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The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
by Eric KandelA brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind--our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions--and how mind and brain relate to art. At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art. Kandel takes us into the world of Vienna to trace, in rich and rewarding detail, the ideas and advances made then, and their enduring influence today. The Vienna School of Medicine led the way with its realization that truth lies hidden beneath the surface. That principle infused Viennese culture and strongly influenced the other pioneers of Vienna 1900. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with his insights into how our everyday unconscious aggressive and erotic desires are repressed and disguised in symbols, dreams, and behavior. Arthur Schnitzler revealed women's unconscious sexuality in his novels through his innovative use of the interior monologue. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele created startlingly evocative and honest portraits that expressed unconscious lust, desire, anxiety, and the fear of death. Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers--Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele--inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today's cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history.
The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World
by Mark EdmundsonHow Freud&’s concept of the super-ego can help us to understand the harsh cultural climate of the digital age Cancellation, scapegoating, raving on Twitter. How did the Internet, which began as a place for open thought and exchange, become a forum for cruelty and judgment? Can a whole culture become mentally ill? How do we understand and respond to this problem? Mark Edmundson views contemporary culture and discourse through Freud&’s concept of the super-ego, the moralistic and frequently irrational inner judge. The poet William Blake was attuned to this &“dark pressure of self-condemnation,&” and Nietzsche knew its power as well. One way to mitigate (temporarily) the self-judgment of the super-ego is to aim it outward instead, judging and even punishing others for supposed infractions. Naturally these targets fight back, resulting in a cascade of bitterness and even hatred. Edmundson traces the destructive passion of the super-ego on politics, race, gender, class, education, and more, drawing on psychological studies, classroom experience, and the work of Adam Phillips and Slavoj Žižek. Edmundson proposes ways to manage the super-ego and even to transform it into an affirmative power. In The Age of Guilt, Edmundson renews the promise of Freudian theory as he explores our unique social moment with psychological insight, humanity, and erudition.
The Age of Charisma
by Young Jeremy C.An innovative examination of American society, culture, and politics, The Age of Charisma argues that the modern relationship between American leaders and followers grew out of a unique group of charismatic social movements prominent in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Drawing on hundreds of letters and testimonials, Jeremy C. Young illustrates how 'personal magnetism' in public speaking shaped society by enabling a shift from emotionally-inaccessible leadership to emotionally-available leadership. This charismatic speaking style caused a rapid transformation in the leader-follower relationship, creating an emotional link between speakers and listeners, and the effects of this social transformation remain with us today. Young argues that ultimately, charismatic movements enhanced American democracy by encouraging the personalization of leadership - creating a culture in which today's leaders appeal directly to Americans through mass media.
The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society
by Walter G. Andrews Mehmet KalpaklıThe Age of Beloveds offers a rich introduction to early modern Ottoman culture through a study of its beautiful lyric love poetry. At the same time, it suggests provocative cross-cultural parallels in the sociology and spirituality of love in Europe--from Istanbul to London--during the long sixteenth century. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli provide a generous sampling of translations of Ottoman poems, many of which have never appeared in English, along with informative and inspired close readings. The authors explain that the flourishing of Ottoman power and culture during the "Turkish Renaissance" manifested itself, to some degree, as an "age of beloveds," in which young men became the focal points for the desire and attention of powerful officeholders and artists as well as the inspiration for a rich literature of love. The authors show that the "age of beloveds" was not just an Ottoman, eastern European, or Islamic phenomenon. It extended into western Europe as well, pervading the cultures of Venice, Florence, Rome, and London during the same period. Andrews and Kalpakli contend that in an age dominated by absolute rulers and troubled by war, cultural change, and religious upheaval, the attachments of dependent courtiers and the longings of anxious commoners aroused an intense interest in love and the beloved. The Age of Beloveds reveals new commonalities in the cultural history of two worlds long seen as radically different.
Age of Anxiety: How to Cope
by Amrita Tripathi Kamna Chhibber&‘What does it mean when someone says they have Anxiety?&’&‘I&’m stressed and nervous all the time, do I have Anxiety?&’&‘Will I ever get better?&’These are some of the questions we want to answer in this book. Is this the Age of Anxiety? Well, how could it not be – when so many millions of us feel that persistent combination of heart palpitations, impending doom, dread, even lack of control, as one of our contributors describes it. The question is, what can we do about it?Through this book we will learn how to distinguish between anxiety as 'an attack of the nerves' or something that will come and go, and Anxiety as a disorder, which will need treatment, including possibly therapy or medication. The conversations are even more pertinent given the global Covid-19 pandemic, prolonged periods of social isolation and an increased focus on mental health and wellness. We learn from coping with Anxiety Disorders, sharing their journey to healing, explaining exactly what would have helped them along the way, as they seek to bust common myths and misconceptions.
