A rich and engaging guide to psychology, the science devoted to understanding human nature.

Its practitioners have long sought to understand behaviour, feelings and thoughts.

She introduces key thinkers, including Carl Jung, Anna Freud, Frantz Fanon, and Daniel Kahneman. We see how they tried to expand our understanding, from Pavlov and his dogs to Milgram and his famous electric shock experiments to the CIA’s secret mind-control projects.

This Little History taken us on a journey through the ever-advancing study of this science, how the field has evolved over time – and how much more we need to learn.

A Little History of Psychology – Nicky Hayes – 9780300282627

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An urgent and moving essay on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative from the Women’s Prize shortlisted author of Enter Ghost. Award-winning author Isabella Hammad delivered the Edward W. Said Lecture at Columbia University nine days before 7 October 2023.

The text of Hammad’s seminal speech and her afterword written in the early weeks of 2024 together make up a searing appraisal of the war on Palestine during what feels like a turning point in the narrative of human history. Moving and erudite, Recognising the Stranger is a brilliant melding of literary and cultural analysis in which Hammad sheds true light on the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Recognising the Stranger : On Palestine and Narrative – Isabella Hammad – 9781911717379

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An essential work that centres colonial and historical trauma in a framework for healing, Decolonizing Therapy illuminates that all therapy is—and always has been—inherently political. To better understand the mental health oppression and institutional violence that exists today, we must become familiar with the root of disembodiment from our histories, homelands and healing practices. Only then will readers see how colonial, historical and intergenerational legacies have always played a role in the treatment of mental health.

This book is the emotional companion and guide to decolonisation. It is an invitation for Euro-centrically trained clinicians to acknowledge privileged and oppressed parts while relearning what we thought we knew. Ignoring collective global trauma makes delivering effective therapy impossible; not knowing how to interrogate privilege (as a therapist, client or both) makes healing elusive; and shying away from understanding how we as professionals may be participating in oppression is irresponsible.

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Falling in love is easy. Staying in love–that’s the challenge. How can you keep your relationship fresh and growing amid the demands, conflicts, and just plain boredom of everyday life?

In the #1 New York Times international bestseller The 5 Love Languages(R), you’ll discover the secret that has transformed millions of relationships worldwide. Whether your relationship is flourishing or failing, Dr. Gary Chapman’s proven approach to showing and receiving love will help you experience deeper and richer levels of intimacy with your partner–starting today.

The 5 Love Languages(R) is as practical as it is insightful. Updated to reflect the complexities of relationships today, this new edition reveals intrinsic truths and applies relevant, actionable wisdom in ways that work.

Includes the Love Language assessment so you can discover your love language and that of your loved one.

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Our human psyches possess astonishing resources that wait within us, but we might not even know they exist until we discover how to access them and cultivate their powers, their untapped potentials and depths.

« Wild Mind » identifies these resources — which Bill Plotkin calls the four facets of the Self, or the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness — and also the four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities that form during childhood.
Rather than proposing ways to eliminate our subpersonalities (which is not possible) or to beat them into submission, Plotkin describes how to cultivate the four facets of the Self and discover the gifts of our subpersonalities. The key to reclaiming our original wholeness is not merely to suppress psychological symptoms, recover from addictions and trauma, or manage stress but rather to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, commit ourselves to the largest, soul-infused story we’re capable of living, and serve the greater Earth community.

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In Cold War Freud, Dagmar Herzog uncovers the astonishing array of concepts of human selfhood which circulated across the globe in the aftermath of World War II. Against the backdrop of Nazism and the Holocaust, the sexual revolution, feminism, gay rights, and anticolonial and antiwar activism, she charts the heated battles which raged over Freud’s legacy. From the postwar US to Europe and Latin America, she reveals how competing theories of desire, anxiety, aggression, guilt, trauma and pleasure emerged and were then transformed to serve both conservative and subversive ends in a fundamental rethinking of the very nature of the human self and its motivations.

Her findings shed new light on psychoanalysis’ enduring contribution to the enigma of the relationship between nature and culture, and the ways in which social contexts enter into and shape the innermost recesses of individual psyches.

COLD WAR FREUD – Dagmar Herzog – 24 € – 9781107420878

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Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition. Shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture. How the inability that many of us have to grieve. And weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living.

In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, « Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses. »

Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing.
According to Prechtel, « When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost. The grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren. » These « ghosts, » he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors. Which the Maya refer to as « solidified tears, » or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself. And the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering.

THE SMELL OF RAIN ON DUST – Martin Prechtel – 25.90 € – 9781583949399

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Jenara Nerenberg was shocked to discover that her “symptoms”–only ever labeled as anxiety– were considered autistic and ADHD. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity.

A framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups. When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely.

Nerenberg explores these topics in depth, delving into:

• Flawed systems that focus on diagnosing younger, male populations.
• How people assigned female at birth are conditioned to blend in and conform to gender expectations.
• How women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all.
• The impact of millions living with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences
• How the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame.

Practical solutions for neurodivergent people to thrive, not just survive.

Divergent Mind is the much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD, and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women. And dispels widely-held misconceptions.

Nerenberg offers us a path forward, describing changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds.

When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.

Divergent Mind : Thriving in a World That Wasn’t Designed for You – Jenara Nerenberg – 9780062876805

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From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes The New York Times bestseller which unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music.

What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?

Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author. Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution. Shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music. Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC – Daniel Levitin – 15.90 € – 9780241987353

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‘Mindblowing’ Michael Pollan.

Why do we know so much more about the cosmos than our own consciousness? Are there limits to the scientific method? Why do we assume that only science, mathematics and technology reveal truth?

The Flip shows us what happens when we realise that consciousness is fundamental to the cosmos and not some random evolutionary accident or surface cognitive illusion; that everything is alive, connected, and ‘one’. We meet the people who have made this visionary, intuitive leap towards new forms of knowledge: Mark Twain’s prophetic dreams, Marie Curie’s séances, Einstein’s cosmically attuned mind. But these forms of knowledge are not archaic; indeed, they are essential in a universe that has evolved specifically to be understandable by the consciousnesses we inhabit.

The Flip peels back the layers of our beliefs about the world to reveal a visionary, new way of understanding ourselves and everything around us, with huge repercussions for how we live our lives. After all, once we have flipped, we understand that the cosmos is not just human. The human is also cosmic.

THE FLIP – Jeffrey J. Kripal – 15.90 € – 9780141992563

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