Mental Health History

In this smart and timely book, the distinguished moral philosopher Sissela Bok ponders the nature of happiness and its place in philosophical thinking and writing throughout the ages. With nuance and elegance, Bok explores notions of happiness - from Greek philosophers to Desmond Tutu, Charles Darwin, Iris Murdoch, and the Dalai Lama - as well as the latest theories advanced by psychologists, economists, geneticists, and neuroscientists.

In his sequel to Ignorance (Oxford University Press, 2012), Stuart Firestein shows us that the scientific enterprise is riddled with mistakes and errors - and that this is a good thing! Failure: Why Science Is So Successful delves into the origins of scientific research as a process that relies upon trial and error, one which inevitably results in a hefty dose of failure. In fact, scientists throughout history have relied on failure to guide their research, viewing mistakes as a necessary part of the process.

John Homans adopted his dog, Stella, from a shelter for all the usual reasons: fond memories of dogs from his past, a companion for his son, an excuse for long walks around the neighborhood. Soon enough, she is happily ensconced in the daily workings of his family. And not only that: Stella is treated like a family member - in ways that dogs of his youth were not. Spending humanlike sums on vet bills, questioning her diet and exercise regimens, contemplating her happiness - how had this all come to pass, when the dogs from Homans's childhood seemed quite content living mostly out in the yard?

Welcome to the world of the fabulously wealthy in London, 1909, where dresses and houses are overwhelmingly opulent, social class means everything, and women are taught to be nothing more than wives and mothers. Into this world comes 17-year-old Victoria Darling, who wants only to be an artist - a nearly impossible dream for a girl. After Vicky poses nude for her illicit art class, she is expelled from her French finishing school. Shamed and scandalized, her parents try to marry her off to the wealthy Edmund Carrick-Humphrey. But Vicky has other things on her mind....

When Olivia awakes in a hospital bed following a near-fatal car accident, she can't remember how she got there. She figures it's because she was in a coma for a week, but as time goes on, she realizes she's lost more than just the last week of her life - she's lost all memory of events that happened years ago. Gone is any recollection of starting or graduating high school, the prom, or her steady boyfriend, Matt. Trying to figure out who she is feels impossible when everyone keeps telling her who she was.

Sex, The World History: Through Time, Religion, and Culture is a daring, deep historical-anthropological exploration. It is also a scathing condemnation of religion and its insistent control of sex.

In his clear, empathetic style, Jonathan Foiles, author of the critically acclaimed This City Is Killing Me, walks us through these and other troubling examples of bias in mental health, placing them in context of past blunders in the history of psychiatry and the DSM. Diagnoses are helpful but not necessary, he argues, and here he offers a pragmatic and sympathetic guide to how we might craft a better and more just therapeutic future.

On April 14, 1865 John Wilkes Booth changed the world with a single bullet. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln had many repercussions and for Henry Rathbone they were profound. Henry was the only man to confront Booth and attempt to apprehend the assassin. Henry was also the man that let Booth escape. While Henry wasn't officially blamed for allowing John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln, he blamed himself.

Il genio di Freud è largamente riconosciuto non solo nel campo della psicoanalisi. Le sue teorie hanno rivoluzionato in modo definitivo il pensiero occidentale. Ma quello che colpisce nella sua opera è l'anticonformismo, che si traduce in un'audacia teorica mai provocatoria e sempre razionale. Freud scopre l'Edipo scrivendo sul sogno poco dopo la morte di suo padre. Afferma che la sessualità determina la vita umana. E colloca all'origine della vita sessuale un desiderio ingovernabile che chiama "pulsione".

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive - and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where, remarkably, most remain unread.

Biographers, journalists, and satirists have long used the subject of sex to define the masculine character and political authority of America's Founding Fathers. Tracing these commentaries on the Revolutionary Era's major political figures in Sex and the Founding Fathers, Thomas Foster shows how continual attempts to reveal the true character of these men instead exposes much more about Americans and American culture than about the Founders themselves.

More people know who Khloe Kardashian is than who Rene Descartes was. Most can't find Delaware on a map, correctly spell the word occurrence, or name the largest ocean on the planet. But how important is it to fill our heads with facts? A few keystrokes can summon almost any information in seconds. Why should we bother learning facts at all? Best-selling author William Poundstone confronts that timely question in Head in the Cloud.

What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain.

When Paul Collins’s son Morgan was two years old, he could read, spell, and perform multiplication tables in his head … but not answer to his own name. A casual conversation—or any social interaction that the rest of us take for granted—will, for Morgan, always be a cryptogram that must be painstakingly decoded. He lives in a world of his own: an autistic world. In Not Even Wrong, Paul Collins melds a memoir of his son’s autism with a journey into this realm of permanent outsiders.

Up until her 15th birthday, the most important thing in the world to Beatriz Mendez was her dream of becoming a professional dancer and getting herself and her family far from the gang life that defined their days - that and meeting her dance idol Debbie Allen on the set of her favorite TV show, Fame. But after the latest battle in a constant turf war leaves her gang leader brother, Junito, dead and her mother grieving, Beatriz has a new set of priorities. How is she supposed to feel the rhythm when her gang needs running and her mami can't brush her own teeth?

Author Joanne Steen tackles the subject that terrifies parents of military personnel - the death of their son or daughter on active duty. In short, accessible chapters Gold Star parents find thoughtful explanations and trustworthy advice for coping with military grief. Steen weaves together realistic examples with voices of other Gold Star parents, connecting the listeners to the wisdom of those parents who have walked in their shoes.

In The Progress Paradox, Gregg Easterbrook draws upon three decades of wide-ranging research and thinking to make the persuasive assertion that almost all aspects of Western life have vastly improved in the past century—and yet today, most men and women feel less happy than in previous generations. Why this is so and what we should do about it is the subject of this book.

Few of us know much about the biology of sex determination, but what could be more interesting than to discover how we are shaped into males and females? In this book, Elof Carlson tells the incredible story of the difficult quest to understand how the body forms girls and boys. Carlson's history takes us from antiquity to the present day to detail how each component of human reproduction and sexuality was identified and studied....

Child psychiatrist and best-selling author Robert Coles offers a profound meditation on how secular culture has settled into the hearts and minds of Americans. This book is a sweeping essay on the shift from religious control over Western society to the scientific dominance of the mind.

Why has an indefinable state of being commanded the attention and fascination of the human race since the dawn of time? In Virgin, Hanne Blank brings us a revolutionary, rich and entertaining survey of an astonishing untouched history. From the simple task of determining what constitutes its loss to why it matters to us in the first place, Blank gets to the heart of why we even care about it in the first place.