Episodes

  • Bruce Hood, "The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)

    Bruce Hood, "The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
    Mar 15 2025
    This interview with Prof. Bruce Hood marks the first anniversary of his bestselling book, The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). In our lively (and happy) discussion we talk with Prof. Hood about what happiness is and how it is assessed scientifically, the importance of human connections and a sense of community. Prof. Hood shares some of the exercises that appear throughout the book, including the importance of keeping a diary. Bruce is the Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol. He undertook his Ph.D. at Cambridge University followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a faculty professor at Harvard. He is a highly regarded international lecturer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    50 mins
  • Zhiying Ma, "Between Families and Institutions: Mental Health and Biopolitical Paternalism in Contemporary China" (Duke UP, 2025)

    Zhiying Ma, "Between Families and Institutions: Mental Health and Biopolitical Paternalism in Contemporary China" (Duke UP, 2025)
    Mar 14 2025
    In contemporary China, people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses have long been placed under the guardianship of close relatives who decide on their hospitalization and treatment. Despite attempts at reforms to ensure patient rights, the 2013 Mental Health Law reinforced the family's rights and responsibilities. In Between Families and Institutions, Zhiying Ma examines how ideological, institutional, and technological processes shape families' complicated involvement in psychiatric care. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in psychiatric hospitals, community mental health teams, social work centers, and family support groups as well as interviews with policymakers and activists, Ma maps the workings of what she calls "biopolitical paternalism"--a mode of governance that sees vulnerable individuals as sources of risk, frames risk management as the state's paternalistic intervention, and shifts responsibilities for care and management onto families. Ma outlines the ethical tensions, intimate vulnerabilities in households, and health disparities across the population that biopolitical paternalism produces. By exploring these implications, Ma demonstrates the myriad ways biopower enables, inhibits, and transforms medical care in China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Mar 13 2025
    Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a patient’s economic productivity. Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness in the North Atlantic world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, various forms of madness were subjected to a style of psychiatric reasoning that was preoccupied with money. Psychiatrists across Western Europe and the United States attributed financial and even moral value to an array of pathological conditions, such that some mental disorders were seen as financial assets and others as economic liabilities. By turning to economic conduct and asking whether potential patients appeared capable of managing their financial affairs or even generating wealth, psychiatrists could often bypass diagnostic uncertainties about a person’s mental state. Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought, Nima Bassiri shows how this relationship transformed the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic, as the most common forms of social valuation—moral value, medical value, and economic value—were rendered equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed—and even revered. Nima Bassiri is assistant professor of literature at Duke University, where he is also the codirector of the Institute for Critical Theory. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Adrian Keith Perkel, "Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach" (Routledge, 2023)

    Adrian Keith Perkel, "Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach" (Routledge, 2023)
    Mar 12 2025
    Today I began my discussion with Dr. Adrian Perkel about his new book Unlocking The Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach (Routledge, 2024) “Aggression is to the mind what the immune system is to the body. It doesn’t seek the fight.” With this perfect mind-body analogy Dr. Perkel proposes a clear way to think theoretically and work clinically with aggression. Throughout the book he links Freud’s formulations of the psyche with contemporary physics and biochemistry. Perkel’s assertion that “Where the aggressive drive goes, so therein lies the solution to many of the psychological problems that present to us in life” is broadly summarized in three essential points: 1. The aggressive drive in the human psyche has the aim of reducing stimuli and excitations brought on by internal and external impingements - it is not looking for a fight. 2. What constitutes a threat or impingement is not necessarily objective - in fact it is always filtered through subjective experience and the UCS associations that are revisited repeatedly giving rise to a lens through which experience is filtered. 3. This experience is driven by memory traces of experience that embed themselves in the UCS and are revisited and hence enacted in a repetitive manner. “My argument is that what wraps all those three points together is that you have life drive needs yes but they're often unfulfilled they're often frustrated and then we need a second mechanism which is what Freud called the death drive.” Acknowledging that the death drive is contentious in psychoanalysis “in neuroscience it's not contested.” I knew going into this interview that we would only discuss a few concepts and elaborations from his book. For more of Dr. Perkel’s writing and webinar on this book please go here and here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)

    M. Chirimuuta, "The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Mar 10 2025
    This book is available open access here. The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024), Mazviita Chirimuuta argues that the standard ways neuroscientists simplify the human brain to build models for their research purposes mislead us about how the brain actually works. The key issue, instead, is to figure out which details of brain function are relevant for understanding its role in causing behavior; after all, the biological brain is a highly energetically efficient basis of cognition in contrast to the massive data centers driving AI that are based on the simplification that brain functionality is just a matter of neuronal action potentials. Chirimuuta, who is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, also argues for a Kantian-inspired view of neuroscientific knowledge called haptic realism, according to which what we can know about the brain is the product of interaction between brains and the scientific methods and aims that guide how we investigate them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    53 mins
  • Teaching With Positive Psychology Skills