The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business
by David T. CourtwrightWe live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. What can we do to resist temptations that insidiously and deliberately rewire our brains? Nothing, David Courtwright says, unless we understand the global enterprises whose “limbic capitalism” creates and caters to our bad habits.
Age into Race: The Coronization of the Old (International Perspectives on Aging #38)
by Haim HazanAge into Race is a socio-anthropological essay on the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on the cultural status of the old. As the worldwide horrors of the Corona era have since been publicly repressed, the text is geared to revisit and relive the tenor of that time while considering its latent revolutionary aftermath. There was wide agreement that Covid-19 policies targeted older people as a risk group in need of protection, setting it apart from the rest of society. Yet, paradoxically, long-term facilities for older people effectively became Covid-19 death traps. What kind of abandonment propelled this apparent contradiction? This book provides an answer by looking at ageist practices regarding Covid-19 triaging, lockdowns and distancing that affected older people around the world, devising Covid-19 as an inevitable "problem of the elderly" and, by implication, instating and categorizing "the elderly" as a public problem to be bio-politically managed and wrought. The Covid-19 pandemic and its concomitant "state of emergency" triggered an accelerated transmutation of customary ageism into emergent racism, spelling a fatal switch to designating the old as bearers of "bare" life unworthy of human living, thus turning old age from a seemingly cultural category to a socially fabricated viral menace of nature. The book tracks down the process through which the "Coronization" of culture legitimized and impelled a further stigmatization of old age beyond mere ageism to sheer racism. Thus, this transmutation, while compromising their autonomy and subjectivity via imposed lockdowns, social isolation, excommunication and selective discrimination rendered the old a race apart. Subsequently, the moral panic invoked by the specter of the pandemic transformed the social perceptions of later life from a containable social problem to an unbridled public hazard that summoned total measures presented as bureaucratically regimented regulations that dehumanized its victims with impunity.
The Age Heresy: How to Achieve More - Not Less - As You Get Older
by Buzan , Tony And Keene , RaymondIt is widely assumed that as we grow older there is a gradual decline in the way we use our brains. This book draws on acclaimed and proven scientific evidence to put forward a sensational brand-new theory which explodes the myth and shows that, with the right sort of mental and physical exercise, you can actually significantly improve your brain power as you get older. Drawing upon a wealth of fascinating facts and records, with studies of great geniuses such as Einstein and Goethe who improved with age, THE AGE HEARSY is packed with practical advice and guidance on how you can actively learn to enhance your memory, powers of creativity and concentration.
Age-Dissimilar Couples and Romantic Relationships
by Lara MckenzieIn recent years, there has been a widespread fascination with age-dissimilar, heterosexual romantic relationships. This interest is not new - these types of couples have been featured in Western media for decades, even centuries - yet qualitative research into such relationships has been limited. This book examines how the romantic relationships of age-dissimilar couples are understood. Based on a range of interviews, McKenzie argues that historical shifts toward greater personal autonomy in partner selection, within relationships, and in marriage and relationship dissolution have been greatly overstated. Through her focus on age-dissimilar couples, whose increasing prevalence have often been seen to be part of this shift, she suggests that these relationships are an avenue throughwhich shared cultural understandings of relatedness, as well as individualism, might be further analysed. McKenzie argues for an approach that emphasises cultural continuity, and which accounts for complexity and contradiction in how age-dissimilar relationships and romantic love are understood. Examining key issues of kinship, ageing and emotion, Age-Dissimilar Couples and Romantic Relationships will appeal to scholars of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Family Studies and Sociology.
