(Part 2) Top products from r/askpsychology

Psychoanalytic theory isn't going to give you much insight into the mind, sadly. It's outdated by almost 80 years at this point. The main psychoanalytic theories on personality and structure of the mind are the common ones in pop-psych that most people know. Freud believed that early experiences were sexual in nature, and failure at any stage of psychosexual development resulted in being "fixated" on that stage (Oral, Anal, Phallic, or Genital), which lead to problems later in life. It's not a testable or falsifiable theory, so it's been abandoned since before WWII as a serious area of scientific inquiry, though many practitioners of classical Psychoanalysis were trained through the 1980's.

Various Behaviorist concepts now dominate the practical applications of psychology, but don't often give much in the way of insight into the mind as it is considered little more than a processor of stimuli. Neuroscience is left to fill in the blanks of how the mind processes that information, and that's how the vast majority of the modern work on it is done: fMRI studies on stimulus-response patterns creating activity in various sections of the brain. for the most part it's working quite well so far and some people have recently begun having human brains directly transmit information/commands through an electronic medium.

If you're looking more for the internal experience or organization of the mind, there's a very wide variety of authors and theories to choose from. The ideas of Schemas and cognitive development by Jean Piaget are still taught and utilized today as they provide a useful foundation for understanding how the mind learns to process information. Similarly, Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development is also still taught and prominent because of the foundation it lays for understanding the basic information processing that's going on in us all the time, usually without our awareness.

For book recommendations, I would have to go with Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence as a good start for laymen in the field to understand where much modern theory is pointing. Goleman's explanation of the slow and fast processes of perception and cognition (one conscious and slow, the other unconscious and fast) are largely responsible for the Freudian phenomena of the "unconscious mind." The ideas of id and super-ego have been largely replaced with neuroscience regarding behavioral reward pathways in the brain (especially relating to addictions), impulse control, and social influences on behavior (taboos, mores, laws, etc).

Personality theories get complex because just defining what a personality is (or agreeing that such things even exist to define) has proven to be problematic. This site gives a pretty good overview of personality theories in psychology and is very well sourced.

Defense mechanisms are part of the out-dated psychoanalytic model, but are still mostly recognizable today as maladaptive behaviors. They're as varied as the people that come up with them, though some are common across populations and cultures (dissociative fugues, Stockholm Syndrome, Munchausen Syndrome, etc.). I don't really have much recommended reading here for informational purposes, sadly. The idea of a coping mechanism or maladaptive behavior is somewhat nebulous and could be almost anything done cognitively or metacognitively to reduce overall stress on the self, including various addictions, self-delusion, repressing a memory completely, rewriting a memory through repeated story-telling, or just ignoring something stressful and hoping it goes away.

Hope I managed to help a little here, even if I didn't give you exactly what you asked for. Good luck in your search!

Two books that really helped me with this are Moonwalking with Einstein, which lays out a good narrative and overview of how various memory devices works and How to Develop a Brilliant memory. The authors, Joshua Foer and Dominic O'Brien both competed in memory competitions, doing rather well using techniques used here.


For lists and such I particularly like the Memory Palace method.




For more specific and complex things like passwords I like the Dominic System.


There are several other methods mentioned in these books, some help linking names to faces (very helpful and very easy). Alot of the things they suggest seem ridiculous, and take practice, but the strangeness is part of what helps you remember.

Anyway, hope that gives you a good starting point!

I know what you're talking about, but I apologize that I can't remember where I read that either. Ultimately it reminds me of what I read in the book Give and Take by Adam Grant - https://www.amazon.com/Give-Take-Helping-Others-Success/dp/0143124986

It has to do with the law of reciprocity and how doing things for other people first makes them feel indebted which isn't a good feeling that makes them feel favorable of you. But in opposite, when people do for you, they feel good about themselves and attribute that positive feeling from you. I'm heavily paraphrasing but maybe that book will send you in the right direction. Sorry I couldn't be more help than that though. I actually spent like an hour looking through my book notes but couldn't find exactly what we're both thinking about here.

While evolutionary psychology is considered a "new" subfield of psychology, it has its origins in Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. Darwin argues that, in the future, psychology will be based on a foundation which is, "of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." An excellent foundation for evolutionary psychology begins in The Origin of Species.

Regarding newer works, I would recommend Robert Wright's The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. This is an excellent encapsulation of how evolutionary psychologists primarily interpret moral behavior in both humans and non-human animals alike.

I would also check out Jerome Barkhow's incredible work The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. I recommend this book if you're looking to understand why human intelligence is fundamentally distinct from other species, and how evolutionary forces shaped human culture.

Happy reading!

You could give choice theory a look. I struggled with depression for years and it helped me turn myself around and become the happiest person I know. I'm not saying it will definitely work for you since everyone finds success in their own way, but it's worth a try.

If reading a whole book is too intimidating you can get a taste of it by looking at the wikipedia article about it, or this website that teaches choice theory.

And if you feel like getting a pep talk from Will Smith you can check out this instagram video he did that mirrors the main idea behind choice theory.

Best of luck to you in finding a way out of the darkness.

Depends on the theoretical models he’s interested in. Here’s my favorite Jungian gift:
The Red Book
It’s something I would never have bought myself because of the cost, but am glad to have it for its historical significance.

I've not read it and am by no means an expert, but The Power Paradox is worth looking into.

My basic understanding of it is that people who are more altruistic and friendly tend to become more popular and also powerful, but once they have power, those traits diminish.

