Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

In this account, Greene (Seton Hall Univ.) traces the long history of psychiatry's American evolution in the course of the Second World War. She has done a commendable job, pulling together published and unpublished material, including first-person accounts and personal interviews. The Selective Training and Service Act signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 included a requirement for inductees to undergo psychiatric interviews, which screened out over two million potential recruits, and psychiatrists belatedly focused on the diagnosis and treatment of those who entered service with mental health issues. Ironically, psychiatrists overlooked PTSD and other combat-related disorders not identified by the screenings. The moral and ethical issues that often accompanied "neuropsychiatric casualties" were treated, albeit unevenly because of the scarcity of psychiatrists and their lack of adequate training. Collaboration with psychologists--and the lack of it--is well described, as is the impact of the way psychiatrists were portrayed in the contemporary media. Of special interest are Greene's descriptions of hypnosis-based psychotherapy in combat zones and the reluctance of military personnel to request any type of help, a proclivity that exists to this day. This author has undertaken a painstaking and groundbreaking research process, producing an "instant classic," but one that will be read and cited for decades to come.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This book is an essential reference for counselors, therapists, educators, and human services staff. As the authors point out, "gender-expansive" clients typically have faced traumatizing rejections, betrayal, disenfranchisement, and violence. They need an affirmative counseling environment. Understanding the foundations of their experience, gender terminology and identities, pronouns and pitfalls (e.g., so-called deadnaming) is critical. Counselors need to explore and understand the assumptions, biases, theoretical knowledge, and values surrounding gender-expansive clients and issues. Building a therapeutic relationship requires understanding how gender identity intersects with life span development, geographic location, privilege, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, the intersectional self, and socioeconomic realities. Counselors need to provide affirming professional interactions. One consequence of geographic location is that clients may confront safety, transportation, or service fee issues, and may find teletherapy more practical. Building a trusting relationship is vital, as are goodness-of-fit of assessment and diagnostic frameworks. Common pitfalls include ignoring gender-expansive identities and interactions, deadnaming, and homogenizing the population. Positive ethics, legal issues, and practice concerns require consideration, as well as attention to transitions and providing an affirming environment.This is an excellent book that includes poignant vignettes, powerful examples, thoughtful "reflection questions," references, and suggested readings. Practical recommendations are also described. The "Binary and Me" exercises and "Pitfalls" sections are especially useful.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Dimitrijevic (International Psychoanalytic Univ.) and Buchholz (formerly, International Psychoanalytic Univ.) present a work that is both necessary and deeply engaging. Their recurring theme is to draw the distinction between loneliness, which can lead to despair, and solitude, which is essential for creativity, flow, and rejuvenation. Chapter 6, an enlightening discourse on the role of solitude and loneliness in creativity, perhaps best expresses this dichotomy. Chapter 7 points out that solitude is voluntary, sought after, and often positive, whereas loneliness is involuntary and aversive. Yet even the term loneliness is further dissected from various perspectives (e.g., chapters 15, 16). Topics covered include child, adolescent, and adult development; music, art therapy, stress, health, and mortality; and even recent research on isolation during the pandemic. Part 4 presents loneliness from the psychoanalytic perspective, delivering frank and powerful clinical accounts of trauma, loneliness, and isolation that provide valuable insight. Though common themes run throughout and there is much agreement across all chapters and authors, each chapter nevertheless offers a unique contribution to the volume. This timely and accessible work is highly recommended for students of psychology, seasoned practitioners, or just curious readers trying to make sense of the paradoxes of modern life.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This book is about chronic, severe mental illness written from the perspective of a professional philosopher who has experienced years of devastating episodes of psychosis. Gosselin (Regis Univ.) turns to the philosophical and scientific literature to make sense of the enormous challenge severely ill patients face, which is to work on recovery while taking medications that often have debilitating side effects. It is difficult for patients to resist the powerful pull of psychosis--which in Gosselin's words "did not want me to receive treatment that would make it recede; it wanted to stay present and alive" (p. 83). Finding the road to recovery requires patients to make herculean efforts to "show up and participate." As Gosselin argues, it is crucial that patients be encouraged to exercise their capacity for autonomous choice as much as possible and to combat the hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, confused thinking, and, as in Gosselin's case, the voice that urged her to kill herself. This author offers careful philosophical reflections on the importance of autonomy, empathy, trust, meaning-making, and epistemic and moral agency. Her aim is to help clinicians and others understand and respect severely ill mental patients and ultimately help patients recover their decision-making capacity with the least amount of coercion possible.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

As a professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Science, Health, and Technology Communication, Mehlenbacher (Univ. of Waterloo) offers an incisive historical examination and current assessment of theories of expertise cast in the language and disciplinary sensibility of rhetoric and communication. This well-organized book progresses clearly through the keystone context for understanding expertise vis-a-vis an historical lens, albeit mostly situated in Western contexts and histories. Mehlenbacher's expansive understanding of the conceptualization, application, and reception of expertise is much needed--even essential--in the present cultural moment. This text offers readers a worthwhile heuristic as related to forging a healthy path toward a society that values intellect and compassion over extreme populism and anti-intellectualism. Mehlenbacher draws from the accounts of 40 interviewed professionals in her critical portrayal of expertise and how it can propel a renaissance of regard for an expert class and its value in society. In five chapters, plus a conclusion, this treatise on expertise successfully trains readers' attention on a simple concept yet offers the profound possibility for re-centering the critical role of expert knowledge in an increasingly anti-intellectual and tribalized world.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