Age and Work: Advances in Theory, Methods, and Practice (SIOP Organizational Frontiers Series)
by Hannes Zacher Cort W. RudolphThe edited volume Age and Work: Advances in Theory, Methods, and Practice presents a systematic collection of key advances in theory, methods, and practice regarding age(ing) and work. This cutting-edge collection breaks new ground by developing novel and useful theory, explaining underutilized but important methodological approaches, and suggesting original practical applications of emerging research topics. The book begins with a prologue by the World Health Organization’s unit head for aging and health, an introduction on the topic by the editors, and an overview of past, current, and future workforce age trends. Subsequently, the first main section outlines theoretical advances regarding alternative age constructs (e.g., subjective age), intersectionality of age with gender and social class, paradoxical age-related actions, generational identity, and integration of lifespan theories. The second section presents methodological advances regarding behavioral assessment, age at the team and organizational levels, longitudinal and diary methods, experiments and interventions, qualitative methods, and the use of archival data. The third section covers practical advances regarding age and job crafting, knowledge exchange, the work/nonwork interface, healthy aging, and absenteeism and presenteeism, and organizational meta-strategies for younger and older workers. The book concludes with an epilogue by an eminent scholar in age and work. Written in a scientific yet accessible manner, the book offers a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, academics in the fields of psychology and business, as well as practitioners working in the areas of human resource management and organizational development.
Age and Foreign Language Learning in School
by Amelia Lambelet Raphael BertheleThis book discusses the empirical studies on how biological age influences foreign language learning in school. It provides a succinct overview of a complex field for both experts and researchers interested in the teaching and learning of foreign languages.
Against White Interiority: A Racial Critique of Therapeutic Reason
by Sam BinkleyThis book presents a bold critique of the new racial sensibility that has attained global prominence following the police murder of George Floyd. Through a set of managerial and therapeutic discourses, this new sensibility describes the inner racial life of white subjects, inducing them to adopt a therapeutic attitude toward deeply interiorized white emotions and conflicts. In so doing, the new racial sensibility promises to remake whiteness in the image of the self-aware racial ally. However, such an appeal, it is argued, serves the subtle function of the preservation of white racial dispositions, and the reproduction of the very racism it sets out to transform. Adopting a critical lens derived from Michel Foucault’s analysis of sexuality, together with an engagement with sociological, psychoanalytic and phenomenological reflections on shame as a racial affect, a critique of white interiority considers alternative frames through which white anti-racist subjection might be imagined.
Against Understanding, Volume 2: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key
by Bruce FinkAgainst Understanding, Volume 2, casts a spotlight on the status of case studies in psychoanalysis, which are commonly used to illustrate clinicians’ expertise and mastery rather than patients’ actual itineraries. When a case is presented, the complex, unwieldy, and often self-contradictory material of a therapeutic trajectory is often vastly oversimplified in view of producing a linear narrative that seems perfectly to fit the parameters of a practitioner’s preferred theoretical framework. Bruce Fink attempts to eschew the appearance of "mastery" in assembling clinical material and in discussing his approach to practice and theory in the myriad case histories and vignettes included in both Volumes 1 & 2 of Against Understanding. To counterbalance the kind of paring down of material usually carried out to make cases conform to a particular paradigm, the case write-ups presented here include much of the "raw data" so often omitted: verbatim quotes from patients about their lives, backgrounds, dreams, and fantasies; and details about the many obscure, vacillating, and unruly phases of treatment. Fink hopes thereby to allow readers to form their own opinions about the well-foundedness or unsoundness of his formulations, interpretations, and interventions. This second part of a two-volume collection of papers, interviews, and case studies provides the reader with hundreds of illustrations of Lacanian theory in practice, and will be essential for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors.
Against Understanding, Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key
by Bruce Fink2014 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis Book Prize winner for Best Anthology Against Understanding, Volume 1, explores how the process of understanding (which can be seen to be part and parcel of the Lacanian dimension of the imaginary) reduces the unfamiliar to the familiar, transforms the radically other into the same, and renders practitioners deaf to what is actually being said in the analytic setting. Running counter to the received view in virtually all of contemporary psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Bruce Fink argues that the current obsession with understanding – on the patient’s part as well as on the clinician’s – is excessive insofar as the most essential aim of psychoanalytic treatment is change. Using numerous case studies and clinical vignettes, Fink illustrates that the ability of clinicians to detect the unconscious through slips of the tongue, slurred speech, mixed metaphors, and other instances of "misspeaking" is compromised by an emphasis on understanding the why and wherefore of patients’ symptoms and behavior patterns. He shows that the dogged search for conscious knowledge about those symptoms and patterns, by patients and practitioners alike, often thwart rather than foster change, which requires ongoing access to the unconscious and extensive work with it. In this first part of a two-volume collection of papers, many of which have never before appeared in print, Bruce Fink provides ample evidence of the curative powers of speech that operate without the need for any sort of explicit, articulated knowledge. Against Understanding, Volume 1 brings Lacanian theory alive in a way that is unique, demonstrating the therapeutic force of a technique that relies far more on the virtues of speech in the analytic setting than on a conscious realization about anything whatsoever on patients’ parts. This volume will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors.
