Mental Health History

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.

Based on the popular research project Whores of Yore, and written with her distinctive humor and wit, A Curious History of Sex draws upon Dr. Kate Lister's extensive knowledge of sex history. From medieval impotence tests to 20th-century testicle thefts, from the erotic frescoes of Pompeii, to modern-day sex-doll brothels, Kate unashamedly roots around in the pants of history, debunking myths, challenging stereotypes, and generally getting her hands dirty.

For centuries, doctors have struggled to define mental illness - how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, how do you even know what it is? In search of an answer, in the 1970s a Stanford psychologist named David Rosenhan and seven other people - sane, normal, well-adjusted members of society - went undercover into asylums around America to test the legitimacy of psychiatry's labels. Rosenhan's watershed study broke open the field of psychiatry, closing down institutions and changing mental health diagnosis forever.

The concept of personality disorders rose to prominence in the early twentieth century and has consistently caused controversy among psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists. In Personality Disorders, Allan V. Horwitz traces the evolution of defining these disorders and the historical dilemmas of attempting to mold them into traditional medical conceptions of disorder.

As the 20th century drew to a close, the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was perhaps the least known of the prominent figures of his time - in particular Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung - and yet he continues to be a figure of influence in the 21st century. His school of ‘individual psychology’ involved a holistic approach to the study of the individual, with a key focus on the way each person viewed the world, especially regarding their concerns of inferiority.

From the Sunday Times top ten best-selling author of The Psychopath Test, a captivating and brilliant exploration of one of our world's most underappreciated forces: shame. "It's about the terror, isn't it?" "The terror of what?" I said. "The terror of being found out." For the past three years, Jon Ronson has travelled the world, meeting recipients of high-profile public shamings. The shamed are people like us - people who, say, made jokes on social media that came out badly or made mistakes at work.

lf a man cannot stand freedom, he will probably turn fascist. This, in the fewest possible words, is the essential argument in this modem classic, Escape from Freedom. The author, Erich Fromm, is a distinguished psychologist, late of Berlin and Heidelberg, now of New York City.

Considered by many to be Hannah Arendt's greatest work, published as she neared the end of her life, The Life of the Mind investigates thought itself, as it exists in contemplative life. In a shift from her previous writings, most of which focus on the world outside the mind, this work was planned as three volumes that would explore the activities of the mind considered by Arendt to be fundamental. What emerged is a rich, challenging analysis of human mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging.

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which appeared first in 1901 and was then expanded in a series of subsequent editions, has proved to be one of Freud's most popular works, and one of his most influential during his lifetime. It was here that he proposed that many slips and errors of memory common to the average man in everyday life actually signals unconscious issues that beset the individual, and, if examined, can be extremely revealing.

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed". In World War II, only 15 to 20 percent of combat infantry were willing to fire their rifles. In Korea, about 50 percent. In Vietnam, the figure rose to more than 90 percent. The good news is that most soldiers are loath to kill.

The answers to these questions are right behind our eyes. The greatest technology we have ever discovered on our planet is the three-pound organ carried in the vault of the skull. This book is not simply about what the brain is; it is about what it does. The magic of the brain is not found in the parts it’s made of but in the way those parts unceasingly reweave themselves in an electric, living fabric.

Explore the history, theories, and concepts of psychology through more than 100 groundbreaking ideas presented in an approachable style that demystifies an often daunting subject matter. The Psychology Book looks at the biggest names in psychology, including William James, Sigmund Freud, and Ivan Pavlov, and unpacks each psychologist's contribution to our understanding of how the mind works. With straightforward information and a directory of scientists, this audio guide helps untangle the knot of theories behind the science of the mind.

Inconscient, désir, pulsions, mais aussi psychométrie, troubles en tous genres... Voici l'essentiel des notions de psychologie, pour tous ceux qui souhaitent découvrir la discipline dans une démarche professionnelle ou personnelle. La psychologie est une science humaine qui a beaucoup évolué ces vingt dernières années. L'objectif : l'aborder sous les notions les plus modernes, en laissant une part limitée aux approches psychanalytiques, dont les concepts principaux et la grille de lecture sont essentiels à la compréhension de plusieurs notions.

In this astonishing and startling book, award-winning science and history writer Robert Whitaker investigates a medical mystery: Why has the number of disabled mentally ill in the United States tripled over the past two decades? Every day, 1,100 adults and children are added to the government disability rolls because they have become newly disabled by mental illness, with this epidemic spreading most rapidly among our nations children. What is going on?

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them. Forensic scientists can unlock the mysteries of the past and help serve justice using the messages left by a corpse, a crime scene, or the faintest of human traces.

Best-selling author Georgia Bragg delights young people with her quirky characters and unique subject matter. How They Croaked provides all the gory details of the awful ends of 19 awfully famous people. It details Ludwig Van Beethoven’s expansive finale, Henry VII’s explosive end, Albert Einstein’s great brain escape, and Marie Curie’s glowing demise.

Francis Ouimet and Harry Vardon came from different worlds and different generations, but their passion for golf set them on parallel paths that would collide in the greatest match their sport had ever known.

Best-selling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost 300 interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end - marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV - Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.