This remarkable book, a collection of fifty personal essays by and about the "brilliant ... luminaries" (p. 73) who have shaped and are still shaping the discipline of social psychology, will be of value to those interested in learning the inside stories of these pioneers. Various authors describe how intense, often lifelong, collaborations with mentors and students have enabled them to formulate and test scientific hypotheses about real-world social problems.They recount their investigations of problems such as cognitive dissonance, attribution theory about people's failure to recognize subliminal influences on their attitudes and behavior, the causes and damages of stereotyping, the conditions that elicit altruism, the power of situations and contexts in forming identities, the effects of social devaluation on self-valuation, self-depletion theory and willpower, confirmation bias, self-fulfilling prophecies and the Pygmalion effect, and the way cultural realities shape the experience of social reality. More recently, some have explored deep cultural differences in personal motivation and pursued studies of neuroplasticity. The essays, full of humour, passion, and intense curiosity about the human mind, all express deep gratitude for the intellectual support received, whether from mentors, colleagues, or through chance encounters with great minds. These authors effectively express their love for their mentors, their graduate students, and their work.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Hellerstein (Columbia Univ.) tells a thrilling story of the paradigm shifts that have swept the field of psychiatry over the last 50 years. His account is conveyed through personal stories; essays capturing his own stages of development as a psychiatrist, from investment in Freudian psychoanalysis to the embrace of clinical diagnosis; and finally arriving at neuroscientific description of brain function. Together, Hellerstein's 14 chapters offer a roadmap of suffering in different milieus, from lying on a couch to motionlessness in an MRI tube. The tone, nevertheless, is one of optimism, as the advancement of science drives the practice of healing. The author superbly shows how each of the three models presented engages a unique set of explanations--and treatments--for psychological distress. In closing, Hellerstein suggests the possible appearance of a fourth wave: psychedelic medicine, combining elements of the three preceeding paradigms. This author is at his best when offering narratives of treatment and its outcome, affording glimpses into the lives of patients and the struggles of their healers. The book will have immense appeal for those considering the medical profession and for contemporary practitioners, and somewhat less but still significant appeal for anyone interested in the history of psychiatric science, as well as professionals in adjacent fields, e.g., social work and psychology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.

This book features many morphological, physiological, behavioral, and psychological tactics employed by numerous animals and plants (but also used by much simpler and incomplete life forms like genes, viruses, bacteria, and fungi) to "cheat" in the natural world, and how these tactics translate into human social life. Grounded in a selectionist, Darwinian view of living organisms, which emphasizes honest signaling and handicaps, and employs a solid comparative approach, the text takes us on a fascinating journey into the mechanisms and evolution of cheating (including deceiving and lying). These are simply defined as acting to favor oneself at the expense of others, particularly when general expectations are placed on cooperative interactions. Through various enlightening and entertaining examples involving mimicry, thanatosis, other types of bluffing, distraction or diversionary displays, false-alarm calling, concealed ovulation, sneaky mating, brood parasitism, and free-riding, Sun (Central Washington Univ.) educates readers about the biological underpinnings of deceiving--by exploiting cognitive loopholes--and lying--by altering truthful information in communication--for which demonstrating the cheater's intention is neither easy nor necessary in nonhuman species. The second half of the book is entirely dedicated to cheating in humans, as supported by language, Machiavellian intelligence, and complex societies, leading to description of Freudian slips, self-deception, Ponzi schemes, conspiracy theories, corruption, and gerrymandering.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Behavioral scientist, teacher, and essayist Vyse offers his advice on "why it's not always rational to be rational." Evolutionary psychologists point out that nature does not care whether a thought or behavior is rational or not, or makes sense or is patently delusional. Instead, nature only wants to know whether or not that thought or behavior is adaptive, i.e., whether it has survival value. But Vyse finds the sometimes amusing utility in such seemingly "irrational" stances as overconfidence, self-deception, wishful thinking, unjustified optimism, and unconstrainted free will, noting how each can help people meet their personal and social goals, assist societies in enhancing their members' well-being, and have other positive outcomes. In the course of this narrative Vyse ranges from American pragmatism and collectivist societies to love at first sight and the writings of Joan Didion. Vyse is an articulate and engaging writer, and his argument is illustrated at points by graphic figures and diagrams to assist readers' comprehension of key concepts, such as rational choice theory. The text is also informed by Buddhist theories of personality, the writings of such philosophers as Descartes and Hume, anecdotes about early psychologists (William James), and contemporary research that debunks so-called "facilitated communication"--which would be humorous were it not so misguided.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.