elucipher:

elucipher-deactivated20151112:

hi! you seem like an incredibly well-read and intelligent person; could you recommend me some books to read? especially ones with psychology or perhaps psychological books that are related closely to the themes mentioned in hannibal?

_{— asked by freetheducks}

Hmmm, psychology, let’s see… this will be a bit of a weird and wonderful mix.

(I suppose I should say that if you want some idea of how Western cultures make sense of abnormal psychology—and by implication, ‘normal’ psychology—it’s worth looking at the DSM. The fifth edition just came out, and reading the amendments from DSM-IV gives you a sense of how approaches to mental disorders are changing. That said, it’s still depressing as all hell.) 

Robert Hare’s “Without Conscience”. Hare was pretty much the founder of the study of psychopathy (his PCL-R is still the standard test) and this book is the classic text on psychopathic characteristics and behaviours and why psychopaths have a very unique form of disorder. In a similar vein, Blair’s ”The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain“ is about the field of affective neuroscience, empathy, and empathy disorders. Jon Ronson’s ”The Psychopath Test“ is a very readable account of a layman’s attempt to understand psychopathy. Marco Iacoboni’s ”Mirroring People“ is about empathy, and how mirror neurons enable imitation and are fundamental to the way that we interact with and relate to other people. (Some interesting stuff about unconscious influence and the implications for free will.)

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow is a fascinating book about rationality and irrationality and how we make decisions. Doidge’s The Brain That Changes Itself is about neuroplasticity: it breaks open the old nature/nurture debate by arguing that brains are extraordinarily adaptable and constantly in flux, mending and upgrading themselves. Warning: Doidge does go a bit overboard with the optimism (and the Freud). For “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink” discussion, I lose a lot of time over on the Mind Hacks blog.

Richard P. Bentall’s Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature is a wide-ranging examination of mental illness, debunking a lot of myths and arguing that our ideas about “abnormal" symptoms are all wrong. 

Stout’s “The Myth of Sanity” is about dissociative behaviours (e.g. losing time, blacking out, hypnotism, multiple personalities and DID), and how they’re part of a universal psychological defence against fear and trauma. 

Ramachandran’s “Phantoms in the Brain” is wonderfully, compassionately written, and explores the quirks of consciousness, neurological disorders and deficits. Also recommended: “The Tell-Tale Brain”, a fascinating broader look at minds, brains, consciousness, language, free will…

Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat is all about strange neurological disorders (similar to Georgia’s Cotard’s Syndrome). And The Mind’s Eye is, as the title suggests, about the neuropsychology of seeing. Sacks himself suffers from prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and offers insight into the experience of having the disorder. Oh, and ”Hallucinations”, which argues that almost everyone experiences visual or auditory hallucinations and takes a really humane approach of exploring them through real-life cases.

Jul 8th   118 notes