New Books In Psychology

What if you suddenly discovered a cherished member of your family was a Nazi? How would you make sense of the code of silence that had kept an uncomfortable reality at bay? How would you resolve the wartime suffering of your family with their moral culpability for the Holocaust? Roger Frie explores the thorny issue of historical memory and intergenerational trauma in his new award winning book Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2017). In an intensely personal confrontation with the Nazi past in his own family, Roger searches for ways to navigate historical traumas and reconcile the memory of his grandfather with the knowledge of his deeds. Roger Frie is a registered psychologist and interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and history. He publishes and lectures widely on historical trauma, culture, memory, and human interaction. Roger has also edited a collection of essays bringing together historians and psychoanalyst

The Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism (Columbia University Press, 2017), by Mark S. Hamm and Ramon Spaaij, identifies patterns among individuals that commit acts of terror outside of a group or network. Hamm and Spaaij follow these individuals, commonly called lone wolf terrorists, through multiple data points to inform a model of radicalization. The trends and changes in lone wolf terrorists, targets of violence, and radicalization pathways over time provides valuable insights for counterterrorism efforts. Finally, Hamm and Spaaij examine FBI sting operations that aim to prevent terrorist attacks. Beth Windisch is a national security practitioner. You can tweet her @bethwindisch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are we good people? Or do we just think we are? In his new book The Character Gap: How Good Are We? (Oxford University Press, 2017), author Christian B. Miller tackles these questions and more, breaking down what character is, how to measure it, and how to distinguish good from bad moral behavior. In our interview, Miller talks to us about finding his way into this area of study and what research says about our tendencies to display our best and worst qualities. His insights and findings offer us the chance to better understand whats going on when we witness ourselves, our loved ones, and even our highest-ranking leaders behaving in ways that run against consciously-held morals. They also offer pathways for developing and inspiring more upstanding behavior. Christian B. Miller is A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University and Director of the Character Project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation and Templeton World Charity Foundation. He is the author of over 75 papers as well as two book

Obesity and weight loss are notoriously challenging areas of research and intervention. Traditional behavioral psychology methods for weight loss are known to be ineffective in the long-term for many people. At a time of year when many of us are resolving to eat better, exercise more, and lose weight, obesity and weight loss expert Dr. Jason Lillis offers a different, evidence-based perspective on this complicated issue. In this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interview Dr. Lillis about his book, The Diet Trap: Feed Your Psychological Needs and End the Weight Loss Struggle Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (New Harbinger Publications, 2014).Dr. Lillis discusses his own values-based reasons for studying obesity, the importance of behavioral interventions, why the “weight loss agenda” may be an ineffective trap, and how values can support long-term commitment to health behaviors. Dr. Lillis also talks about two exercises from ACT that can he

Middle-agedness is a curious phenomenon. In many ways, one is at one’s peak and also at the early stages of decline. There is much to do, but also dozens of paths irretrievably untaken. Successes, but also regrets. It’s no wonder that the idea of a midlife crisis is so familiar. But midlife is not commonly a subject of explicit philosophical study. In Midlife: A Philosophical Guide (Princeton University Press, 2017), Kieran Setiya develops a philosophical account of the crises associated with midlife that combines the precision of a philosophical treatise with the narrative and advice-giving of a self-help manual. The result is a fascinating exploration of the challenges that come with growing old.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who do people turn to when they want to talk about serious issues in their life? Do they end up confiding in people they list as confidants? In his new book, Someone to Talk To (Oxford University Press, 2017), Mario Luis Small uses in-depth interviews with first-year graduate students to uncover how intimate conversations are executed in real time. This book is interesting in the way that the interviews unfold; readers will find themselves nodding in agreement and thinking about social networks in new ways. A common theme throughout the book is how our behavior differs from what we may answer on a survey and under what circumstances it does so. For instance, weak ties, not strong ties, are relied upon more often than previous research would suggest. At the end of the book Small turns to empirical and theoretical generalizability finding many examples and surveys of non-graduates students echoing his study. In an era of big data Small encourages us to not lose sight of the human behavior we are studying and th

What is it to be moral, to lead an ethically good life? From a naturalistic perspective, any answer to this question begins from an understanding of what humans are like that is deeply informed by psychology, anthropology, and other human-directed perspectives as these are constrained by evolution. In The Geography of Morals: Varieties of Moral Possibility (Oxford University Press, 2017), Owen Flanagan sets out to clarify the landscape of moral possibility for actual human beings. He defends a perspective on human morality that he describes as an “oughtology” based in naturalism, gleaned from comparing Western, Chinese, and Indian moral traditions. Flanagan, a professor of philosophy at Duke University, considers how diverse moral traditions converge on some features basic to moral psychology, such as compassion, yet differ in other ways, such as whether anger is a justified and beneficial moral emotion or whether it should be extirpated. He also examines different views of the self, including the