Against the Wind
by Howard Scott Madeleine Gagnon Phyllis AronoffIs an artist born, or rather, created by experience? From the moment in childhood when he is forced to take drastic action to defend his adoptive mother from a violent assault - the only maternal figure that he has ever known - it is evident that the life of Joseph Sully-Jacques is to be no ordinary life, and one marked by sorrow and adversity.Unable to cope with or even recognize the residual effects of his trauma in adolescence, Joseph retreats into an increasingly abstract world, one in which he must confront what he calls his "visions." And when he hears of the death of his natural mother, this brings to the surface memories he had hoped were buried deep within him, and precipitates the form of various crises to come, particularly as he discovers and makes use of the artistic abilities revealed to his family during his psychiatric evaluation.After many more hardships, the young man does find meaning to the absurdities of life, ironically in the asylum, where he meets a virtuoso pianist whose condition prevents her from continuing to exercise her talents. They heal together through their mutual love, which will soon subsist upon nothing but memory and absence. During mournful years of raising his son alone, in his extensive adversaria, Joseph sets out to reconcile the contradictory themes in his life, including abandonment, madness, love, and death.In spare, lucid prose, and in a style reminiscent of André Gide, Madeleine Gagnon invites the reader to experience the creation and development of an artist "in his own words" - Joseph's gelid journal entries that are to become emphatic poetic laments - in a novel that chronicles the extreme destitution of Quebec in the years before World War Two and in abstract developing forms of artistic expression after years of uncertainty and loss.
Against Sex: Identities of Sexual Restraint in Early America (Gender and American Culture)
by Kara M. FrenchHow much sex should a person have? With whom? What do we make of people who choose not to have sex at all? As present as these questions are today, they were subjects of intense debate in the early American republic. In this richly textured history, Kara French investigates ideas about, and practices of, sexual restraint to better understand the sexual dimensions of American identity in the antebellum United States. French considers three groups of Americans—Shakers, Catholic priests and nuns, and followers of sexual reformer Sylvester Graham—whose sexual abstinence provoked almost as much social, moral, and political concern as the idea of sexual excess. Examining private diaries and letters, visual culture and material artifacts, and a range of published works, French reveals how people practicing sexual restraint became objects of fascination, ridicule, and even violence in nineteenth-century American culture. Against Sex makes clear that in assessing the history of sexuality, an expansive view of sexual practice that includes abstinence and restraint can shed important new light on histories of society, culture, and politics.
Against My Better Judgment: An Intimate Memoir of an Eminent Gay Psychologist
by Roger BrownAgainst My Better Judgment: An Intimate Memoir of an Eminent Gay Psychologist is an extraordinary and moving account of the life of a gay man in his late 60s after he loses his companion of 40 years to cancer. A leading professor of psychology at Harvard University, Roger Brown bravely comes forth with his compelling story of grief, loneliness, and a relentless search for intimacy, healing, and self-acceptance. Readers gain insight into a stage of life experienced by gay men of which little is written or spoken due to the ageism that characterizes homosexual culture. Against My Better Judgment reveals deeply personal truths that will prepare gay men for what to expect in the later stages of life. Universal in nature, these truths will speak to readers from various lifestyles and of all ages. Readers will recognize the book as a story of looking for love in all the wrong places, but will also see in it a process of discovery--both internal and external. In the aftermath of his lover&’s death, Brown turns to prostitutes for companionship, for relieving repressed sexual energy, and even for love. Through his unique relationships with three young men, he does not find the romantic love he so desperately seeks, but discovers that his idea of human nature has been formed by his particular life position and association with people who share his values, knowledge, and privileges. Once he goes outside his social and intellectual circle, he acquires a new perspective on life and realizes how far from universal truth his notions of humanity have been.Readers of Against My Better Judgment will gain a different perspective on the complexities of love, relationships, fidelity, human nature, and the hardships of life inevitably faced by all humans--straight, gay, or bisexual. Gay men, lesbians, psychologists, widowers, therapists, and anthropologists, as well as sensitive readers of any background, will heighten their understanding of what it means to be human. This remarkable story makes a tremendous contribution to existing gay literature and the timeless struggle of art and literature to make sense of the universe and the place of humans within it. Echoing life, Against My Better Judgment, with its brutal honesty, intrigues and repels alternately, just as it elicits both sadness and laughter.
Against Moral Responsibility
by Bruce N. WallerA vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial.In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility.Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.
