Resources
I think of this page as my virtual book shelf. I keep here a very incomplete list (in no particular order) of media and creators pertaining to psychotherapy and psychology from which I’ve benefited over the years.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Games People Play - Eric Berne
The idea of this book is that people in relationships and social groups play games with one another in order to avoid the risks inherent in intimacy. The author describes over a hundred different human games he and colleagues “discovered” in researching the book. It’s both funny and intelligent.
Psychology in Seattle Podcast – Kirk Honda
The host (a therapist and professor) with the help of co-hosts and friends does a good job demystifying topics in psychology and therapy.
In Session – HBO
An excellent dramatic television show about the life and work of a clinical psychologist. I recommend this show to anyone who’s interested in the complexities and drama of therapy.
The Happiness Hypothesis – Jonathan Haidt
Written by a contemporary researcher in psychology who illuminates contemporary and historical approaches to being happy. The book’s claims are grounded in psychological and sociological research. Haidt discusses the benefits of meditation, his subjective experience with antidepressants, as well as the role of religion and spirituality in a person’s happiness. I remember best his metaphor likening the human mind to an elephant with a conscious rider sitting atop, trying to guide the elephant, which also has a mind of its own.
Drugs Without the Hot Air – David Nutt
An excellent book for anyone interested in the history of psychoactive drugs, recreational and medicinal. The author is an English psychiatrist who has worked in high levels of government. Nutt holds unorthodox ideas about illegal recreational drugs (mainly psychedelics), their stigmatization, and their potential to benefit society.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in psychoactive drugs from the point of view of a broad-minded medical expert.
Escape from Freedom – Erich Fromm
This was the first book of Fromm’s that I read. I was turned on to Fromm after reading Bel Hooks’s All About Love, which references Fromm throughout. Escape from Freedom is a good introduction to Fromm’s original thinking and precise, analytical style. In Escape from Freedom, Fromm argues that the rise of Nazism illustrates a fundamental truth about humans: that people unconsciously fear freedom.
That’s Not What I Meant – Deborah Tannen
The author separates people into two communication camps: indirect communicators and direct communicators. She then helps people who identify as either better understand the logic of the other. I really liked the book because I, a direct communicator, was working closely with an indirect communicator, and I was constantly frustrated and disappointed in our working relationship. The book helped me understand my associate’s way in the world and learn how to more effectively communicate with him.
How to Be an Adult in Relationships – David Richo
This book discusses romantic love through lenses of Buddhism and mindfulness, breaking ‘love’ into five components (the ‘five A’s’): attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowance. Richo discusses his understanding of how love changes us and binds us in intimate relationships. He also elaborates how intimacy both brings a person’s psychological issues to the surface and provides the primary means through which those issues get resolved.
I enjoyed this book. The author writes clearly and much of its content just rang true for me.
The Drama of the Gifted Child – Alice Miller
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in psychodynamic or psychoanalytic therapy and how a ‘depth psychologist’ might think about their clients. It’s an enjoyable read too.
Love, Lust, and Lube – Moushumi Ghose
This is an excellent primer for anyone interested in sex positivity, a contemporary movement viewing sex as fundamentally good, and deserving of attention and understanding. The book also provides a ‘how to’ guide for participating in sex without commitment as well as non-monogamous relationships.
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames - Thich Nhat Hanh
This book is all about anger and it’s potential to do harm in relationships.
Thich Nhat Hanh describes anger as a hot potato. If you are fighting with a loved one, take twenty minutes and allow your hot anger to cool (like a potato) before attempting to reengage the discussion. He says that we need to be mindful of the potential destructiveness of our anger. In the event of an angry outburst, the author prescribes that the culprit address the outburst within twenty-four hours in order to mitigate relational damage.
Your Erroneous Zones – Wayne Dyer
This best-seller from the 1970s epitomizes the annoying marketing of the self-help genre with an awful cover featuring grandiose claims. But in my view, the writing and thinking of the author are nevertheless good.