Psychology and spirituality have a complicated relationship. Dating back to ancient times, we see them treated as sister disciplines which inform and enhance one another. But at some point in the last century, Western psychology decided to divorce itself from Eastern philosophy and spirituality, leaving us with an incomplete way of understanding human experience. Author Margot Esther Borden takes up this story in her new book, Psychology in the Light of the East (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), and in our interview, we discuss her conviction that our understanding of human nature is best served by attending to the soul as well as the psyche, and be utilizing wisdom from Eastern as well as Western traditions and worldviews. Margot Esther Borden, M.A., is a psychotherapist, international public speaker, and adjunct professor at Antioch University Midwest. She completed her training in breathwork in Paris and her master of arts in person-centered counseling/humanistic psychology at the University of Durham. She

Epistemology is the area of philosophy that examines the phenomena of and related to knowledge. Traditional core questions include: How is knowledge different from lucky guessing? Can knowledge be innate? Is skepticism a threat, and if so, how should it be countered? And: Is it possible to know something simply on the basis of another person’s say-so? In the background of all of these traditional questions is a broad concern thats not often explicitly addressed—the concern is with ignorance. We study the nature of knowledge so that we might better overcome ignorance. And yet ignorance is not often an explicit object of examination. In Understanding Ignorance: The Surprising Impact of What We Don’t Know (The MIT Press, 2017), Daniel DeNicola makes the case for placing ignorance at the center of epistemology. He argues that ignorance is not univocal; it comes in many forms, and the different forms need to be addressed in different ways.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adcho

In her new book, Caring for Red: A Daughter’s Memoir (Vanderbilt University Press, 2016), Mindy Fried shares her experiences with providing care for her father at the end of his life. With rich stories and memories of her father, the book introduces the reader to Manny “Red” Fried, in addition to Mindy as a daughter as caregiver. The book really focuses on how families can preserve the dignity of older family members as they age, as well as how we can keep older family members active and engaged into their later years. Red’s personal history is important throughout the book—he was a labor organizer and once pursued by the government during the McCarthy era. This historical time influences not only Red’s life and experiences but also that of his family. By combining “activism with acting,” he led a rich life and was interested in being engaged until the end. With friends and family having “Mondays with Manny,” his community was able to provide support

We all recognize that parenting involves a seemingly endless succession of choices, beginning perhaps with the choice to become a parent, through a sequence of decisions concerning the care, upbringing, acculturation, and education of a child. And we all recognize that many of these decisions are impactful. More specifically, we know that the choices parents make often deeply impact the lives of others, including especially the life of the child. Given the sheer number of impactful and other-regarding choices involved, one might expect parenthood to be a major site of philosophical attention. But it isn’t really. In The Philosophical Parent: Asking the Hard Questions about Having and Raising Children (Oxford University Press, 2017), Jean Kazez philosophically engages with a broad sample of the questions that parents must confront. Her analyses are philosophically nuanced but also accessible to non-academic readers.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Immigrant experiences are complex and varied. People who leave their home countries for a new one often feel torn between two identities and struggle to feel at home in either place. Dr. Julia Beltsiou, my guest for this episode, has put together an anthology addressing the various dimensions of the immigration experience entitled, Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves (Routledge, 2016). In our interview, we discuss her own immigrant experience as it shapes her sense of self and her clinical work with fellow foreigners, as well as topics such as language, name changes, and public perception of immigrants. We also hear her thoughts on the current moment in immigration, which is fraught with struggles over power, identity, and acceptance. Julia Beltsiou, Psy.D. grew up in Germany as the daughter of recent Greek immigrants and came to live in the U.S. as a young adult. She is a graduate of New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. She has presented nationally and internationally on

For many people who binge eat, strong emotions can be a cue that leads to a pattern of maladaptive eating behaviors. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy approach to treating binge eating (and other disorders), which works simultaneously on both acceptance and change processes. Traditional DBT techniques like mindfulness, emotion regulation, and distress tolerance, are a promising approach to the treatment of binge eating and underlying emotional processes. In this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Debra Safer, MD on the application of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for Binge Eating Disorder. Dr. Safer discusses use of strategies from DBT that are helpful for people who tend to binge eat in response to strong emotions. Dr. Safer is an expert on DBT for binge eating and bulimia and is the Co-Director of the Stanford Adult Eating and Weight Disorders Clinic. She obtained her MD from the University of California, S

