If we think of the beginnings of psychoanalysis, we certainly recognise that it overturned the vision human beings had of themselves, the illusion of ownership of their thoughts and actions. And in reality it still remains a way of reading the world, both inside and outside, that is admittedly disorienting. However, especially in recent years, the principles on which psychoanalysis was founded have been subjected to considerable pressure from the outside that forces psychoanalysis to problematise still more its vision of humankind and to abandon everything connected with prejudice toward the culture and history it was born out of, i. e. Western, in order to recognize the link between individual and social boundaries and the differences of various cultures. It is at this intersection between individual horizon and collective sphere that the psychoanalysis could be a galvanising force for knowledge and social growth. The book poses these questions and brings together the different experiences of psychoanalysts living and working in a variety of realities and cultures.

Being a grandmother is one of life's most important roles and many women can feel unprepared to take it on. New Age Nanas presents the rich and diverse views of over 1000 modern Australian grandmothers on what it is like to be a grandmother today, interwoven with expert commentary on how to make the most of this potentially wonderful and rewarding stage of life. This book is for grandmothers and their families to contemplate, learn from, laugh and cry with. Readers will read about grandmothers' views on topics such as feelings towards grandchildren, managing changing relationships as grandchildren get older, negotiating conflicts, special issues faced by grandmothers and taking time for their own lives, together with expert suggestions and advice from the authors on positive grandmothering. Based on sound research, and written in an engaging and readable style, it is a 'self help' book for grandmothers with a difference. Most importantly, New Age Nanas is a book in which Australia's two million grandmothers can find themselves, their concerns and their joys in the modern grandmothering role.

Can psychoanalytical hypotheses have a universal value? Can they describe the same – or a similar – psychic dynamic for any human, regardless of the historical, social and cultural context? Can psychoanalysis help with mental suffering in different realities? In our times, the questions psychoanalysis has to face are very complex. The modern world is dominated by technology that subverts the perception of the body, by new families and group organization, and by a global violence that enforces a changed geometry of the mind. The answers to these new situations differ from country to country, regardless of the uniformity brought about by globalization. Consequently, the role of psychoanalysis changes across different nations. Presenting their different experiences and problem areas, the authors of the essays contained herein have laid out a map which is different from the geographical and geopolitical ones that we all know.

In 2011, 525 people died by suicide in Ireland - an increase of 7 percent on the previous year. After these figures were published, the Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly, described suicide as "a tragedy that we are constantly working to prevent". Ireland, like most countries, has a national suicide prevention strategy, but there is scant evidence to support most of the initiatives set out in national suicide prevention strategies. In Suicide: A Modern Obsession, Dr. Pat Devitt and Derek Beattie explore suicide in different cultures and historical periods, survey various public-policy approaches to the subject (looking at what works and what doesn’t), investigate links between economic performance and suicide, and provide an in-depth examination of suicide prevention. They also look at the impact of media portrayals of suicide. Finally, they offer practical advice to those dealing with suicide and its aftermath.

In this book, Kurt Koffka reformulates the basic question of perception. In the past it had often been assumed that there was really no need to explain the features of veridical perception. Here Koffka rejects this approach: regardless of the veridicality of perception, the researcher must always ask the question, "Why do things look as they do? " The book details the phenomenological and holistic approach to this question which the Gestalt movement embraced, while also reviewing the extensive research which had been conducted up to that time in support of the Gestalt orientation.

The concept of authoritarianism, first defined in The Authoritarian Personality published in 1950, has since been treated in a bewildering array of studies that have explored both its narrow psychological meaning and its broader social implications. In this volume, authors John P. Kirscht and Ronald C. Dillehay have provided a much-needed review of this growing subject, summarizing and evaluating about 260 studies that have appeared to date.Kirscht and Dillehay differentiate between the psychological and the sociological approach to authoritarianism, tracing the historical development of both schools of thought. They also outline three major views of authoritarianism: as antecedent to certain types of behavior (for example, ethnic prejudice), as the consequence of other variables (such as child rearing practices), or as a correlate of yet other processes(e.g. alienation); these views, in turn, suggest a variety of theoretical and methodological issues. The authors review, in addition, the multitudes of beliefs and behaviors thought to vary with authoritarianism, examining the validity of these relationships in empirical research.While the authors do not attempt to reformulate or redefine authoritarianism, they point up avenues for future research and single out significant research findings which are likely to offer the firmest ground for development.