Each chapter discusses a different way that we’re wired ‘erroneously’. The chapter I remember best discusses the fallacy of guilt. Dyer says that even if someone’s done something wrong, feeling guilty about it doesn’t help.
If you’re interested in cognitive therapy (‘feel better through thinking differently’), this book is a good primer.
Sigmund Freud
I’ve read a couple of Freud’s books and have read much more about his school of therapy as well as his importance to the field of psychotherapy. His writing never stirred me much, maybe because I only read him in translation. However, his ideas gird much of what happens in psychotherapy, and give language to the intricacies of the relationship that develops between therapist and client.
As a side note, I also enjoyed reading a correspondence between Freud and Einstein.
Carl Jung
I came to Carl Jung through Joseph Campbell and the famous Meyers-Briggs personality test which is based on Jung’s understanding of personality. Though much of his thinking is baked into the thinking of psychotherapists and the general population, Jung is more a mystic and philosopher than a scientist, which I embrace.
I can recommend a few of the books of his I’ve read: The Undiscovered Self, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, and Man and His Symbols.
Feeling Good by David Burns
Like Your Erroneous Zones, Feeling Good is a good primer on cognitive therapy.
The writing here is crisp and the author’s thinking is clear. Also, if you’re looking for DIY therapy tools, this book is excellent, providing exercises aimed at helping the reader better cope with negative emotions.
The Family Crucible – Gus Napier and Carl Whitaker
This is a good primer on family and systems therapy. It’s well written and is a page-turner.
Carl Rogers
Much has been written by and about Carl Rogers. Rogers’s most famous proposition is that the success of therapy has more to do with the kind of relationship that develops between a client and therapist than anything the therapist might say to the client.
Empathy, positive regard, and honesty are the key components for effective therapy according to Rogers. And he was the first (so far as I know) therapist to systematically test his hypotheses.
I recommend his book On Becoming a Person to anyone interested in the thinking of a foundational psychotherapist. It’s also a good primer on the person-centered approach to psychotherapy.
Love and Will – Rollo May
Rollo May brings spiritual and philosophical thinking into his work as a clinician and writer. In Love and Will, May identifies and elaborates a correlation between a person’s capacity to love and the strength of their will.
The Art of Loving – Erich Fromm
Fromm’s The Art of Loving was a self-help phenomenon in (I think) the 1950s. This book is a quick read full of Fromm’s original thinking and prose. The core message though is that love is not something you fall in, it’s something you stand in.
Love for Fromm is a creative action and orientation toward life. I’ve read this book at least three times.
The Art of Being (also known as To Have or To Be)– Erich Fromm
This book deals with systems of value. Fromm writes that people orient their lives generally around either ‘having’ or ‘being’. A person of the ‘having orientation’ amasses things, relationships, money, and power, and thus measures his or her worth against others. The ‘having orientation’ leads a person toward a life where satisfaction is fleeting and love is impossible.
The ‘being’ orientation on the other hand, which according to Fromm is less common in the West than the East, is about measuring one’s life by how one is living it. Are you being kind? Are you loving? Are you eating well? Are you being wise and pragmatic in your purchases? Are you being generous? Are you seeing the world outside of what you can acquire?
This is another wonderful book from Erich Fromm that has impacted my thinking more than I probably understand.
All About Love – Bel Hooks
This book deals with Hooks’s ideas around what love is. I don’t remember much specifically from it, but I do recall that I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Irvin Yalom
I’ve read a couple of Yalom’s books and I’ve watched some of his videos on group therapy. I think he’s a great writer and communicator for anyone trying to understand therapy from the point of view of a contemporary therapist. He writes well and lovingly demystifies the process of therapy.
Books of his I recommend: Love’s Executioner, The Gift of Therapy, and The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy.
Conjoint Family Therapy - Virginia Satir
I recommend this book to anyone interested in family therapy. This book is set up in outline form, and its main purpose is to elaborate and demystify the process of family therapy. Satir writes crisply and clearly.
