Benjamin Jr. - 2006
    Stanley Hall, James Catell, John B. Watson, and B.F. Skinner as well as lesser known luminaries such as E.B. Titchener, Mary Calkins, Leta Hollingworth, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, and Helen Thompson WolleyProvides the historical and disciplinary context that will help readers to better understand the richness and complexity of contemporary psychologyIncludes discussions of important events, societies, and landmarks in the history of psychology such as the growth of psychological laboratories in the US, the Thayer Conference (the landmark summit which defined school psychology), Kurt Lewin's social action research, and Lewis M. Terman and the Stanford Revision of the Binet-Simon Scale (now the well known, "Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale") Test Bank for instructors with identification, multiple-choice, matching, and essay questions written by Ludy Benjamin available at www.wiley.com/go/benjamin .

Jesus in India


Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - 1899
    Christian and Muslim scriptures provide evidence about this journey.