Against Moral Responsibility
by Bruce N. WallerIn Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms--including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts--is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want--natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities--would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.
Against Happiness
by Owen Flanagan Joseph E. LeDoux Bobby Bingle Daniel M. Haybron Batja Mesquita Michele Moody-Adams Songyao Ren Anna Sun Yolonda Y. WilsonThe “happiness agenda” is a worldwide movement that claims that happiness is the highest good, happiness can be measured, and public policy should promote happiness. Against Happiness is a thorough and powerful critique of this program, revealing the flaws of its concept of happiness and advocating a renewed focus on equality and justice.Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors, this book provides both theoretical and empirical analysis of the limitations of the happiness agenda. The authors emphasize that this movement draws on a parochial, Western-centric philosophical basis and demographic sample. They show that happiness defined as subjective satisfaction or a surplus of positive emotions bears little resemblance to the richer and more nuanced concepts of the good life found in many world traditions. Cross-cultural philosophy, comparative theology, and social and cultural psychology all teach that cultures and subcultures vary in how much value they place on life satisfaction or feeling happy. Furthermore, the ideas promoted by the happiness agenda can compete with rights, justice, sustainability, and equality—and even conceal racial and gender injustice.Against Happiness argues that a better way forward requires integration of cross-cultural philosophical, ethical, and political thought with critical social science. Ultimately, the authors contend, happiness should be a secondary goal—worth pursuing only if it is contingent on the demands of justice.
Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy
by Eric G. WilsonIn Against Happiness, the scholar Eric G. Wilson argues that melancholia is necessary to any thriving culture, that it is the muse of great literature, painting, music, and innovation and that it is the force underlying original insights and suggests it would be better to relish the blues that make humans people.
Against Equality
by Ryan ConradWhen "rights" go wrong.Does gay marriage support the right-wing goal of linking access to basic human rights like health care and economic security to an inherently conservative tradition?Will the ability of queers to fight in wars of imperialism help liberate and empower LGBT people around the world?Does hate-crime legislation affirm and strengthen historically anti-queer institutions like the police and prisons rather than dismantling them? The Against Equality collective asks some hard questions. These queer thinkers, writers, and artists are committed to undermining a stunted conception of "equality." In this powerful book, they challenge mainstream gay and lesbian struggles for inclusion in elitist and inhumane institutions. More than a critique, Against Equality seeks to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility! "In an era when so much of the lesbian and gay movement seems to echo the rhetoric of the mainstream Establishment, the work of Against Equality is an important provocation and corrective.... I hope this book is read widely, particularly by the people who will most disagree with it; in the tradition of the great political pamphleteers, this collection should spark debate around some of the key issues for our movement." -Dennis Altman, author of Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation "Against Equality issues a radical call for social transformation. Against and beyond the "holy trinity" of pragmatic gay politics-marriage, militarism, and prison-the queer and trans voices archived in this collection offer a radical left critique of neoliberalism, capitalism, and state oppression. In a format accessible and enlivening, equally at home in the classroom and on the street, this book keeps our political imaginations alive. Prepare to be challenged, educated, and inspired." -Margot Weiss, author of Techniques of Pleasure
Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion
by Ryan ConradWhen “rights” go wrong.<P> Does gay marriage support the right-wing goal of linking access to basic human rights like health care and economic security to an inherently conservative tradition?<P> Will the ability of queers to fight in wars of imperialism help liberate and empower LGBT people around the world?<P> Does hate-crime legislation affirm and strengthen historically anti-queer institutions like the police and prisons rather than dismantling them?<P> The Against Equality collective asks some hard questions. These queer thinkers, writers, and artists are committed to undermining a stunted conception of “equality.” In this powerful book, they challenge mainstream gay and lesbian struggles for inclusion in elitist and inhumane institutions. More than a critique, Against Equality seeks to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility!
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
by Paul BloomWe often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don't have enough of it.Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations--who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison--are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and--yes--ultimately more moral.Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.
Against Depression
by Peter D. KramerIn his landmark bestseller Listening to Prozac, Peter Kramer revolutionized the way we think about antidepressants and the culture in which they are so widely used. Now Kramer offers a frank and unflinching look at the condition those medications treat: depression. Definitively refuting our notions of "heroic melancholy," he walks readers through groundbreaking new research—studies that confirm depression's status as a devastating disease and suggest pathways toward resilience. Thought-provoking and enlightening, Against Depression provides a bold revision of our understanding of mood disorder and promises hope to the millions who suffer from it. .