Recommend good books on Psychology

Anna Karenina

Yeah /lit/ loves Jung I think

what you're looking for is pop psychology. freud, jung, campbell, bernays etc.

>>7682041
Prometheus Rising.

>>7682041
Freud lol.

>>7682162
What can you tell about this book? Is it hard if english it's not my first language?

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>>7682130
>freud
>pop psychology
all the kool kids dismiss freud now because he is muh unprovable. i tried talking to a psych student about freud when i read some small book he co-wrote with einstein some years ago ("why war") and he had a total chimp-out. like palms-sweating, hyperventilating kind of stuff.

i get that he wrote a lot of hypothetical, theoretical things, musings, ideas that aren't provable (as he himself often said. he himself stressed that a lot).

i think psych people just hate freud because the whole goddamn field isn't an exact science: so they make their cute little statistics and studies and meta studies and call it rigorous, but they know very well it's not a hard science like maths or chemistry. they're scared about freud because he never bothered to sugar coat it.

>>7682041
Just so you know, things like 'body language' and Jung have very little to do with modern psychology. As far as I'm aware body language stuff is bullshit best confined to women's magazines (unless you're looking at emotional intelligence and non-verbal cues, which are more valid), and it's only useful to study Jung with respect to learning about the evolution of psychology - like Freud, his ideas were groundbreaking in an age where there was very little study of the mind, but nowadays they are largely outdated, and psychoanalysis in general is controversial.

Another problem is that the field of psychology is, as you say, so broad. Are you interested in social psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, neuropsychology, sport psychology, developmental psychology, or any of the other numerous sub-disciplines? I can recommend specific books if you're interests overlap with mine, or I'll be equally clueless if you're interested in different areas. Two people could study a psychology degree and learn only 5% of the same material - there's a lot of it.

Finally, fiction is useful, but not really psychology as it is understood today. For example, the psychological conceptualization of depression is simply 9 specific symptoms - 5 of which have to be present for a particular length of time. Obviously they know that the experience of depression is much deeper and richer than that, but that is not useful from a practical point of view, so they try to reduce it to its absolute simplest form. Literature can help to fill in these gaps and give a much deeper understanding of mental/psychological states, but obviously it's more art than science.

t. postgrad psychology student

I liked The Divided Self by R.D. Laing a good deal.

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>>7682041
One of my all-time favorites.

>>7682231
This. Freud is really interesting. You don't even need to buy his whole theory, but he just gives some very sharp insight.


OP, i would recommend reading Foucault too.

>>7682400

Hello my concealed carry instructor

>>7682231
>I think psych people just hate freud because the whole goddamn field isn't an exact science:
It doesn't aim to be an exact science, because only mathematics and logic can be considered as such. Natural science would be more precise, but in the sense that it aims to create models that make sense of the human mind and apply with a reasonable margin of error, for this you need statistics and similar studies of that kind - to show that is not a simple conjecture, but a fact within the model.
Now, Freud was very influential and important for the development of psychology, but his theories are not, as you said, provable, not even within some margins of error - at some point discussing the determination of the sexes he claims that male sex roled was determined by people peeing on fire, with no evidence no argument, basically he was just making things up.

>>7682369
>As far as I'm aware body language stuff is bullshit best confined to women's magazines (unless you're looking at emotional intelligence and non-verbal cues, which are more valid)
I would describe pic related as a book on body language, and it seems a serious (and great) psychological work.

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>>7682421
damn, I forgot the pic...

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/archives.html

>Medical Muses, Hustvedt
deals with case studies of hysteria, and the dynamics of psychiatry becoming a physical discipline under Charcot. it's got lots of stuff like Freud worshiping him, the society scandals of Paris around 1890 and hypnotism and all sorts.
>Freud
very interesting, and his Interpretation of Dreams gets quoted about Hamlet in almost every course on Hamlet. you can pick up a tiny book called Forgetting Things which was one of the Penguin minis a few years back, which is worth it for the diagrams of how Freudian slips work alone. there's also a collection by the same publisher called The Uncanny which is great for lit theory combined with psychology
>Crazy Like Us, Watters
This one is about exporting American models of psychiatry, like a modern version of the first one. Lots of interesting, far flung, case studies and bits of hoodoo and bureaucratic collapse.
Watters did another book with Ofshe, called Making Monsters, which is about how the Satanic Abuse and Recovered Memory SNAFUs came about in the 80s and early 90s. Watters is just a journalist, so Crazy Like Us is very readable; Ofshe is a psychiatrist so the Making Monsters book focuses more on in medical practice than just what happens in social effects.

