my mind on books

Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Dr Daniel J Siegel (Bantam, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

From a pioneer in the field of mental health comes a groundbreaking book on the healing power of “mindsight,” the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. Mindsight allows you to make positive changes in your brain–and in your life.

• Is there a memory that torments you, or an irrational fear you can’ t shake?
• Do you sometimes become unreasonably angry or upset and find it hard to calm down?
• Do you ever wonder why you can’t stop behaving the way you do, no matter how hard you try?
• Are you and your child (or parent, partner, or boss) locked in a seemingly inevitable pattern of conflict?

What if you could escape traps like these and live a fuller, richer, happier life? This isn’t mere speculation but the result of twenty-five years of careful hands-on clinical work by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. A Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Siegel is one of the revolutionary global innovators in the integration of brain science into the practice of psychotherapy. Using case histories from his practice, he shows how, by following the proper steps, nearly everyone can learn how to focus their attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain.

Through his synthesis of a broad range of scientific research with applications to everyday life, Dr. Siegel has developed novel approaches that have helped hundreds of patients heal themselves from painful events in the past and liberate themselves from obstacles blocking their happiness in the present. And now he has written the first book that will help all of us understand the potential we have to create our own lives. Showing us mindsight in action, Dr. Siegel describes

• a sixteen-year-old boy with bipolar disorder who uses meditation and other techniques instead of drugs to calm the emotional storms that made him suicidal
• a woman paralyzed by anxiety, who uses mindsight to discover, in an unconscious memory of a childhood accident, the source of her dread
• a physician–the author himself–who pays attention to his intuition, which he experiences as a “vague, uneasy feeling in my belly, a gnawing restlessness in my heart and my gut,” and tracks down a patient who could have gone deaf because of an inaccurately written prescription for an ear infection
• a twelve-year-old girl with OCD who learns a meditation that is “like watching myself from outside myself” and, using a form of internal dialogue, is able to stop the compulsive behaviors that have been tormenting her

These and many other extraordinary stories illustrate how mindsight can help us master our emotions, heal our relationships, and reach our fullest potential.

A book as inspiring as it is informative, as practical as it is profound, Mindsight offers exciting new proof that we aren’t hardwired to behave in certain ways, but instead have the ability to harness the power of our minds to resculpt the neural pathways of our brains in ways that will be life-transforming.

See also: Author’s website & a Google talk from last April:

We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion by Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris (Scribner, 2009)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

In this dazzling exploration of contemporary human feelings, digital whiz kids Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris use their computer programs to peer into the inner lives of millions, constructing a vast and deep portrait of our collective emotional landscape. Armed with custom software that scours the English-speaking world’s new Internet blog posts every minute, hunting down the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling,” the authors have collected over 12 million feelings since 2005, amassing an ever-growing database of human emotion that adds more than 10,000 new feelings a day. Drawing from this massive real-world stockpile of found sentiment, We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion presents the best of the best — the euphoria, the despair, the passion, the dreams, and the desires that make us human. At turns touching and thought-provoking, humorous and heartbreaking, We Feel Fine combines the words and pictures of total strangers to explore every corner of the human experience. Packed with personal photos, scientific observations, statistical infographics, and countless candid vignettes from ordinary people, We Feel Fine is a visual, fiercely intelligent, endlessly engrossing crash course in the secrets of human emotion. Are men or women happier? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? Is beauty the bridge between happiness and negativity? How do our emotions change as we age? What causes depression? What’s sexy? What’s normal? What’s human? We Feel Fine finally provides a way to answer these questions that is both quantitative and anecdotal, putting individual stories into a larger context and showing the stories behind the statistics — or as the authors like to say, “bringing life to statistics and statistics to life.” With lush, colorful spreads devoted to 50 feelings, 13 cities, 10 topics, 6 holidays,5 age groups, 4 weather conditions, and 2 genders, We Feel Fine explores our emotions from every angle, providing insights into and examples of each. Equal parts pop culture and psychology, computer science and conceptual art, sociology and storytelling, We Feel Fine is no ordinary book — with thousands of authors from all over the world sharing their uncensored emotions, it is a radical experiment in mass authorship, merging the online and offline worlds to create an indispensable handbook for anyone interested in what it’s like to be human.

The whole book (and more) can be viewed at the website.

Mysterious Minds: The Neurobiology of Psychics, Mediums, and Other Extraordinary People ed. by Stanley Krippner and Harris L. Friedman (Praeger, 2009)

(link for UK)

Welcome to the world of Mysterious Minds: The Neurobiology of Psychics, Mediums, and Other Extraordinary People. Here, experts in the emerging field of neurobiological study make the case that while many claims of psychic ability are easily proven false, there may well be claimants who can obtain information in ways not easily explained by mainstream science—and there might be scientific tools and approaches available to confirm those experiences.

Written by an expert team of distinguished investigators from a half dozen countries around the world, Mysterious Minds introduces readers to the current state of research into parapsychological experiences, emphasizing the neurobiological data obtained by those who claim to be psychics or mediums. It offers specific examples of paranormal claims of extraordinary people—claims scrutinized through the use of high-tech brain imaging, clinical neurological examinations, and psychotropic drugs. The book concludes by proposing a series of models based on fundamental neurobiology, psychology, and quantum physics that could help us unravel these mental mysteries.

This week’s NOVA asks ‘What Are Dreams?’ The full program will be available online starting Nov 25 through the above website.

Also check out the recommended “Links & Books,” which has links to websites and articles, plus these book titles (which they didn’t link, so I’m providing the Amazon links):
Nightmares: The Science and Solution of Those Frightening Visions during Sleep (Brain, Behavior, and Evolution) by Patrick McNamara (Praeger, 2008)
Take a Nap! Change Your Life by Sara Mednick (Workman Publishing Co, 2006)
The Mind at Night: The New Science of How and Why We Dream by Andrea Rock (Basic Books, 2005)
Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of the Subjective Experience by Mark Solm (Other Press, 2003)

I wasn’t familiar with Robert Stickgold who is the resident expert in their “Ask the Expert” section, but he has co-edited a recent volume on The Neuroscience of Sleep.

Seed Magazine has a video conversation between Stickgold and Michel Gondry, director of The Science of Sleep.

“It was all in your mind,” Chade told me sometime later, and it stung that he dismissed so lightly all that I had endured. All of life, I wanted to tell him, is in our minds. Where else does it take place, where else do we add up what it means to us and subtract what we have lost? An event is just an event until some person attaches meaning to it.

— Fool’s Fate (The Tawny Man, Book 3) by Robin Hobb (Bantam Spectra, 2004), p 286 (link for UK)