Psychology Memoirs

A deeply reported, revealing biography of tennis phenomenon and activist Naomi Osaka, telling the untold story behind her Grand Slam-winning career, her headline-making advocacy for racial justice and mental health, and the challenges of a life in the international spotlight.

On the morning of August 23, 1973, a man wearing a wig, makeup, and a pair of sunglasses walked into the main branch of Sveriges Kreditbank, a prominent bank in central Stockholm. He ripped out a submachine gun, fired it into the ceiling, and shouted, "The party starts!" This was the beginning of a six-day hostage crisis - and media circus - that would mesmerize the world, drawing into its grip everyone from Sweden's most notorious outlaw to the prime minister himself.

For Chavez, an elementary school librarian and mother of two boys, the signs of mounting anxiety and depression had been present for a while, though she had done her very best to ignore them. Then, one night, while her husband was away on business, Julie found herself locked in a debilitating panic attack that threw her life into a tailspin. The terrifying aftershocks left her grappling with questions about the origin of her anxiety and where it would lead next. What follows is a funny, unflinchingly open account, offering an intimate portrait of how one woman found her way back from the edge.

Before: Jen Waite has met the partner of her dreams. A handsome, loving man who becomes part of her family, evolving into her husband, her best friend, and the father of her infant daughter. After: A disturbing email sparks suspicion, leading to an investigation of who this man really is and what was really happening in their marriage. In alternating before and after chapters, Waite obsessively analyzes her relationship, trying to find a single moment form the past five years that isn't part of the long con of lies and manipulation.

How do you deal with those that break the law? If their aim is to evade you, how do you identify them? If their aim is to lie, how do you interview them? If they don't see their actions are wrong, how do you help them to successfully reform? Criminal psychology is the discipline which tackles these challenges head on. From the signals which give away when we’re lying to the psychological profiling of violent offenders, this exhaustive guide, written by the UK’s top experts, is the perfect introduction.

Dr. Loren A. Olson has frequently been asked two questions: How could you not know that you were gay until the age of forty? Wasn't your marriage just a sham to protect yourself at your wife's expense? In Finally Out, Dr. Olson vigorously answers both questions by telling the inspiring story of his evolving sexuality, into which he intelligently weaves psychological concepts and gay history.

In 1990, a young woman was strangled on a jogging path near the home of Pat Brown and her family. Brown suspected the young man who was renting a room in her house, and quickly uncovered strong evidence that pointed to him - but the police dismissed her as merely a housewife with an overactive imagination. It would be six years before her former boarder would be brought in for questioning, but the night Brown took action to solve the murder was the beginning of her life's work.

Women have committed some of the most disturbing serial killings ever seen in the United States. Yet scientific inquiry, criminal profiling, and public interest have focused more on their better-known male counterparts. As a result, female serial killers have been misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated. In this riveting account, Dr. Marissa A. Harrison draws on original scientific research, various psychological perspectives, and richly detailed case studies to illuminate the stark differences between female and male serial killers’ backgrounds, motives, and crimes.

This is Diablo's captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen's clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer's keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband.

Growing up unknowingly autistic, Livia spent the majority of her young life seeking worth and validation in external achievements. She excelled in her honors classes, competitive sports, and eventually, an eating disorder. Until the control she so desperately sought nearly killed her, Livia made the hardest decision anyone with an eating disorder can make: to trust and surrender to the recovery process.

Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest tennis player ever, a man whose hard-nosed work ethic led to an unprecedented number one world ranking for 286 weeks, and whose prodigious talent made possible a record-setting 14 Grand Slam titles. While his more vocal rivals sometimes grabbed the headlines, Pete always preferred to let his racket do the talking. Until now.

What started as a wonderful love story for Mélissa and Scott ended 16 years later with Scott’s dramatic death, leaving Mélissa and her two young children to endure the unimaginable. In her desperation, Mélissa prayed for guidance, and God responded by sending her an army of angels to make her transition from wife to widow more bearable. Since her husband’s passing, Mélissa has felt a strong calling to use her voice to address the stigmas around suicide and mental health.

In 1985, 32-year-old David Brown seemed to have it all. A computer genius with a million-dollar business, married for the fifth time - most recently to a 23-year-old beauty, Linda, the mother of his new-born baby - he was the living emobodiment of a rich playboy. But the signs of the dream life's dark underside were already emerging - especially in Brown's penchant for divorcing his young wives as soon as they matured to full womanhood.

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck. From that day forward his life became a hell of irrepressible tics and involuntary utterances, and Cory embarked on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist to discover the cause of his disease. Soon it became unclear what tics were symptoms of his disease and what were side effects of the countless combinations of drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life was a living hell.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

Drawing on rarely consulted archives, Crews shows us a man who blundered tragicomically in his dealings with patients, who never produced a corroborated cure, who promoted cocaine in one decade and was deluded by it in the next, who misunderstood the psychological controversies of the era, and who advanced his career through falsifying case histories and betraying the mentors who had helped him to rise.

In his 26 years in the field, Richard Taylor has worked on well over a hundred murder cases, with victims and perpetrators from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, Taylor draws on some of the most tragic, horrific and illuminating of these cases - as well as dark secrets from his own family's past - to explore some of the questions he grapples with every day: why do people kill? Does committing a monstrous act make someone a monster? Could any of us, in the wrong circumstances, become a killer?

When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways.

I haven't tasted chocolate for over ten years and now I'm walking down the street unwrapping a Kit Kat. Remember when Kate Moss said, 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels'? She's wrong: chocolate does. At the age of 32, after ten years of hiding from the truth, Emma Woolf finally decided it was time to face the biggest challenge of her life. Addicted to hunger, exercise and control, she was juggling a full-blown eating disorder with a successful career, functioning on an apple a day.

As with the two prior volumes of True Crime Case Histories, I want to start with a quick word of warning. Most news articles and television true crime shows skim over the sticky details of truly gruesome crimes. In my books I don't gloss over the facts, regardless of how horrible they may be. I try to give my listeners a clear and accurate description on just how demented the killers really were. I do my best not to leave anything out. The stories included in these books are not for the squeamish.