Social constructionists hold that the world is determined at least in part by our ways of representing it. Recent debates regarding social construction have focused on categories that play important roles in the human social world, such as race and gender. Social constructionists argue that these categories are not biological or natural and that alleviating social injustice begins with recognizing they are not. At the same time, the case of Rachel Dolezal, a woman born of white parents who considers herself black, makes clear that even if race is not biological, it doesn’t follow that race is a matter of personal choice. So how should we understand what social construction involves? In The Construction of Human Kinds (Oxford University Press, 2016), Ron Mallon articulates a view of social construction that draws on philosophy, psychology, and social theory. He identifies an element of essentialist thinking in some human kind concepts, and elaborates the mechanisms by which human categories and our repre

In her new book, After the War: Returned Soldiers and the Mental and Physical Scars of World War I (UWA Publishing, 2017), Leigh Straw, a Senior Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame, explores the history of repatriation and return of WWI soldiers to Western Australia. The soldiers’ physical and mental scars, including tuberculosis and what we today call PTSD, did not end with the armistice, as soldiers and their families struggled with the consequences of wartime trauma well into the 1920s.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since Donald Trump was elected President, he’s created a non-stop torrent of news, so much so that members of the media regularly claim that he’s effectively trashed the traditional news cycle. Whether that’s true or not, it is hard to keep up with what’s going on in the White House, and each new uproar makes it difficult to remember what’s already happened. Take Trump’s first cabinet meeting, way back on June 12, 2017. Remember that? It began with Trump proclaiming, “Never has there been a president….with few exceptions…who’s passed more legislation, who’s done more things than I have.” This, despite the fact that he had yet to pass any major legislation through Congress. Then it got odder. Trump listened as members of his Cabinet took turns praising him. Mike Pence started it off, saying, “The greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people.̶

The psychology of eating disorders is poorly understood. Recent trends in research and treatment focus near-exclusively on behaviors around food and weight without sufficiently attending to their psychic undercurrents. Yet evidence shows that, when patients start putting words to the pain their eating disorders express, they start gaining freedom from these vexing patterns. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is well positioned to offer individuals such an opportunity, and the rationale for such an approach is well-described in Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin’s new book, Food for Thought: Perspectives on Eating Disorders (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). In her book, Dr. Nina–as she likes to be called–explains psychoanalysis’s unique perspective on eating problems: that they express relational needs and traumas when words cannot, and that treatment which focuses on “what’s eating at you” rather than “what you’re eating” offers deeper and longer-lasting healing. In o

All “true believers” believe their beliefs are true. This is particularly true of true religious believers: for Christians, Christianity is the true religion, for Jews, Judaism is the true religion, for for Muslims, Islam is the true religion. Few true believer, however, would make the claim that their religion is “scientifically true”; religion, after all, is a matter of faith, and faith and science are somewhat different things. But that’s the claim Robert Wright is making in his thought-provoking, well-reasoned, and thoroughly-researched book Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (Simon and Schuster, 2017). Well, sort of. Wright makes clear that he’s talking about Buddhism as a spiritual practice, not a religious dogma. He purposefully leaves aside the supernatural aspects of Buddhist belief–gods, devils, miracles, unseen realms and such–and focuses on what Buddhist meditators believe and do to reach “enlighten

When Descartes famously concluded “I think, therefore I am”, he took for granted his ability to use the first person pronoun to refer to himself. But how do we come to have this capacity for self-conscious thought? We aren’t born with it, and while we may not be the only creatures that can think thoughts about ourselves, this ability does not seem to be very widespread. For starters, to be able to think of oneself, it seems one must first possess a concept of the self of what the “I” refers to. In Thinking About Oneself: From Nonconceptual Content to the Concept of a Self (MIT Press, 2015), Kristina Musholt provides a naturalistic account of how self-conscious thought develops: how we move from possessing implicitly self-referential information to having explicit self-representation. Musholt, who is professor of cognitive anthropology at Leipzig University, argues that this is a multistage process driven by social interaction and the recognition of other beings’ perspective

Psychoanalysis is transitioning. Its history of pathologizing deviant sexuality is giving way to curiosity about the universal complexities and contradictions inherent in sex and gender. Yet it could use some pushing along, and Patricia Gherovici’s new book, Transgender Psychoanalysis: A Lacanian Perspective on Sexual Difference (Routledge, 2017), does just that. In it, she draws inspiration and courage from her clinical work with transgender patients in order to challenge long-standing essentialist notions about sex and gender. She also introduces readers to Jacque Lacan’s still-revolutionary ethics on sexual difference. In our interview, we talk about her involvement in the recent wave of attention to transgender experience, how she applies Lacan’s ideas to her own clinical work, and the importance of putting further pressure on psychoanalysis and Western society, at large to let go of antiquated, discriminatory notions and embrace the infinite complexity in all human sexuality. Patricia G