The Stanford Prison experiment is a classic and famous experiment on this topic. I understand it's methodology to be questioned on the basis of selection bias.

This isn't exactly what you are asking, but a good psychology-related book that is written for the layman would be Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow

It is an interesting read that provides a lot of information about thinking.

Gross' Psychology is a fantastic core textbook which covers a large range of topics across psychology. It is useful from the first introduction to psychology all the way to undergraduate study. But by being so comprehensive, it is a bulky book.

Can't say it's the best because I haven't read them all, but check out Seven Psychologies by Edna Heidbreder. It seems to fulfill all the desiderata you specify.

I highly recommend this book. It talks a lot about disagreements and fights in relationships. Gottman is the best in his field and the science and advice is pretty solid.

This answer is a bit more of a "how" than a "why", but maybe it'll spark some interest anyway...

This book describes us as behaving in ways that imply that we have a hierarchy of behaviors structured under goals and ideals. Any behavior that doesn't contribute to some higher-order goal or ideal will tend to feel less rewarding, so you'll do it less... and to not have goals or ideals at all or the ability to set them and hold to them (or to organize your behavior as if you did, since sometimes they're subconscious) can be dysregulating. Purpose and meaning are in some sense even bigger meta-goals and meta-ideals, ways we can organize our lives that are bigger than an individual person, sometimes spanning longer than any one person's lifetime. In that sense, we seek purpose and meaning because it sucks not to have it. It leaves you blowing in the wind, like everyone in this thread is saying.

To make this more concrete, here's a clinical example of something that could be related: people with borderline personality disorder tend to have many short, intense relationships that flame out, coming in part from experiencing a strong conflict between wanting to feel close to people and being overwhelmed by fears that they'll be hurt or abandoned. They also tend to experience an unstable sense of self. The unstable sense of self might contribute to overly intense, conflictual, unstable relationships by robbing them of a stable backdrop against which to ask themselves "who am I in this relationship and what do I actually want it to be for myself?" In other words, I think those behavioral phenomena might be a particularly vivid example of what happens when you don't have access to some organizing principle to hold sway over your fleeting whims, habits, less helpful or savory subconscious motivations, etc.

If it's purpose or meaning that you feel conflict about or a lack of rather than a sense of self, that's not going to produce the same surface manifestation of unstable relationships... but it might well produce a life course that has the same overall structure of instability, maybe manifested instead in ways like not being able to pick a career or a college major, demotivation leading to cycles of procrastination and then hyperproductivity once the pressure is past a certain threshold, making major changes like moving to a different state often without having a clear picture of what it is you're looking for, that kind of thing.

There's a good book called Work with Me thats exactly on this topic. Amazon link

You are right, psychodynamic theory tends to be skimmed over as it is a bit thin on empirical evidence. Rather, it relies on case reports to build the knowledge base.

A few books come to mind.

Nancy McWilliams is one of the more prominent names and is a pretty great writer and speaker.

http://www.amazon.com/Nancy-McWilliams/e/B001K8DARQ

There is the PDM which excels at speaking about the subjective experience of an individual with a particular disorder

https://www.amazon.com/Psychodynamic-Diagnostic-Alliance-Psychoanalytic-Organizations/dp/0976775824

For developmental psychology there is the Evolving Self by Kegan

https://www.amazon.com/Evolving-Self-Problem-Process-Development/dp/0674272315/

Interpersonal world of the infant by Stern is dense, but can help understand the role of early life and help explain the impact of pre-verbal trauma, neglect

https://www.amazon.com/Interpersonal-World-Infant-Psychoanalysis-Developmental/dp/0465034039/

There are ton more out there, but the above I have read personally.

Check out "object relations" for a more general psychodynamic approach. Some psychodynamic theorists have also been incorporated into more modern approaches. For instance Alfred Adler theorized "basic mistakes" which in turn lead to REBT and later the "Cognitive Distortions" in CBT.

I'm seeing Angelhead: My Brother's Descent into Madness, January First: A Child's Descent into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her, Descent into Madness: A Personal Look into Schizophrenia, and The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. All of those are about schizophrenia, none of them are textbooks or as old as you describe.

Not every older book is possible to find with google. It's possible that she has the title exactly right, and it's just so obscure that nobody is talking about it online.

Inter-Library Loan is a great way to get ahold of rare books. If you have enough information, you can give that information to the library, and they'll check with other libraries until they find one that has the book. Then that library mails the book to your library. It can cost some money, but sometimes it's the only way to find some rare books.

Ah, will do that as often as possible then. By the way, this is the book I mentioned:

http://www.amazon.com/Developmental-Psychology-Adolescence-David-Shaffer/dp/0495601713

Hmm. Try one or two these, maybe:

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Kimberlee Roth & Frieda Friedman's Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010

Stephen Pinker does a great book on how violence has been on the decline historically.

I have reflected on this issue a lot and the main conclusion I've come to is that all people are caught between a central conflict of: "do I whats best for me and mine, or work for the greater good" For many self-interest rules their behaviour. Furthermore people disagree on what is best for the world, i.e. left and right wing politics. So even if all people wanted to work towards the greater good they disagree on what will get to the greater good.

Finally there is this viscous cycle in the world of endless retribution. Most of the Western world hates ISIS at present due to their terrorist acts, (fair) but I would also say that half the reason ISIS exists is out of the military actions of the western world in the Middle, but of course those military actions were likely prompted by the LAST horrific terrorist acts, and so on. The problem is that if people don't want to see the actions of their enemies in historic context with any sort of justification, they see their enemies actions as simply evil acts.