New Books in Psychology

Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control (Karnac, 2011) is a practical, task-oriented, instructional manual designed to help therapists provide effective treatment for survivors of these most extreme forms of child abuse and mental manipulation. “If you do not have a patient who has gone through these experiences, this is initially a deeply frightening book, as well as a crucial book. It is not a book that soft-soaps the reader along the grades of obscene hierarchy between ‘mild’ trauma and major. It goes straight to the jugular of the worst realities that exist, and is not trying to apologize for, or justify, their existence. Enough research has been carried out; enough survivors have come forward with their unique constellations of physical and mental pain. Alison Miller is writing for those who know what exists and want and need help in understanding it further.” –Valerie Sinason, Director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies, from the Foreword Alison Miller is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. She worked for many years in child and youth mental health services, treating children and families. She is the original developer of the Living in Families Effectively (LIFE) Seminars (www.lifeseminars.com), and has co-authored two books on parenting with Dr Allison Rees. Since 1991, Dr Miller has been treating and learning from persons with dissociative disorders, in particular survivors of ritual abuse and mind control, and has developed a protocol for effective treatment. Jasun Horsley is the author of Seen & Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and several other books on extra-consensual perceptions. He has a weekly podcast called The Liminalist: The Podcast Between and a blog. For more info, go to http://auticulture.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Mental illness and other emotional troubles are relatable experiences for Polly Buckingham, author of the new collection of short stories, The Expense of a View (University of North Texas Press, 2016). In this collection, Polly channels her experiences into rich stories that capture the essence of mental illness and the humans who deal with it. She speaks with me about the healing that can come from writing–and reading–these stories and about her unique views on life, writing, and consciousness. If you’re a writer, psychologist, or someone who’s interested in how other people experience the world differently, this interview is a do-not-miss. Polly Buckingham teaches at Eastern Washington University and is director of its Willow Springs Books. She is also founding editor at SpringTown Press, and her previous book is entitled A Year of Silence. Eugenio Duarte is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

The wish to understand mental suffering is universal and requires an appreciation for its history. Since Biblical times, humans have understood madness, or other deviations from normal mental functioning, in diverse and unique ways. These have included belief in divine origins, biological causation, and environmental influences. And treatments for mental illness have undergone a similar evolution. In his book Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity (Princeton University Press, 2015), Andrew Scull offers an important and timely examination of this complicated history. And in our interview, he talks about what motivated him to take on such an ambitious and important project and his hopes for the future of psychiatry and psychology. Andrew Scull is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. His prior books include Masters of Bedlam: The Transformation of the Mad-Doctoring Trade (2016); Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era (2015); and The Insanity of Place / The Place of Insanity: Essays on the History of Psychiatry (2015). Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D.is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Psychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories: the basic emotions, like fear or happiness, and the higher cognitive emotions, like shame or pride. In her new book, Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality (MIT Press, 2016), Jennifer Greenwood challenges this standard division and related distinctions, such as which emotions are innate or learned. Greenwood, who is academic tutor in philosophy, education, and nursing at the University of Queensland, argues that there is just one natural kind, emotions, that develop from common precursor states by means of deeply interactive relations between the assistance-soliciting infant or child and the assistance-providing caregiver. This deep functional interaction justifies her claim that the emotions are a case of extended cognition, as well as the view that language mediates emotional ontogenesis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Pragmatism, as a philosophical concept, is often misunderstood and misapplied. Fortunately, I had the chance to speak with Philip Rosenbaum, psychoanalyst and editor of the book Making our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism in Psychoanalysis (Information Age Publishing, 2015)about what pragmatism really is and how it informs clinical theory and praxis. We discuss how pragmatisms influence reaches far back to the beginnings of psychoanalysis, in Sigmund Freud’s original ideas, and up through the ways clinicians conceptualize their work in the present. Dr. Rosenbaum’s book and our discussion raise prescient questions about how we evaluate our ideas, questions that will be relevant to clinicians and non-clinicians alike. Philip Rosenbaum is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst trained at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis & Psychology. He serves as Director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Haverford College, co-editor of The Journal of College Student Psychotherapy, and associate editor for the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. (www.eugenioduartephd.com) is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in LGBTQ issues, eating and body image problems, and relationship problems. Follow him on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Claudia Malacrida explores the practices of the Michener Center in Red Deer, Northern Alberta, to uncover a close relationship between the institutionalization of persons with disabilities and eugenics. Canadian province of Alberta was infamous for its eugenics program, which lasted until the 1970s with a significant number of people being involuntary sterilized. Malacrida has opened many important questions including the normalization of eugenics, gender aspect of eugenics, social exclusion, dehumanization, violence, and loss of identity of the inmates. During this interview we have talked about ideological underpinnings of eugenics program, horror practices of the Michener Center, and about struggles of the inmates to cope with daily violence and neglect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

