my mind on books

Your Emotional Type: Key to the Therapies That Will Work for You by Michael A. Jawer and Marc S. Micozzi (Healing Arts Press, 2011)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Your emotional type as the means to finding the right treatment for your chronic illness or pain

• Provides an easy questionnaire to find your emotional type

• Identifies the connections between emotional type and 12 common chronic ailments: asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, hypertension, irritable bowel, migraines, PTSD, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcers

• Explains which of 7 mind/body healing therapies works best for each emotional type

Different people process their feelings in different ways–your emotional style is a fundamental aspect of who you are. It affects more than just your outlook on life; it can affect your well-being as well. Many chronic ailments are not the result of germs or genes but are rooted in our emotional biology. The link between emotional type and health explains why modern medicine–which views treatment as “one size fits all”–often fails to successfully treat chronic pain and illness.

Examining the interplay of emotions, chronic illness and pain, and treatment success, Michael Jawer and Dr. Marc Micozzi reveal how chronic conditions are intrinsically linked to certain emotional types and how these ailments are best treated by choosing a healing therapy in line with your type. Explaining the emotional ties behind the 12 most common chronic illnesses–asthma, allergies, chronic fatigue, depression, fibromyalgia, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, post-traumatic stress disorder, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcers–the authors provide an easy assessment survey that allows you to identify your emotional type as well as the ailments you are susceptible to. Extending this connection between mind and body, they assess 7 alternative healing therapies–acupuncture, hypnosis, biofeedback, meditation, yoga, guided imagery, and relaxation techniques–and indicate which methods work best for each emotional type. Empowering you as a patient to seek out the therapies that will work best for you, this book offers a welcome path to effective pain relief and sustainable health.

See also: Book website

Memory: Fragments of a Modern History by Alison Winter (University of Chicago Press)

(amazon.co.uk – 29 Dec)

Product description from the publisher:

Picture your twenty-first birthday. Did you have a party? If so, do you remember who was there? Now step back: how clear are those memories? Should we trust them to be accurate, or is there a chance that you’re remembering incorrectly? And where have the many details you can no longer recall gone? Are they hidden somewhere in your brain, or are they gone forever?

Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, and, as Alison Winter shows in Memory: Fragments of a Modern History, the answers have changed dramatically in just the past century. Tracing the cultural and scientific history of our understanding of memory, Winter explores early metaphors that likened memory to a filing cabinet; later, she shows, that cabinet was replaced by the image of a reel of film, ever available for playback. That model, too, was eventually superseded, replaced by the current understanding of memory as the result of an extremely complicated, brain-wide web of cells and systems that together assemble our pasts. Winter introduces us to innovative scientists and sensationalistic seekers, and, drawing on evidence ranging from scientific papers to diaries to movies, explores the way that new understandings from the laboratory have seeped out into psychiatrists’ offices, courtrooms, and the culture at large. Along the way, she investigates the sensational battles over the validity of repressed memories that raged through the 1980s and shows us how changes in technology—such as the emergence of recording devices and computers—have again and again altered the way we conceptualize, and even try to study, the ways we remember.

Packed with fascinating details and curious episodes from the convoluted history of memory science, Memory is a book you’ll remember long after you close its cover.

Google Books preview:

Rationality + Consciousness = Free Will by David Hodgson (Oxford University Press, 2012)

(amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

In recent years, philosophical discussions of free will have focused largely on whether or not free will is compatible with determinism. In this challenging book, David Hodgson takes a fresh approach to the question of free will, contending that close consideration of human rationality and human consciousness shows that together they give us free will, in a robust and indeterministic sense. In particular, they give us the capacity to respond appositely to feature-rich gestalts of conscious experiences, in ways that are not wholly determined by laws of nature or computational rules. The author contends that this approach is consistent with what science tells us about the world; and he considers its implications for our responsibility for our own conduct, for the role of retribution in criminal punishment, and for the place of human beings in the wider scheme of things.

See also: Author’s website (with links to articles)

Google Books preview:

The Mind’s Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power of Meditation ed. by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard Davidson (New Harbinger)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

By inviting the Dalai Lama and leading researchers in medicine, psychology, and neuroscience to join in conversation, the Mind & Life Institute set the stage for a fascinating exploration of the healing potential of the human mind. The Mind’s Own Physician presents in its entirety the thirteenth Mind and Life dialogue, a discussion addressing a range of vital questions concerning the science and clinical applications of meditation: How do meditative practices influence pain and human suffering? What role does the brain play in emotional well-being and health? To what extent can our minds actually influence physical disease? Are there important synergies here for transforming health care, and for understanding our own evolutionary limitations as a species?

Edited by world-renowned researchers Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard J. Davidson, this book presents this remarkably dynamic interchange along with intriguing research findings that shed light on the nature of the mind, its capacity to refine itself through training, and its role in physical and emotional health.

See also: Mind & Life Institute website

A kindle ebook deal, currently at $1.99 (price subject to change, so check before you click): The Best Things in Life: A Guide to What Really Matters by Thomas Hurka (Oxford University Press, 2010)

Product description from the publisher:

For centuries, philosophers, theologians, moralists, and ordinary people have asked: How should we live? What makes for a good life?
In The Best Things in Life, distinguished philosopher Thomas Hurka takes a fresh look at these perennial questions as they arise for us now in the 21st century. Should we value family over career? How do we balance self-interest and serving others? What activities bring us the most joy? While religion, literature, popular psychology, and everyday wisdom all grapple with these questions, philosophy more than anything else uses the tools of reason to make important distinctions, cut away irrelevancies, and distill these issues down to their essentials. Hurka argues that if we are to live a good life, one thing we need to know is which activities and experiences will most likely lead us to happiness and which will keep us from it, while also reminding us that happiness isn’t the only thing that makes life good. Hurka explores many topics: four types of good feeling (and the limits of good feeling); how we can improve our baseline level of happiness (making more money, it turns out, isn’t the answer); which kinds of knowledge are most worth having; the importance of achieving worthwhile goals; the value of love and friendship; and much more. Unlike many philosophers, he stresses that there isn’t just one good in life but many: pleasure, as Epicurus argued, is indeed one, but knowledge, as Socrates contended, is another, as is achievement. And while the great philosophers can help us understand what matters most in life, Hurka shows that we must ultimately decide for ourselves.
This delightfully accessible book offers timely guidance on answering the most important question any of us will ever ask: How do we live a good life?