Although folklore has been collected for centuries, its possible unconscious content and significance have been explored only since the advent of psychoanalytic theory. Freud and some of his early disciples recognized the potential of such folklorist genres as myth, folktale, and legend to illuminate the intricate workings of the human psyche. Alan Dundes is a renowned folklorist who has successfully devoted the better part of his career to applying psychoanalytic theory to the materials of folklore. From Game to War offers five of his most mature essays on this topic.Dundes begins with a comprehensive survey of the history of psychological studies of folklore in the United Slates. He then presents a striking analysis of the spectrum of behavior associated with male competitive events ranging from traditional games -- such as soccer and American football -- to warfare. He argues that all of these activities can be seen as forms of macho battle to determine which individual or team feminizes his or its opponents.This is followed by a study of the saga of William Tell, one of the most celebrated legends in the world. A novel treatment of the biblical flood myth in terms of male pregnancy is the penultimate essay, while the concluding article proposes an ingeniously imaginative interpretation of the underpinnings of anti-Semitism.

Curiosity about the human mind -- what it is and how it functions -- began long before modern psychology. But because the mind and its processes are so elusive, they could be described only by means of metaphor. Michael Kearns, in this prize-winning study, examines the development of metaphors of the mind in psychological writings from Hobbes through William James and in fiction from Defoe through Henry James. Throughout the eighteenth century and even into the early nineteenth, metaphors of the mind as a relatively simple entity, either mechanical or biological, dominated both those engaged in psychological theorizing and novelists ranging from Richardson and Smollett through Dickens and the Brontes.In the nineteenth century, such psychologists as Herbert Spencer and Alexander Bain conceived of the mind as a complex organism quite different from that embodied in earlier thinking, but their figurative language did not keep pace. The result was a tension between theoretical expression and actual discussion of mental phenomena.

In this study, 224 ninth graders from two similar Kentucky towns were obtained by means of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. They were divided into various groups and analyzed in relation to a number of background factors and their resulting personality patterns. The emergence of various group patterns in this study demonstrates that the complexity of human personality necessitates complex analytic procedures.

This important book reexamines old assumptions concerning the nature of group cohesion in industrial firms as it is influenced by management actions. Based upon a carefully controlled study, it offers a sound theoretical base and a replicable method, both vital to students of group processes and organizational theorists. The study indicates that high stress was positively related to intragroup conflict regardless of group sanctions encouraging cohesiveness but that when managers rewarded group behavior under high stress a climate was created in which competitive behavior could occur without inducing conflict and nonproductive behavior. Timely, thoroughly documented, the book extends and integrates prior work in an area vital to managers and theorists alike. Its research design and results should establish the book as the central authority on group cohesiveness in industry.

Ride shotgun with author and award-winning copywriter Josh Langley as he battles his inner-cynic and subjects himself to a barrage of strange and creepy adventures as a result of his lifelong obsession with the afterlife. Determined to find out what happens when we die but realising it’s unlikely that an obliging ghost is going to jump out in front of him with the verdict, Josh designs his own unique “afterlife investigation plan’’ and sets off on an extraordinary journey in aquest for answers to the question we all secretly want to know. Things get a little weird and spooky as he visits crematoriums, experiments with out-of-body experiences, attempts past-liferegressions, conjures up dead people, converses with his long dead grandmother and is scared witless on a terrifying ghosthunt, to name a few. Explore the paranormal from the safety of your armchair with Dying to Know a humorous and moving travelogue like nothing else before it. Join Josh as he searches for answers to the question that has plagued him for years, and reaches his final, and somewhat surprising, thought-provoking conclusion.

This book is an ambitious project uniting various fields in a multidisciplinary venture drawing on academics and clinicians from medicine, psychology and educational sciences. The interdisciplinary approach has assembled medical, educational and health specialists - many of whom are a rare assemble of outstanding academics and clinicians - with scholarly contributions from many different countries and institutes. It provides a plethora of essays and reviews by clinicians and academics, many contributions self-confessional, disclosing details of their own personal pain and suffering with critical life events including either physical or psychological illnesses, and a description of their own resources and strengths. There are also chapters provided by academics with creative and novel ideas drawing on insight derived from literature, arts and psychology as well as medicine, creating models for encouraging personal development coping despite adversity and eventually finding meaning towards recovery both physically and psychologically. This process of recovery frequently required the support of trusted families and friends, teachers, and fellow physicians and psychologists, enabling them to pursue interesting and outstanding careers "despite" these apparent disadvantages. The authors are all very reflective, providing good advice for young practitioners and "afflicted" alike. The distinguished contributors show the power of the role of psycho-history and biography in understanding who researchers have been influenced by, and what and why. This book will be useful for practitioners and researchers, but also for laymen and social policy makers. The intended readership thus includes those interested in health psychology, sociology, anthropology, public health and mental health sciences.