    Teaching With Positive Psychology Skills
    Mar 6 2025
    Studies show that students who have a positive outlook on their lives outperform students who don’t. Is positive thinking a skill? Can it be taught? Our article is: “Teaching Positive Psychology Skills at school may be one way to help student mental health and happiness,” by Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, published in The Conversation, which explores how the components of happiness and connection can be applied to classroom settings around the world. Amid the reduced access to mental health services for many students, and the rising rates of student stress and depression, researchers are finding that positive psychology interventions make a real difference. “Students who’ve been introduced to science-based ideas about happiness,” Dr. Shum writes, “feel more satisfied with life.” She joins us for this episode to explain more. Our guest is: Dr. Kai Zhuang Shum, who is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist (NCSP) and a Licensed Psychologist. She serves as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville School Psychology Program. She specializes in positive psychology, motivation, anxiety (including OCD), attention, time management, and well-being (happiness). Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Mindfulness The Well-Gardened Mind Inside Look at Campus Mental Wellness Services You Will Get Through This Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD Make a Meaningful Life Meditation Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    55 mins
  • Steven Lesk, "Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness" (Prometheus, 2023)

    Steven Lesk, "Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Mental Illness" (Prometheus, 2023)
    Feb 26 2025
    Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia eludes us the most. No matter the strides scientists have made in neurological research nor doctors have made in psychiatric treatment, schizophrenia remains misunderstood, almost complacently mythologized. Without a reason for the illness, patients feel even more alienated than they already do, families are left hopeless, and doctors struggle to provide accurate care. Steven Lesk, though, after a medical career dedicated to those affected by schizophrenia and a determination to find the answer to its existence, presents a groundbreaking theory that will forever change the lives of the mentally ill. In Footprints of Schizophrenia: The Evolutionary Roots of Madness (Prometheus, 2023), Lesk threads evolutionary evidence with neurological evidence, turning the mysteries of our minds into a tapestry of logic. With his breakthrough theory and this unprecedented book, Lesk will invite necessary cultural dialogue about this stigmatized illness, provoke new psychiatric and pharmacological research, and provide unequivocal comfort to those afflicted and affected by schizophrenia. Lesk's "primitive organization theory" is based in human evolution, from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens, and the specific changes to our brains after the emergence of language. We have existed in human-like form for six million years, but we've only had language for 50,000; within the vast span of evolutionary time, that's hardly any time at all. Lesk elucidates us to the hormones affected by language, especially dopamine, and with brilliant clarity, connects human evolution, our brain affected by language, and those with schizophrenia whose dopamine doesn't flow in our new, adaptive way. In other words, the twenty million people who have schizophrenia in the world don't suppress dopamine in the way evolution has trained us, so their brains don't process language well and function as if they're in a hallucinatory, delusional dream state. Not only will Lesk's theory focus treatment efforts for schizophrenia, but it will also affect that of other dopamine-related mental illnesses like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's chorea, Tourette's, ADD, and more. Publishing Lesk's work will usher in a new era of psychiatric understanding, one that the field and the public desperately needs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Peter Shabad, "Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing the Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2024)

    Peter Shabad, "Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing the Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2024)
    Feb 25 2025
    Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become: Seizing the Vital Moment in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2025), by Peter Shabad, examines how humans can overcome feelings of shame through self‑acceptance and regain their innate passion and freedom to grow. Shabad examines in detail how self-shaming and passivity are intertwined with the fatalism of self-pity, envy, resentment, and ultimately, regret for not "seizing the vital moments" in life. From birth on, children attempt to contribute to the human endeavor through their innate passion. Parental receptivity enables a child to plant seeds of belonging, inspiring the generative passion necessary for furthering development. Exposed vulnerability due to the lack of receptivity leads to feelings of shame and self-consciousness; as human beings, we interpret our misfortunes and limitations as punishments and reverse our passion into an inhibited passivity. Shabad envisions psychotherapy as a pathway through which individuals learn to inclusively accept all aspects of their inner lives in order to embark on their journey of self-acceptance. He emphasizes the need for therapists to view patients as active agents in this process. Passion, Shame, and the Freedom to Become is a must read for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and anyone interested in developing a deeper understanding of the dynamics of shame and passion in our lives. Akilesh Ayyar is a spiritual teacher and writer in New York. He can be reached at ayyar@akilesh.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 36 mins