Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2024 -

In this clearly written, easy-to-understand volume, Winters (Oregon Research Institute, Minnesota) and Ingwalson (Univ. of Minnesota) excellently address the sensitive, complicated topic of adolescent substance abuse and mental health. Their explanations span developmental risks and protective factors to current, evidence-based interventions and treatment. They deftly explore the threat of substance use disorder (SUD) within the adolescent population, adeptly incorporating the topic of prevention. There are explanations and discussions around the intersection of specific mental health diagnoses with SUDs. Behavioral addictions are also included, covering delicate, problematic topics such as adolescent screen time, video and game addictions, sex addictions, and eating disorders. The authors provide ample research-based evidence to support their evaluations and suggestions for practice with a clear focus on understanding and treating co-occurring SUD and mental health disorders in youth. They thoroughly present interventions and treatment, including a brief review of the important aspects of physiological and psychological development and the mandate for early intervention and treatment planning within the continuum of care. With a bank of test questions (and answers); gray boxes highlighting important, practical guidelines for clinicians; and discussion points at the end of each chapter, this is sure to be a go-to textbook for novice practitioners working with youth at risk for SUD.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Higgins (Univ. Texas) explores how aesthetic practices can help those who are grieving establish emotional and social normalcy in the the wake of loss. Her familiarity with aesthetic theory emerges from her earlier book The Music between Us (CH, Nov'12, 50-1372). She is also open about the fact that this book took shape because of her struggles with grief after the sudden death of her husband, the noted philosopher of emotion Robert Solomon. This remarkable book builds convincing bridges between psychology, philosophy, and aesthetic theory. She argues that listening to music in community can help the grieving share emotions with others, helping them overcome the feelings of social isolation created by grief. She also argues that art can help individuals understand how to find order in grief's chaos. The book positions its arguments in relation to the latest psychological theories of grief, including the now standard "continuing bonds" theory of grief, which moves beyond the older theories of grief put forward by Freud and Kubler-Ross. This book will interest philosophers but can also inform the work of mental health professionals who seek deeper philosophical underpinnings for their clinical work.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.

This book by Hunt (Univ. of Nottingham, UK) presents the author's core research and its application regarding his idea that narrative is at the center of human experience. All humans create and tell stories, and we listen to other' stories in turn. In a broad range of fields, using narrative approaches is both meaningful to people and clinically effective. This book provides a wide-ranging introduction to narrative psychology and applies the concept of narrative to professional contexts to help people develop efficient techniques to use in practical situations, including for clinical and occupational psychology. While the book's basic stance is client centered, Hunt elaborates different approaches and strategies to using narrative in seven different areas: writing, therapy, exposure therapy, medicine, health psychology, work psychology, and coaching. In all cases the client creates a new story. This stimulating and creative study offers a basis for developing an expanding range of professional competence. It is essential reading for all manner of practitioners, including psychologists, social workers, counsellors, physicians, coaches, and instructors in all disciplines.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

This comprehensive volume on the biopsychosocial facets of mental health in children and adolescents is an important contribution to the field. Authors Corcoran and Wolk (both, Univ. of Pennsylvania) use the models of evidence-based social work practice, professional values and ethics, and DSM diagnostic categories as a frame for assessing and treating children. Both authors are experienced researchers, teachers, and, most importantly, practitioners who have worked with children and families. Accordingly, they provide a practical and refreshing real-world approach. The book includes a valuable chapter on the strengths and limitations of the DSM, as well as an overview of relevant childhood disorders, biopsychosocial risk factors, assessment processes, and potential intervention strategies. The authors also consider the use of medications and cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic models for understanding assessment and intervention. The text is strengthened by the use of case material that is real and not contrived, and by the inclusion of cultural and spiritual considerations. The use of research has more depth than is typical, and each chapter has a rich list of references. The index is a thorough and important resource.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

