Psychology Memoirs

In America, we teach that strength means holding back tears and shaming your own feelings. In the Black community, these pressures are especially poignant. Poor mental health outcomes-- including diagnoses of depression and anxiety, reliance on prescription drugs, and suicide–have skyrocketed in the past decade. In this book, actor Courtney B. Vance seeks to change this trajectory. Along with professional expertise from famed psychologist Dr. Robin L. Smith, Courtney B. Vance explores issues of grief, relationships, identity, and race through the telling of his own most formative experiences

David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest.

In this surprising and moving memoir, the legendary rap star and cofounder of Run DMC keeps it a hundred percent, speaking out about his battle with depression and overcoming suicidal thoughts - one of the most devastating yet little known health issues plaguing the black community today.

When neuroscientist Susan Barry was 50 years old, she took an unforgettable trip to Manhattan. As she emerged from the dim light of the subway into the sunshine, she saw a view of the city that she had witnessed many times in the past but now saw in an astonishingly new way. Skyscrapers on street corners appeared to loom out toward her like the bows of giant ships. Tree branches projected upward and outward, enclosing and commanding palpable volumes of space.

A fascinating, transformative look at the therapeutic powers of psychedelic drugs, particularly in the treatment of PTSD, and the past fifty years of scientific, political, and legal controversy they have ignited, by award-winning journalist Tom Shroder.

From New York Times best-selling author and blogger Heather B. Armstrong comes an honest and irreverent memoir - reminiscent of the New York Times best-seller Brain on Fire - about her experience as one of only a few people to participate in an experimental treatment for depression involving 10 rounds of a chemically induced coma approximating brain death.

As a forensic psychiatrist, it's Dr Das' job to treat and rehabilitate what the tabloids might call the 'criminally insane', many of whom assault, rob, rape and even kill. His work takes him to high-security prisons and securely locked hospital wards across the country, as well as inside courtrooms, giving evidence as an expert witness.

Dr. Helen Morrison has profiled more than 80 serial killers around the world. What she has learned about them will shatter every assumption you've ever had about the most notorious killers known to man.

Melissa Broder always struggled with anxiety. In the fall of 2012, she went through a harrowing cycle of panic attacks and dread that wouldn't abate for months. So she began @sosadtoday, an anonymous Twitter feed that allowed her to express her darkest feelings and that quickly gained a dedicated following. In So Sad Today, Broder delves deeper into the existential themes she explores on Twitter.

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.

The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump provides a coherent and nuanced psychological portrait of Donald Trump, drawing upon biographical events in the subject's life and contemporary scientific research and theory in personality, developmental, and social psychology.

Maude Julien's parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor - raising her in isolation and subjecting her to endless drills designed to "eliminate weakness." She endured a life without heat, hot water, adequate food, friendship, or any kind of affectionate treatment. But Maude's parents could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak.

At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford’s MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startup—a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand—out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men’s pants. Against all odds, business was booming.

UN CHOC. Depuis 1984, Jean-Luc Ployé a effectué plus de 13 000 expertises psychologiques pour les tribunaux français : la moitié sont des victimes, l'autre des mis en cause. Parmi eux : Michel Fourniret, avec qui il devra passer huit heures dans une salle minuscule, sa femme Monique Olivier, qui se révèlera brillante aux tests d'intelligence, ou encore Francis Heaulme dont il découvre le haut du corps mutilé par de fréquentes autoflagellations. Son travail consiste à établir leur profil psychologique à l'aide de divers tests, d'entretiens qui lui permettent d'essayer d'entrer dans la tête des tueurs.

Beginning in the 1950s, William Masters and Virginia Johnson convinced hundreds of people to shed their clothes and copulate—in the name of science. For more than 40 years, the pair served as the nation's top experts on love, sex, and intimacy. In this eye-opening work, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier presents an unprecedented look at the research team of Masters and Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of men and women. Masters of Sex offers a titillating portrait of the team's real-life story.

In this provocative book, award-winning journalist Patricia Pearson argues that our culture is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. We don't believe that women batter their husbands or abuse the majority of children in North America. We ignore the 200 percent increase in crime by women in a period when most crime statistics are dropping. Pearson weaves the stories of women such as Karla Homolka and Mary Beth Tinning (who smothered eight of her children) with the results of criminologists and psychiatrists to expose the myth of female innocence.

In this captivating fusion of science and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind. David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his honest attempt to understand the condition. At what point does a harmless idea become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is an audiobook that will challenge the way you think.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry, Robert Lowell put his manic-depressive illness (now known as bipolar disorder) into the public domain, creating a language for madness that was new and arresting. As Dr. Jamison brings her expertise in mood disorders to bear on Lowell’s story, she illuminates not only the relationships among mania, depression, and creativity but also the details of Lowell’s treatment and how illness and treatment influenced the great work that he produced (and often became its subject).

Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction - not just to sex, but to male attention - Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.

In this painfully moving memoir, take a firsthand look at anorexia through the eyes of a young girl. Even in kindergarten, Rachel Richards knows something isn't right. By leading us through her distorted thoughts, she shines a light on the experience and mystery of mental illness. As she grows up, unable to comprehend or communicate her inner trauma, Rachel lashes out, hurting herself, running away from home, and fighting her family. Restricting food gives her the control she craves. But after being hospitalized and force-fed, Rachel only retreats further into herself.