On to the reviews:
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
by Eric G. Wilson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008
Review by Elisabeth Herschbach, Ph.D.
"Do you not see," wrote John Keats, poet of melancholy, "how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?" According to Eric Wilson, this is a lesson that we Americans, obsessed with happiness at the expense of all those more somber, soul-making states of mind-- melancholy, sadness, gloomy introspection-- are fast forgetting.Read the whole review.
Lured by the "gaudy glow of the pervasive American dream," we chase easy comforts and the smug trappings of conventional success. Bombarded with self-help books and prescriptions for Prozac, we think that every pang of sorrow, every lapse into gloom, must be either a sign of disease or a personal failing, something to be overcome in the quest for perfect bliss. But the pursuit of happiness-- drafters of the Declaration of Independence be darned-- is not all that it's chalked up to be. Or so Wilson argues.
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The Trauma of Psychological Torture
by Almerindo E. Ojeda (Editor)
Praeger, 2008
Review by J. Jeremy Wisnewski, Ph.D.
In a publishing climate where books on torture are being released faster than we can read them, it is refreshing to know that there is still plenty to say--and plenty to learn. Almerindo E. Ojeda's newly edited volume proves this in spades. Each of the twelve chapters offers fresh perspective on a surprising range of issues. Despite the title, The Trauma of Psychological Torture goes well beyond an analysis of the psychological and physiological effects of torture. On my view, this is a serious asset--even charm, if such a thing can be said--of this book: it attempts to situate the trauma of psychological torture in historical and social context, paying close attention to several areas of interest that a reader might not expect from the title alone. In addition to exploring what the title indicates, the book features articles on the origins of torture in U.S. history (one contributed by none other than Alfred McCoy), the ethical questions surrounding medical complicity in torture, and the relation of torture to practices in 'supermax' prison facilities in the United States. In addition, the editor of the book contributes an interesting attempt to operationalize the definition of 'psychological torture.' The range of articles makes this book a surprisingly panoramic work that would be a welcome read to anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of torture as it exists today.Read the whole review.
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The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain
by George Lakoff
Viking, 2008
Review by Maura Pilotti, Ph.D.
George Lakoff is a cognitive scientist who, for quite some time, has applied to politics his knowledge of how the human brain/mind processes information. The enlightening results of this undertaking are evident in his latest book: The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st –Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. In it, Lakoff examines the functioning of the human brain/mind with the purpose of identifying the relationship between the format in which ideas, mostly involving public policy, are presented and their reception by the different constituencies of public opinion (i.e., us). He focuses on frames, pre-existing knowledge structures that absorb, transform, and attribute value to incoming information. The influence of frames on information processing is also prominently featured in his earlier work devoted to the American political process (e.g., Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think; Don't Think of an Elephant). Yet, in The Political Mind, Lakoff's treatment of the role that frames play in the functioning of the human brain/mind and thus of their impact on the political process is more complete, although no less insightful and direct.Read the whole review.
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Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies
by Brett Kahr
Basic Books, 2008
Review by George Williamson, Ph.D.
Between 2003 and 2006, Brett Kahr administered some 24,000 surveys (approx.) to British and American subjects, to collect and study their sexual fantasies. Who's been sleeping in your head? reports on the results of these surveys and presents Kahr's psychological analysis. The main data collection was done through computer and internet sites in successive stages, beginning with an initial pilot survey, followed by a primary survey of British subjects and then a smaller survey (approximately one sixth of total) of American subjects. In addition, the computerized surveys were supplemented by in-depth interviews, each lasting five hours, with 132 British subjects. This provided Kahr with a body of about 20,000 fantasies with which to work. In addition to sexual fantasy content, considerable data on sexual history, family history and current living conditions were collected as well. A large portion of the book is taken up with directly reporting a selection of the fantasies as recorded, by simply listing them with little analysis. Some fantasies taken from the interviews, however, were subjected to close and detailed analysis.Read the whole review.
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Revolution in Psychology: Alienation to Emancipation
by Ian Parker
Pluto Press, 2007
Review by Gustav Jahoda, Ph.D.
The author is a professor of psychology, though what he professes is light-years away from the conventional approaches, since he regards current psychology as 'mostly useless and sometimes dangerous'. A few years ago he gave a talk in which he suggested that it is so bad that only Marxism can save it. From the fact that he is anti-Stalinism one can infer that his Marxism is probably of the Trotskyite variety. He is extremely well read in the psychological literature, though there is no indication that he has done any empirical research. At this point readers of this review may well conclude that this book is not for them, but that would be a mistake. Parker views psychology through a red filter, and his unusual panorama is presented with force and clarity, supported by an impressive display of scholarship -- the bibliography extends over 35 pages.Read the whole review.
Parker's fundamental thesis is that present-day western psychology is tool of capitalist society and as such a means of control and oppression. All the well-known slogans are rolled out: ideology, alienation, false consciousness, class struggle, and so on. Some of these are helpfully explained.
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God and Phenomenal Consciousness: A Novel Approach to Knowledge Arguments
by Yujin Nagasawa
Cambridge University Press, 2008
Review by David Efird, Ph.D.
Sometimes the greatest advances in a discipline occur not when new data is discovered but rather when an underlying structure of known, but thought to be disparate, phenomena is uncovered. These advances, particularly in the sciences, are typically termed 'unifications', such as the unification of the electric with the magnetic force. It is just this sort of advance that Yujin Nagasawa has made in the Philosophies of Mind and of Religion. Nagasawa has discerned what he takes to be a common structure to four influential arguments in these disciplines, two concerning the nature of God, and two concerning the nature of phenomenal consciousness. The benefit of this 'unification' is that it opens up new possibilities for responding to the arguments, possibilities which had not been seen before his 'unification', since if there is a plausible reply to one of the arguments, it is possible that a structurally similar reply will apply to at least one of the other three arguments. This is just the strategy Nagasawa pursues, and from this strategy emerges a new theory of the nature of the world in its most fundamental elements and of the possibility of our knowledge of it. In this review I will explain briefly Nagasawa's 'unification' of the four arguments, the sort of response Nagasawa favors to two of them, and an argument for why Nagasawa's 'unification' may not provide as great an advance as we might have hoped.Read the whole review.
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