If you want some off the deep end stuff which will get you strange looks but sounds good: Reich. This documentary is worth the time even if you don't end up reading his books
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyeS94J7EA
He's the guy Kate Bush wrote Cloudbursting about, because he figured rain was operated by the same energy which cures cancer and neuroses.

>>7682425
I can't say I've ever come across that one, but yeah he seems like a serious psychologist. It's just body language seems to be the worst of all pop psych - it's usually reduced tp paparazzi photos of couples in a celebrity magazine and an 'expert psychologist' revealing what their body language says about the state of their relationship.

>>7682421
>create models that make sense of the human mind and apply with a reasonable margin of error
this is a meme.

>>7682369
Not OP but got anything could on social psych. I am just interested in anything that could improve writing characters in fiction.

>>7682041
I'm reading the Art of Loving by Eric From now. It's one of the most impactful books I've ever read.

If you any interest in love, psychology, philosophy, society, and actually living a good life, it's an excellent read.

>>7682231
He's was a Jewish sex-pervert fearful of the Catholic Church.

>>7682728
Not a huge amount, sorry - it's not one of my favourite areas (I think the science is pretty weak a lot of the time, and the whole field seems heavily influenced by left-wing liberalism). That's not to say it's all bad or not worth studying, I just didn't like the social psychology department at my university very much.

That said, I'm sure Phillip Zimbardo's books are pretty interesting. He's one of the most well-known social psychologists and has conducted some of the most interesting psychological experiments of all time. I've not read it myself, but I've heard good things about 'The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil'.

>>7682041
Nietzsche

>>7682770
top lol my friend

nietzsche was uber autistic yo

>>7682763
Literally every intellectual field is pimarily left leaning. They have a better grasp on reality.

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http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/

>>7682487
>it's usually reduced tp paparazzi photos of couples in a celebrity magazine and an 'expert psychologist' revealing what their body language says about the state of their relationship.
There is some of that in the authors of the book, not involving celebrities but normal people, and they have the interesting claim that they're able to know if a marriage will work with just watching them talk about a specific problem for some minutes.
The interesting thing about that book is that they reduce body language to small units - one muscle movement, and describe general emotions as the multiple combinations of action units. They say that looking at how these action units appear, using slow motion, can reveal if some people are compatible or not - it's not exactly about the state of their relationship because both can be very happy at the time, but about how both relate to each other and how often this works out for couples.

Apparently they took the quite painful procedure of inserting needles inside they muscles to stimulate them with electricity, in order to be able to move some muscles that usually we're not able to move consciously, and that constitute action units as well.

>>7682369
You seem american or english.

>>7683235
Is he dead?

>>7682041

Thinking Fast and Slow

>>7682041
Real psychology is boring junk for nerds. Read Robert Anton Wilson and Lloyd deMause.

>>7682231
look to bernays for why people dislike freud

this will also lead you to understand why our society is more and more sexualized as time passes.

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>psychology

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/27/study-delivers-bleak-verdict-on-validity-of-psychology-experiment-results

>>7682734
Sounds good, will check it out

Shallows: what the internet does to your brain is well written and very interesting.

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>>7682041
Listen to me oh pee, I have just what you need.

First fucking thing you need to read is introduction lectures in psychology by boss Freud, this shit will get you ready for what's about to come, Freud also has literary value, so if you're interested in criticism after, you might want to read his interpretation of Gradiva by Jensen.

Next up you read some basic introduction to psychology course, you can easily find one on the internet, just Google you doofus, also, I know you'll be tempted to read the interpretation of dreams by mister Freud, but you'll just fail and not understand anything because you're still a noob and the interpretation is hardcore shit.