In Doing Harm, Eidelson, a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, takes a critical, unflattering, but important look at the role the American Psychological Association played in the US government's post-9/11 torture program. Although the APA has always sought to play an important role in education and advocacy at the national level, those well-meaning goals became distorted by the organization's involvement in the war on terror. Perhaps this was due in part to the misjudgments of American citizens regarding the supposed effectiveness of torture to help illuminate and eradicate terrorists and some in the APA's leadership that might have shared those views. In any case, Eidelson follows the trail of those who have endeavored to bring these issues to light, the counterefforts of others to keep that involvement hidden, and ongoing efforts to completely shut down the post-9/11 torture program. This is not a pleasant read, but most important lessons are often unpleasant to learn. Though this reviewer is a strong supporter of APA, my appreciation of the association increases the more directly it addresses its failings and shortcomings. An excellent read for all involved in psychology as a discipline.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Paris (emer., psychiatry, McGill Univ., Canada) explores the treatment of chronically suicidal patients and challenges current interventions. Clinicians often view suicide as difficult to treat and thus face dilemmas regarding the hospitalization, safety, and treatment of chronically suicidal patients, considering clinical and legal risks. Examining epidemiological and social perspectives and myths surrounding suicide prevention, Paris illuminates the inner worlds of the chronically suicidal. Although psychiatric medications may treat comorbidities, they provide no demonstrated benefit for preventing suicide; psychotherapy, however, is useful. The book includes a thought-provoking discussion of suicide over the life course. With scant research available, clinicians struggle with how to manage acute and chronically suicidal patients. They hope hospitalization will provide safety, yet it offers no guarantees and may exacerbate chronicity. Therapy with patients who experience chronic suicidality needs to focus on life goals, limit setting, and treating underlying borderline personality disorders (BPD). Paris urges readers to think differently about chronicity and recommends dialectical behavior therapy for BPD--although it is not usually covered by insurance--and stepped care. He reports that shorter treatment periods of 12 weeks are more effective than ongoing therapy over years. This is an essential reference for clinicians who may treat suicidal patients.Summing Up: Essential. General readers through faculty; professionals.

Lawson (emer., Western Michigan Univ.) uses cognitive science to describe the mental capacities and processes that accompany religious thoughts and behaviors, a field of study he originated. He begins with several theoretical chapters, some of which were originally published decades earlier, and ends with proposed experiments that would lead to further advances. Lawson draws on evolutionary science to describe how cognition was adaptive, allowing for the development of a "theory of mind" that permeates the perceiving, thinking, and experiencing that characterize religion and its practice. Lawson contends that this approach to developing cognitive models has greater explanatory value than historical and anthropological perspectives, especially when discussing the role of imagination. In prescientific eras, imagination was used to create myths and rituals about "other worlds" from which one could answer life's basic questions. This process begins when infants attribute agency to items in their environment and begin acting on their assumptions accordingly. Noting which creations accurately predict subsequent events, Lawson writes engagingly and in a tour de force tells readers how they can create their own religions.Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty.

What is moral motivation and how does it differ from other motivations? Are there universal moral rules that motivate people or do moral motivations vary culturally? What are norms and how are they developed? This interdisciplinary collection, which compiles essays by researchers in psychology, social psychology, sociology, neurobiology, and philosophy, contributes richly to an understanding of moral motivation. As this book makes evident, this emerging field of research covers issues of great complexity which can accessed through the specific methodological tools offered by the aforementioned disciplines. Supported by copious references, the chapters address such issues as the nature of self, identity, emotion and morality; evolutionary accounts of the emergence of the human senses of fairness, justice, and reciprocity; the role of guilt, blame, and punishment in enforcing norms; the distinction between moral and conventional motivation; cultural variation in the concepts of vice and virtue; variations in individual sensitivity to moral norms; the philosophy of virtue and the role of empathy in moral motivation; and the application of neuroscience methods to the study of moral learning. This is a groundbreaking work on moral motivation.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