Vi er født til at nyde søvn, sex og syltetøjsmadder, og det gør vi. Men ellers fylder det dårlige - vi dyrker drab i nyhederne, husker skolens buksevand, som var det i går, og dødkeder os på arbejdet. Det ligger i generne, men det ligger også i kulturen. Vi må tage os sammen! lyder budskabet fra lektor ved Aarhus Universitet Hans Henrik Knoop, der er præsident for European Network for Positive Psychology. Hvis vi skaber de rette betingelser for vækst og selvregulering, kan vi løfte os fra stenaldermennesket og opnå en langt bedre trivsel.

This memoir is a frank, moving and at times humorous account of Matt Barwick’s struggle with infertility, and diagnosis with bipolar disorder triggered by family suicide.At twenty-nine, still childless after a year of trying, Matt and his wife Ali realised that starting a family was not going to be the ‘cinch’ it appeared to be for most of their friends. The couple start a crash course in conception from a straight-talking fertility guruand the journey towards more serious medical intervention begins. Already feeling the strain of infertility and the recurring cycle of disappointment, Matt’s world comes crashing down when he loses his only brother to suicide, resulting from depression that was largely hidden from the world. Shortly after his brother’s funeral, the unthinkable happens, and Matt finds himself in a mental facility dealing with his own diagnosis of bipolar and beginning a battle with the demons of depression that will test him, his marriage, relationships and career; creating an uncertainty that threatens to destroy everything. Told with refreshing honesty, Life in Limbo offers a rare perspective on the topics of infertility, family suicide and mental illness diagnosis from the perspective of a self-deprecating, young, Australian man. Keen to remove the stigma attached to mental illness, particularly for men, and bring the subject out into the open, Matt’s story is an inspiring message of courage, hope and unwavering love.

This thoughtful, compassionate book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Southern Appalachian child -- his mental disorders and his adaptive strengths. Drawing upon his extensive fieldwork as a clinical child psychiatrist in Eastern Kentucky, Dr. Looff suggests means by which these children can be helped to bridge the gap between their subculture and the mainstream of American life today. The children described in this book, the author points out, are in a real sense not "all children." Since no child grows up in a vacuum, the children of Eastern Kentucky cannot be understood apart from the historical, geographic, and socioeconomic characteristics of the area in which they grow. Knowledge of the children requires some knowledge of the lives of parent, teachers, and the many others upon whom they are dependent. That is to say, mental disorder -- or mental health -- is embedded in a social matrix. Dr. Looff therefore examines the milieu of these Southern Appalachian children, their future as adults, and how they can achieve their potential -- whether in their native or an urban setting. In viewing the children within their own cultural framework, Dr. Looff shows how they develop toward mental health or psychopathology, suggesting supportive techniques that build upon the strengths inherent in each child. These strengths, he suggests, rise out of the same culture that burdens the child with handicaps.Dr. Looff's position is one of guarded optimism, based on the successes of the techniques he has used and observed in seven years of work in Appalachian field clinics. Although he details instances of mental disorder in children, and instances of failure in family functioning, he notes at the same time family strengths and sees these strengths as sources of hope.Although this book is based on fieldwork techniques within a specific area and culture, it is paradigmatically suggestive of wider application. Dr. Looff demonstrates effectively and clearly the profound need for increased concern about what is happening to the rising generation -- the children of Eastern Kentucky, the children of the Southern Appalachian region, and the children of the rural south.

Lust is arguably the most basic of human desires. It determines much of our behavior and our culture, but is it understood? Building on his groundbreaking work in Ecstasy and Rage, Michael Eigen confronts lust, mining the history of psychology and religion as well as the literary depths of the Symposium, the Iliad, and the book of Genesis. He also takes us into his own sessions as a psychoanalyst to show how lust expresses itself in the daily lives of real people. This comprehensive and accessible account of a still-taboo subject includes lust's inescapable ties to reproduction and its ultimate resolution in death. The author uses contemporary and historical examples to show how lust is simultaneously a positive force and potentially destructive. In championing the life-affirming aspects of lust, Eigen's conclusions are thought-provoking, illuminating, and ultimately healing.