When trying to conceive doesn’t go as planned, many women and couples are faced with difficult decisions about which interventions to pursue. Treatment of infertility, whether natural or high-tech, comes with stress and feelings of isolation when your friends or relatives seem to fall pregnant without much effort. Mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills can be useful for reducing the stress and anxiety associated with fertility problems and for improving communication and support on the fertility journey. In this interview, cross-posted from the new podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Rae Littlewood interviews Ann Bracken, author of the book Mind, Body, Baby: How to Overcome Stress and Enhance Your Fertility with CBT, Mindfulness, and Good Nutrition. Drawing from research and from years of experience counseling couples on their fertility journey, Ann Bracken offers an easy-to-follow guide to mind-body health with clear strategies to overcome emotional stress, improve relationships, communicate with fertility consultants, and support individual and couple wellbeing. Ann Bracken has many years of experience as a Fertility Counselor and Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapist and teacher of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. In addition to training with Dr. Alice Domar, renowned fertility researcher at Boston IVF, Ann has worked as a fertility specialist in Irelands largest fertility clinic, SIMS IVF, and at the renowned Lister Fertility Clinic in London. She is now in private practice in Dublin, Ireland. Contact Ann Bracken through her website: http://www.annbrackentherapy.com/ Dr. Rae Littlewood is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Albuquerque, NM and a co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

In Human Programming: Brainwashing, Automatons, and American Unfreedom (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), Scott Selisker offers readers a fascinating new history of American anxieties along the borderland between the machine and the human mind. Demonstrating the way that a variety of fields influence and coproduce one another, Human Programming follows the metaphor of the automaton through news media, fiction, psychology, cybernetics, film, law and back again. Along the way, Selisker engages academic work on labor automation, posthumanism, affect and emotion, and techno-Orientalism. Through careful interpretation of books on American soldiers returning from the Korean War, the trial of Patty Hearst, the narrative logic of Snow Crash and Blade Runner, the central conflicts of Homeland and the Manchurian Candidate, and the baffled news reports on John Walker Lindh, Human Programming “offers a new literary and cultural context for understanding the human automaton figure” as it has appeared and reappeared over the half century, and explores how the metaphor of the automaton has “shaped American conversations about the self and other, the free and unfree, and democracy and its enemies, since World War II” (7, 8). Beginning with a prehistory in WWII propaganda, this timely study comes up to a present in which we replace our employees with touchscreens, rely on machine learning to translate our conversations, use proprietary software to plot our routes, and deny the human freedom of our fellow citizens. Carl Nellis is an academic editor and writing instructor working north of Boston, where he researches contemporary American community formation around appropriations of medieval European culture. You can learn more about Carls work at carlnellis.wordpress.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

This podcast explores the predictive processing hypothesis and its implications for embodied cognition, epistemology, schizophrenia, autism, and implicit bias. It discusses the concept of top-down models in perceptual experience and the role of embodiment in cognition. The debate between direct realism and indirect realism in relation to predictive coding models is explored, as well as the relevance of Cartesian evil demon thought experiments. The role of top-down expectations and the generation of models, including the potential for cognitive biases, is also discussed.

Every night around the world, millions of people lie in bed at night, struggling to fall asleep. Experts suggest that about one in three people struggle with at least mild insomnia. Paradoxically, their efforts to control their sleep may actually result in digging them in even deeper into insomnia. Fortunately for people with insomnia, and the therapists and medical professionals who treat them, some behavioral interventions are helping many people to end the pattern of sleeplessness. In this interview, cross-posted from the new podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Alisha Brosse, who co-authored the book End the Insomnia Struggle: A Step by Step Guide to Get to Sleep and Stay Asleep (New Harbinger Publications, 2016) with Dr. Colleen Ehrnstrom. Dr. Brosse is a specialist in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), which is considered the best treatment for chronic insomnia. Dr. Brosse is also the Associate Director of the Robert D. Sutherland Center for the Evaluation and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder, provides evidence-based treatment for a variety of mental health concerns and offers training for mental health professionals. Dr. Brosse explains how the cycle of insomnia develops and why our efforts to control sleep have paradoxical effects. Dr. Brosse then describes cognitive, behavioral and acceptance-based strategies in insomnia treatment. Specifically, Dr. Brosse explains two behavioral approaches that are key to CBT-Is effectiveness: Stimulus Control Therapy and Sleep Restriction Therapy. Dr. Brosse also shares how willingness is an important component to successful insomnia treatment. Read an excerpt from End the Insomnia Struggle here! Diana Hill, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist practicing in Santa Barbara, California, and a co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology