Psychology Memoirs

Meredith Maran lived a daughter's nightmare: she accused her father of sexual abuse, then realized, nearly too late, that he was innocent. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Americans became convinced that they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then, decades later, recovered those memories in therapy. Journalist, mother, and daughter Meredith Maran was one of them.

In Beyond the Surface, inspirational speaker and Paralympic champion Jessica Long shares her story—and key principles to help you find your own path to unconditional self-acceptance. With Jessica’s support, you’ll explore reflections and practices to overcome hardship and cultivate self-love in even the most difficult times.

This book explains what bipolar disorder is, outlines medications that work to combat it, describes Bridget's journey with God, and talks about how the stigma of mental illness has been somewhat alleviated, but there is still work to be done.

In the 1970s and early '80s, southern California was shocked when dead boys began turning up with disturbing regularity alongside some of the state's most heavily traveled freeways. Victims of sadistic torture, the dead boys and young men had been raped and strangled, and their untimely deaths were eventually attributed to the Freeway Killer, an elusive psychopath whose trail of death would go down in California history as one of the worst true crime stories in the country.

There are many myths about serial killers: that they are all dysfunctional loners; all white males; only motivated by sex; that they all travel and operate across a wide area; cannot stop killing; are all insane, or evil geniuses; and that they all want to get caught. Of course, there are some serial killers who fit into these categories, but the married Green River Killer was not a dysfunctional loner; there are plenty of female and non-Caucasian serial killers, Dr Harold Shipman was certainly not motivated by sex; and many serial killings (such as the Ipswich prostitute murders carried out by Steve Wright) happen within a confined area.

In the early hours of July 10, 2016, gunshots rang out and a young man lay fatally wounded on a quiet Washington, DC, street. But who killed Seth Rich? When he was buried in his hometown, his rabbi declared: “There are no answers for a young man gunned down in the prime of his life.” The rabbi was wrong. There were in fact many answers, way too many. In the absence of an arrest, a howling mob filled the void. Wild speculation and fantastical theories surfaced on social media and gained traction thanks to a high-level cast of provocateurs.

Who are the greatest innovators in the world? You're probably thinking Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford - the usual suspects.

This book isn't about them. It's about people who are just as innovative, entrepreneurial, and visionary as the Jobses, Edisons, and Fords of the world, except they're not in Silicon Valley. They're in the street markets of Sao Paulo and Guangzhou, and the rubbish dumps of Lagos. They are pirates, slum dwellers, computer hackers, dissidents, and inner city gang members.

Secrets of a Good Girl pulls back the curtain on an erotic world hiding in plain sight - a world where women are in control. In this erotic memoir, listeners will follow the real journey of “Josie”, as she goes behind closed doors into European sex clubs, aboard private yachts, and to exclusive erotic enclaves around the world.

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family - that his father's mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw's first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.

When her husband, Alan, is injured in a speedboat accident, Cathy Crimmins reluctantly assumes the role of caregiver and learns to cope with the person he has become. No longer the man who loved obscure Japanese cinema and wry humor, Crimmins’ husband has emerged from the accident a childlike and unpredictable replica of his former self with a short attention span and a penchant for inane cartoons. Where Is the Mango Princess? is a breathtaking account that explores the very nature of personality - and the complexities of the heart.

The debut of an important new literary voice: Marin Sardy's extraordinarily affecting, fiercely intelligent memoir unflinchingly traces the path of the schizophrenia that runs in her family. Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where the author grew up, Marin Sardy weaves a fearless account of the shapeless thief - the schizophrenia - that kept her mother immersed in a world of private delusion and later manifested in her brother, ultimately claiming his life.

Imagine losing your grip on reality and plunging into a nightmarish yet fantastical realm of schizophrenia. This memoir is one Harvard grad's account of several psychotic episodes he's endured over the years. A constant pause-resister, the adrenaline doses keep coming from start to finish. These vivid accounts of psychoses put the listeners in a front-row seat of some of the spectacular recesses of human imagination - only the listener has the option to check out at any time.

One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach—gentle and full of promise—in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach's world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family.

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. Some books promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged accepting the coming crone. Beyond that, there was little that offered a path to understanding menopause in a complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.

Dan Mathews knew that his witty, bawdy 78-year-old mother, Perry, was unable to maintain her fierce independence - so he flew her across the country to Virginia to live with him in an 1870 townhouse badly in need of repairs. But to Dan, a screwdriver is a cocktail not a tool, and he was soon overwhelmed with two fixer-uppers: the house and his mother.

When journalist Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he finds it impossible to walk away. More than 30 years ago, Ayers was a promising classical bass student at Juilliard - ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans there - until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia.

Over time, the two men form a bond and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayers' life. The Soloist is a beautifully told story of devotion in the face of seemingly unbeatable challenges.

Warning: This audiobook describes several crime scenes that are graphic in nature and may be very disturbing to some people. Do not proceed if under the age of 18 or are disturbed by scenes of death and violence. One after another, young women disappeared without a trace in the night. One by one, their brutalized bodies turned up, the macabre crime scenes suggesting they shared the same cruel fate. Abducted, bound, and raped, all fell prey to an unknown killer; all became the victims of a deadly deception.

In ADHD and Me, he tells about the next 12 years as he learns to live with both the good and bad sides of life with ADHD. Blake's memoir offers, for the first time, a young person's account of what it's like to live and grow up with this common condition. Join Blake as he foils bullies, confronts unfair teachers, struggles with distraction and disorganization on exams, and goes sailing out-of-bounds and ends up with a boatload of spiders.

Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She’d been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season.

Captive, Madeline Dyer's first poetry collection, is based on the therapy writings she produced when she was experiencing psychosis and OCD due to autoimmune basal ganglia encephalitis, a rare type of brain inflammation caused by the immune system attacking the brain. While her communication skills and cognitive abilities diminished due to the effects of the inflammation, she was able to share her thoughts and emotions via the written word