In this excellent book, Wu (Carnegie Mellon Univ.), a philosopher of mind and cognitive science, focuses on such mental movements as thinking, remembering, reasoning, introspecting, and attending to understand what it means to be an agent. Understanding the basic forms of such movements requires comprehending basic agency as it is lived. This involves an agent doing things, regardless of whether those actions are mental or of the body. Wu's goal is to articulate a biology of agency that integrates psychophysics, imaging and electrophysiology of neurons, computational theories of mental processes, a priori argument, and--although these are beyond the scope of his book--molecular and genetic levels. Science and philosophy of mind should work together as part of biology because both aim to understand the world. To advance this convergence, Wu argues for four central themes. First, action has a psychological structure that unifies reasoning, mental bias, and introspection as forms of attention. Second, intentional action is characterized by control, which is at the heart of intentional agency, and by automaticity, a feature of all action. Third, attention is essential to understanding action. Finally, attention is a type of active memory, practical memory for action.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Neuroethics has attained an important disciplinary status alongside bioethics and philosophical psychology as evidenced by this book from May (Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham). He has no metaethical or metaphysical agenda other than to accurately depict the intersections of brain science, psychology, morality, and social thought. No brain scans will prove or disprove human agency, self-identity, responsibility, or free will, but humans can elevate conceptions of these matters beyond mind-matter dichotomies and simplistic determinisms. Several chapters explain the neurological bases proposed for potential technologies such as brain modulation, brain reading, cognitive adjustment, mental enhancement, addiction amelioration, moral improvement, and similar opportunities, covering both pro and con stances. Other topics include addiction, anxiety, bias, compassion, depression, dual hemispheres, epiphenomenalism, habit, learning, mental disorder, moral judgment, neuromarketing, personality, psychedelics, psychopathology, self-control, and therapy. Another chapter offers fascinating insights into motivated reasoning: e.g., humans' rationalizations, confabulations, unconscious dishonesties, distorted values, and outright frauds all seemingly valid according to human mentalities. May expresses hope for neuroethics-balanced and nuanced support for justice. This is a crucial volume for those studying the philosophy of mind, ethics, neuroscience, cognitive science, psychiatry, and psychology.Summing Up: Essential. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

This excellent book introduces professionals to the work of Nesci (Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy; Scuola Internazionale di Psicoterapia, Italy) and his life-long interest in and commitment to the psychological care and well-being of cancer patients and their caregivers. Through his early experience as a trainee, he realized the unique challenges cancer patients face: difficult treatments and the existential threats cancer presents, the latter usually ignored by medical teams. Patients may be labeled as uncooperative or depressed based on their lack of positive emotional expression to staff. Nesci developed a theory explaining patients' reactions and treatment needs, also realizing the need to support medical staff burdened with difficult treatments and uncertain outcomes. He then created a group discussion protocol for medical trainees to raise awareness of the psychosocial aspects of medical care. Written as a professional memoir, this volume describes the author's early experiences as he began to specialize in treating cancer patients and their families and training medical teams. His protocol emphasizes the need to listen, observe, and empathize, key skills needed to support medical staff and to help patients come to terms with the existential challenges their illness presents. Nesci created a training center for doctors and continues his commitment to humanize medical care for extremely ill patients.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Raskin (SUNY, New Paltz) has accomplished what previously would have taken multiple high-end reference manuals to accomplish. Namely, the blending of a biopsychosocial model and the incorporation of an international perspective into the same text on psychopathology. In fact, calling it a "text" minimizes both its scope and its broad applicability. Raskin views psychopathology and mental distress from the biological, psychological, and social lenses while at the same time recognizing that the DSM-5-TR is only one effective method for the diagnosis of such disorders. In doing so, Raskin infuses history, classification, diagnosis, cultural issues, and contemporary understanding into the work. This will likely become a standard by which other psychopathology texts are compared. Chapters contain connections to history, linkages to advertising and its role in prescription issues, alternatives to both the DSM and the ICD, and detailed biological explanations that inform the discussions of each psychopathology and potential treatments. Though not for the introductory or undergraduate student, this work would serve well as an essential manual for those in graduate programs in clinical psychology or even clinical social work.Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students and professionals.

