Psychology Memoirs

For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives - if they survived - in and out of asylums, accumulating life's wreckage around them. In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind - manic depression, or bipolar disorder. That doctor was John Cade and in that small kitchen he stirred up a miracle.

Rose Cartwright reveals how the failure of the mental health system to cure her OCD led her to radical action. While she explored her trauma through a series of mind-bending psychedelic trips, Rose started to interrogate our dominant medical paradigm. What if people’s intense distress is not a symptom of illness, but a desperate expression of our need for love and connection? Rose set out on a quest to draw a new map of mental health, interviewing experts in psychiatry and neuroscience along the way: what she discovered will have implications for generations to come.

A unique joint memoir by a US marine and a conflict photographer whose unlikely friendship helped both heal their war-wounded bodies and souls.

On Feb. 12, 2008, at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, CA, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney shot and killed his classmate, Larry King, who had recently begun to call himself "Leticia" and wear makeup and jewelry to school. Profoundly shaken by the news and unsettled by media coverage that sidestepped the issues of gender identity and of race integral to the case, psychologist Ken Corbett traveled to LA to attend the trial.

It happens to us all: We think we’ve settled into an identity, a self, and then out of nowhere and with great force, the traces of our parents appear to us, in us - in mirrors, in gestures, in reaction and reactivity, at weddings and funerals, and in troubled thoughts that crouch in dark corners of our minds. In this masterful collection of new essays, the apple looks at the tree.

Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself from terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet. She built a global business based upon her claims. There was just one problem: she'd never had cancer. In 2015, journalists uncovered the truth: this hero of the wellness world, with over 200,000 followers, international book deals and a best-selling smartphone app, was a fraud.

In a truly groundbreaking exposé of professional golf, Michael Calvin and Thomas Bjorn - captain of the 2018 European Ryder Cup Team - capture the distinctive nature of the game, and the principles and philosophies of players who dominate the world rankings. With unprecedented access to the European Tour players, and in-depth interviews with the European Ryder Cup team, Calvin reveals a sport which operates entirely within the finest margins of excellence.

From John Wayne Gacy to Jeffrey Dahmer, many of America's most famous murderers have entered into the collective cultural consciousness. They have become pop culture figures, famous for their crimes and the violent nature of their acts. People feel compelled to understand more about these dark and twisted crimes, even when they disgust. For audiences everywhere, the very idea that these people can exist and operate in day-to-day life becomes an issue of abject terror and interest.

Learn the Single Most Powerful, Enlightened, Correct Method of Thinking: Your brain is a far, far more powerful computer than any that’s ever been built. And your conscious mental processes—the methods by which you think, acquire, and organize your knowledge—are that computer’s software. Your mind comes with default software—your instinctual method of thinking—which fails, however, to unlock even a tenth of your full intelligence. If you’re like most people, your software has never been upgraded—and you’ve ended up feeling unhappy, ineffective, and full of uncertainty, ...

Menopause hit Darcey Steinke hard. First came hot flashes. Then insomnia. Then depression. As she struggled to understand what was happening to her, she slammed up against a culture of silence and sexism. Some books promoted hormone replacement therapy. Others encouraged accepting the coming crone. Beyond that, there was little that offered a path to understanding menopause in a complex, spiritual, and intellectually engaged way.

What is it about humans that causes us to defy genetic programming and so often live in hope, despite all that's terrible about existence? In this audio program, Diane Ackerman shares what she has learned about human survival from working at a crisis hotline. Full of insight, drama, and self-revelation, her wisdom draws from all human knowledge - from the natural and social sciences to the insights of great artists - to show how humans, like animals, cope with stress, and to illumine the tenuous but gorgeous thread by which we all cling.

Evoking days gone by when coaches were respected as much for their off-court performances as for their success on the court, Wooden presents the timeless wisdom of legendary basketball coach John Wooden. In honest and telling passages about virtually every aspect of life, Coach shares his personal philosophy on family, achievement, success, and excellence. Raised on a small farm in South-Central Indiana, he offers lessons and wisdom learned throughout his career at UCLA and life as a dedicated husband, father, and teacher.

This book examines the root causes of veteran isolation, from PTSD, hyper-vigilance, and emotional numbness to the loss of identity and purpose that military life once provided. Many veterans return feeling like strangers in their own communities, struggling to connect with civilians who don’t understand their experiences. Others withdraw due to frustration with slow-moving veteran services, distrust of civilian healthcare, or the stigma of seeking help. These barriers leave many feeling unseen, unsupported, and without the camaraderie that once gave them strength.

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

In Serial Killers’ Dark Psychology, you’ll go beyond the headlines and crime scenes to uncover the hidden truths behind these terrifying predators. Using real case studies, forensic insights, and expert criminal profiling, this audiobook dives deep into the minds of history’s most ruthless murderers, exposing their methods, manipulations, and the terrifying logic behind their crimes.

Nyna Giles was picking up groceries at the supermarket one day when she looked down and saw the headline on the cover of a tabloid: "Former Bridesmaid of Princess Grace Lives in Homeless Shelter". Nyna was stunned, shocked to see her family’s private ordeal made so public - the woman mentioned on that cover, Carolyn Scott Reybold, was her mother. In this powerful memoir of friendship and motherhood, Nyna Giles uncovers her mother’s past to answer the questions she never knew to ask.

When Susannah Breslin is a toddler, her parents enroll her in an exclusive laboratory preschool at the University of California, Berkeley, where she becomes one of 128 children who are research subjects in an unprecedented 30-year psychological experiment that predicts who she and her cohort will grow up to be. Decades later, trapped in an abusive marriage to a man with a violent history and battling breast cancer, she starts to wonder how growing up under a microscope shaped the person she became and her life choices. Is she the narrator of the story of her life, or is something else?

Why listen to a book on Freud? As long as man views guilt as a problem for science instead of religion, the influence of Sigmund Freud will remain lurking in the mind of modern man. Freud was an architect of the modern mind - and unholy builder - like Marx and Darwin. Freud was also a hater of religion - specifically the Bible and its absolute standard.

Lucille O’Neal shares her public battles and personal struggles as the single young mother of NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal. Lucille O’Neal would one day have it all, but not before fighting the public battles and personal demons that would threaten to shatter the very foundation of her life and took a devastating toll along the way.

How Can I Help? portrays a week in the life of Dr. David Goldbloom as he treats patients, communicates with families, and trains staff at CAMH, the largest psychiatric facility in Canada. This highly listenable and touching behind-the-scenes account of his daily encounters with a wide range of psychiatric concerns - from his own patients and their families to Emergency Department arrivals - puts a human face on an often misunderstood area of medical expertise.