What you'll do now is get on terms with the modern trends in psychology, you'll need to read some Goleman (if I hear about the power of now or some other nerd shit I'll fuck yo bitch), also Ekman will teach you a lot.

Now you have the foundation to go on to the deep stuff, read totem and taboo by Freud and carry on with his case studies, this will be necessary because you need to understand how Freud's ideas can be extrapolated to new fields.

Lastly, you need to figure out what you want yourself, you want social psychology? Start with Bernays's propaganda just because it's fun, then read the classics on social, wiki will help you there, Le Bon is entry level stuff in that field. You want clinical psychology? Read Adler's Individual Psychology, you need to understand the personality first and Adler is your best man for that.

Good luck Oh Pee!

>>7682231
congrats on being a humanities retard and exposing your inferiority complex.

>>7685418
>I know you'll be tempted to read the interpretation of dreams by mister Freud, but you'll just fail and not understand anything because you're still a noob and the interpretation is hardcore shit.
>first publishing blockbuster of the 20th century
>literally so popular that not having read it was worse than not having read DFW on /lit/
>lol it's too deep for anyone now
>recommends goleman
>recommends bernays as opposed to freud
it's like ignorant and arrogant had a baby and it couldn't read

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>>7686565
Also, Freud is not that big on social psychology, and oh pee is looking for interesting reads, Bernays is the way to go.

Please tell me what you have against based Goleman, one of the remarkable psychologists of the moment.

Bet you don't have any arguments anyway, keep spouting memes pleb.

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>>7686565

>It was popular once so it's easy peasy to understand

This is why people misinterpret Freud, they jump right in the heavy stuff cause lol yolo 420.

>>7686910
Goleman is such boring, mealymouthed shit, you would be better reading the Greeks for the same insights with less pretense. If you really cannot see how slow and plodding he is to get to the same point, while also trying to make out that these are some new discoveries, you're not just retarded, you're socially ignorant to the point of autism.
>not big on social psychology
It's a pity nobody told him that, he could have saved himself from being the inspiration for his hack nephew, Bernays, and needn't have bothered writing Civilization and Its Discontents.
>>7686913
He wrote it to be easy to understand, so that he wouldn't be misinterpreted and could explain his theory to lay people who might be more accepting of it than professionals. If your complaint is that he's misinterpreted by those that read it, it was mostly those who were so far up their own asses they couldn't read anything but their own ideology and their preconceived notions into it who misinterpreted his work, like you.

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>>7687270
>Boring, mealymouthed shit
>Designed the frame for studying a new type of intelligence

I'm not sure if you're trolling or are just uninformed about the subject.

Get back to me when you actually read the books, studied the subjects, not just dank memes on lit.

Also, for the Freud argument, his psychology is somewhat irrelevant for social psychology, he considered Le Bon all you need, which today is out performed.

> civilization and its discontents

Mentioning this makes me pretty sure you've only read the Wikipedia page.

Also, yes, all his works are written for "laymen", does that mean you can jump right in the interpretation, considering it presents the results of a vast and rigorous process of psychoanalysis? It's the same as reading a book from end to beginning then trying to make sense of it.

Point is, go read some books kid, memes are memes.

>>7688572
If you mean "emotional intelligence", yes, that is the kind of boring mealymouthed pretending to be new by having a buzzword Goleman should be rated lower than The Secret for. The book is insufferable even for self help standards, and no, it's not new.

>only read the Wikipedia page
m8, you found Goleman interesting, I'm not sure you can read a Wikipedia page for errors. I'm not memeing at you, you read shit that is literally on the low end of self help books. Interpretation was designed to be dived right into, and the reason you have problems with that is because you read trash like Goleman and think it's not just new but relevant outside of middle aged housewives and social autists like yourself.

>read some books kid
Great advice, take some of it yourself. You sound ignorant and the arrogance isn't enough to snow anyone who's read actual big boy books (which Freud's IoD isn't even, though you might wish it was because it scared you).