Bollmer (digital media, Univ. of Queensland, Australia) charts new territory in this compelling book by examining the ways in which affect (i.e., the human emotions) has been analyzed through various technologies in the 20th century. He looks at the profound changes that took place throughout the previous century in terms of how affect was typically interpreted, expressed, and measured. He shows how experimental psychology, led by William James, used photography to document emotion, leading to such varied practices as the French tradition of neurologist Guillaume Duchenne, American physiognomy studies, prison dynograph studies of psychopathy, and finally to the electropsychometers of L. Ron Hubbard. Bollmer's thesis that the very physical features of the devices employed to measure affect shaped the definition of emotion is a strong argument against contemporary affect theory which tends to neglect the material basis of research. This book is one of the best histories of technology in the field of psychological research to date. It will find a receptive audience in the fields of science and technology studies, media studies, and psychology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Prosociality is a complex concept aimed at describing behaviors intended to benefit others or society as a whole. In their comprehensive handbook on the topic, editors Malti (Univ. of Toronto) and Davidov (Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem) gather an impressive team of international contributors. Organized in four thematic parts, 30 chapters provide a thorough overview of the development, mechanisms, and promotion of prosociality along biological, lifespan, cognitive, and social theoretical and research lines. Part 1 examines prosocial development across early and middle childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, considering genetic, neurobiological, and psychophysiological prosocial development perspectives. Part 2 delves into antecedents and emotional, moral, temperamental, and gendered mechanisms, among others. Part 3 explores prosociality in family, peer, school, community, and cultural contexts. Finally, part 4 describes applications for civic engagement, policies, and families. This insightful handbook is excellent for researchers, students, and practitioners seeking to understand and encourage human prosocial behavior.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.

It is unfortunate that research interest in how children and adolescents cope with stress has grown so rapidly in the last several decades, an indication that the stressful circumstances that children experience have increased. This handbook is thus a much-needed new resource for the many fields that are concerned with understanding and intervening to help children. In six sections and 28 clearly written chapters, this text brings together theory and research, making a major contribution to building and consolidating the development of coping as a field. Of particular interest are the chapters on implications for intervention, with a focus on the specifics of academic and social media coping as well as a broader look at the programs available for youth coping. This handbook will interest psychologists who may importantly discover that while they thought they were studying self-referencing or attachment, they were also studying crucial components of early coping. The interest tent broadens to include neuroscientists, educators, and clinicians who will find disciplinary connections in many chapters. The field of coping is truly interdisciplinary as the breadth of these chapters indicates.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

This is an accessible text that invites readers to engage with unhelpful and potentially problematic conceptualizations of self-injury. Lewis (Univ. of Guelph) and Hasking (Curtin Univ.)--two psychology professors--introduce the person-centered framework as a more empowering way to address this issue. While a person-centered approach is not new to the field of psychology, it has not traditionally been applied to self-injury. The authors begin by reviewing common models of self-injury, then introduce the person-centered model as an alternative to address the pitfalls (e.g., increasing stigma by pathologizing individuals, using deficit-based language) of the aforementioned models. Their argument is supported by a review of research studies in literature that explores precipitating factors and how self-injury behavior is maintained. This text will be particularly useful in that it challenges widely held misconceptions about self-injury and adolescents. An entire chapter is dedicated to the self-injury "contagion," dispelling common stereotypes and replacing them with a more comprehensive understanding of relational aspects of self-injury. The content of this book is applicable in the context of diverse groups--not only for clinicians and researchers but also for teachers, parents, etc.--and leaves the reader with actionable steps they can take to address self-injury and reduce stigma when faced with the need to discuss such a sensitive topic.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.