(Part 3) 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 It's outdated by almost 80 years at this point.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!

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!

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 have worked in the mental health field. No matter what advice you read you are going to have to find something that works for you. I tend to perceive life from an existential point of view. Your choices define you. You cannot change what choices you have made in the past. You can only control what choices you make in the present. Focus on making choices that help you feel fulfilled and that encourage personal growth. Let the guilt be the fuel that drives you to make better choices in the present. Don't make any choices that are going to add to the guilt you feel.

Here is a book that may or may not help you: [Man's Search for Meaning] (http://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X)

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.

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.

Attachment and object relations are important concepts in the conception of personality disorder, but they are a bit outdated in the sense that these concepts have been somewhat refined.

You can find more modern conceptions in relational psychoanalysis / mentalization theory (e.g. Fonagy/Target -- Attachment theory and psychoanalysis, Attachment and reflective function: their role in self-organization).

Or interpersonal neurobiology. For example, this article by Daniel Stern, this one by Daniel Siegel, and something by Allan Schore, like this or this).

Here's another decent overview article

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1. Get yourself a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations - this is a nice readable paperback you can carry with you daily
   
   
2. Pick it up daily and read a paragraph
   
   
3. That's all you need to do for now. A master or mentor is helpful, but they are in short supply these days
   

Not a real easy read unless one has a lot "pre-requisite" knowledge, but Iain McGilchrist's The Master and his Emissary has been one of the very hottest books in the EP field since it was published. Lawrence Kohlberg's The Philosophy of Moral Development (both volumes) is another bedrock. But I would say that anyone who has looked into the social construction of reality and the evolution of the "consensus trance" is worth your time.

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.

Hi, since you haven't got any replies yet, I had a course named attitude and attitude change a while back, we used this book (https://www.amazon.com/Attitudes-Attitude-Change-Social-Psychology/dp/0863777791). That book atleast talkes about factors that influence a persons resilience to attitude change, however I'm unsure if it contains an inventory or scale. Unfortunately I don't have the book at hand now. Better than nothing I hope :)

Hey there, I came across this in the British Psychological Society's magazine which looked like a tasty read: 'The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia' by Nathan Filer.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heartland-finding-losing-schizophrenia/dp/0571345956/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1U4CJW9MJXIQQ&keywords=the+heartland+finding+and+losing+schizophrenia&qid=1564741705&s=gateway&sprefix=the+heartland%2Caps%2C166&sr=8-1

Not sure how good it is, as I haven't read it, but definitely takes a critical look at the diagnosis and the place of Schizophrenia in the history of psychiatry. Alternatively, Mind often have empowering rather than solely medicalised info on their website for survivors: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/schizoaffective-disorder-and-me/#.XUQQ3C2ZM1I

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

I feel in a case like this, it is likely something along the lines of paranoid schizophrenia. Although violence among psychiatric patients is extremely rare, violent tendencies are more common in paranoid schizophrenia.

A recent review (c.f., Silverstein, Pozzo, Roche, Boyle, & Miskimen, 2015) scholars suggested increased violent tendencies may be due to (1) they tend to have psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, persecutory ideation) which prompt violent responses; (2) it is extremely common in marginalized populations who tend to have histories of violence; (3) there are a number of brain abnormalities thought to influence systems which manage impulsivity (for example, patients with schizophrenia tend to have increased left-hemispheric fast-wave EEG activity, which denotes overarousal).

However, this may only address the reasons why someone like Evans may have been driven to murder. Being driven to murder is likely a blend of situation specific stimuli interacting with one's own behavioral traits. There are a variety of reasons as to why one may be driven to murder, and even a case similar to Evans would not necessarily denote that other hypothetical individuals involved would even have a mental disorder (I only brought this up as his mental state has been battled in court). Even in the previously cited review, there appears to be no clear distinction between crimes by mental patients and those without any sort of diagnosis, so while this crime may not suggest he has any type of diagnosis, it is perhaps parsimonious to suggest that someone in this situation may have brain abnormalities (to say the least).

One could commit murder for a variety of possible reasons. Likely, in any case, there are a slew of psychological and physiological variables which may result in this behavior. In this one instance, it seems like that Evan's condition may largely be to blame. I would like to state that I do not think this justifies Evan's behavior, nor should it necessarily allow him leniency with the law. But the fact of the matter is that because murder can help for a variety of reasons it may be less useful to ask why (because this really only categorizes murders) and more useful to consider where we draw the line as a society, and how our criminal justice system is to be used to respond to these crimes.

Silverstein, S.M., Pozzo, J.D., Roche, M., Boyle, D., & Miskimen, T. (2015). Schizophrenia and violence: Realities and recommendations. Crime Psychology Review, 1, 21-42. doi: 10.1080/23744006.2015.1033154

If this is a topic which really interests you, I would recommend the following two books:

Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty (Baumeister & Beck)
https://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1474176881&sr=8-5&keywords=psychology+of+evil

The Lucifer Effect (by the infamous [Stanford Prison study] Philip Zimbardo)
https://www.amazon.com/Lucifer-Effect-Understanding-Good-People/dp/0812974441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474176881&sr=8-1&keywords=psychology+of+evil