Most of us can be self-critical about our bodies sometimes. At the extreme, painful thoughts and emotions about body image can lead to emotional suffering and even impact quality of life. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Debbie Sorensen interviews Dr. Emily Sandoz about her acceptance-based approach to working with clients on body image and eating disorders. Dr. Sandoz explores the concept of “Body Image Inflexibility,” her values- and acceptance-b...
Dec 24, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 72
In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Stephan J. Guyenet , neurobiologist and obesity researcher, about the unconscious systems that lead to overeating and weight gain. Dr. Guyenet discusses why dietary guidelines alone are not enough to change our eating behavior. In The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat (Flatiron Books, 2017), hee explores the biological and evolutionary reasons for overeatin...
Dec 19, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 71
What is learning? There is a robust body of literature that seeks to tell us what the most effective classroom techniques and strategies are, but Joshua Eyler goes further. In his new book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (West Virginia UP, 2018), Eyler digs deeply into research from a broad range of disciplines to help us understand the act of learning itself, and then showing us how that deeper understanding can translate into more effective teaching ...
Dec 12, 2018•40 min•Ep. 70
McKenzie Wark ’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (Verso, 2017) introduce readers to important work in Anglophone cultural studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, media theory, speculative realism, science studies, Italian and French workerist and autonomist thought, two “imaginative readings of Marx,” and two “unique takes on the b...
Dec 06, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 14
In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Diana Hill talks with Dr. Kelly Wilson about kindness and the common humanity of feeling inadequate and broken. Dr. Wilson describes the evolutionary science behind suffering and how “evolutionary mismatch” plays an important role in modern day physical and psychological illness. Dr. Wilson, co-founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), demonstrates acceptance and compassion as he describes his perso...
Dec 06, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 70
We’re all familiar with cases where one attributes certain psychological states or capacities to creatures and systems that are not human persons. For example, your cat might prefer a certain variety of cat food, and maybe your houseplants enjoy a certain corner of the room they’re in. In many cases, these attributions pass by without much notice. However, in certain regimented scientific contexts, the attribution of psychological states and capacities to non-human things has become indispensabl...
Dec 03, 2018•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 175
In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock, Dr. Yael Schonbrun talks with expert and author Dr. Eckhard Roediger about the ins and outs of contextual schema therapy. In his recent book, Contextual Schema Therapy: An Integrative Approach to Personality Disorders, Emotional Dysregulation and Interpersonal Functioning (Context Press, 2018), Dr. Roediger describes an integrative approach to schema therapy that incorporates the latest advances in contextual behavioral ...
Nov 29, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 69
Sigmund Freud may have been the first to popularize the study of dreams, but several scholars since Freud have advanced our understanding of dreams in revolutionary ways. Among them is Mark Blechner , an interpersonal/relational psychoanalyst who first published his theories on dreams in his 2001 book The Dream Frontier . With his new book, The Mindbrain and Dreams: An Exploration of Dreaming, Thinking, and Artistic Creation (Routledge, 2018), Blechner draws upon his clinical experience over the...
Nov 28, 2018•58 min•Ep. 68
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade debate over race, class, and IQ. In The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), Michael E. Staub , Professor of English and American Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York, investigates neuropsychological studies published between Brown and the controv...
Nov 21, 2018•38 min
Steven Shaviro ’s book Discognition (Repeater Books, 2016) opens with a series of questions: What is consciousness? How does subjective experience occur? Which entities are conscious? What is it like to be a bat, or a dog, a robot, a tree, a human being, a rock, a star, a neutrino? Discognition looks at a series of fascinating science fiction narratives – in some cases reading philosophical or scientific literature as speculative fiction – to raise important questions about consciousness and sen...
Nov 20, 2018•1 hr 8 min
Listeners familiar with our recent podcasts exploring the remarkable legacy of William T. Powers revolutionary Perceptual Control Theory of human behaviour, including its contribution to cognitive behavioural therapy through the development of the Method of Levels approach, may be wondering about the empirical evidence for such a sweeping repudiation of classical behaviourism. Prepare to have those questions answered with this episode’s return visit of Richard S. Marken ; this time to discuss hi...
Nov 19, 2018•1 hr 8 min
What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons periodically, and occasionally providing consultations for policymakers. In Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (Teachers College Press, 2018), renowned critical psychologist Michelle Fine challenges us to imagine social research radically differently. According...
Nov 16, 2018•1 hr 20 min
Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence other people. The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition–the theory-theory and the simulation theory–have provided focused accounts of mindreading, the more specific practice of ascribing beliefs, desires, and intentions to others in order to predict and explain their behavior. In How We Understand Others: Philosophy and Social Cognition (Routledge, 2018), Shannon Spaulding draws on social psychological...
Nov 15, 2018•1 hr 6 min
Human beings have long seen themselves as the center of the universe, as specially-created creatures who are anointed as above and beyond the natural world. Professor and noted scientist David P. Barash calls this viewpoint a persistent paradigm of our own unique self-importance and argues that it is as dangerous as it is false. In his recent book, Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are (Oxford University Press, 2018), Barash explores the process by which sci...
Nov 13, 2018•1 hr 22 min
Humans are the only animals that can use language processes to create abstract, symbolic thoughts. This is both a blessing and a curse. Although symbolic processes have many benefits to humans, they can also lead us to great suffering. We worry about the future, fret over the past, get stuck in rigid rules, and create problems for ourselves that exist only in our minds. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Debbie Sorensen talks to Dr. Matthieu Villatte...
Nov 13, 2018•1 hr 10 min
Sometimes, a couch is a only a couch, but not in Dr. Nathan Kravis ’s new book, On the Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud (MIT Press, 2017). In a live interview conducted in connection with the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis, we discuss how the couch has become the leading symbol for psychoanalysis in positive and maligned ways. Dr. Kravis discusses how the couch came to signify reclining, rest, introspection and healing and how important decor was for F...
Nov 07, 2018•59 min
In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Yael Schonbrun discusses common struggles in adult romantic relationships with Dr. Avigail Lev, co-author (with Matthew McKay ) of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Couples: A Clinician’s Guide to Using Mindfulness, Values, and Schema Awareness to Rebuild Relationships (Context Press, 2017). Dr. Lev discusses how early childhood experiences contribute to the development of schemas that can negatively impact our ...
Oct 30, 2018•59 min
Magical thinking lies at the heart of J. Eric Oliver and Thomas J. Wood ’s new book, Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2018). Oliver is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and Wood is assistant professor of political science at Ohio State University. In the book, they argue that our intuitions and differences in whether you use intuition or reason to guide your life, strongly relate to our politics. The intuition...
Oct 30, 2018•25 min
Pamela Woolner , senior lecturer in education at Newcastle University, joins us in this episode to discuss her edited volume, School Design Together (Routledge, 2014). Pam is an expert in understanding and developing learning environments, particularly the use of participatory research methods to engage and empower users to share their experiences and knowledge. My conversation with Pam begins with her background in psychology and how her early research studying the use of visuals in math then l...
Oct 29, 2018•31 min
To many, the title, A Transdiagnostic Approach to CBT using Method of Levels Therapy: Distinctive Features (Routledge, 2012) , may seem incongruous with a podcast channel called “New Books in Systems and Cybernetics.” However, listeners familiar with my previous interview with Richard S. Marken about his co-authored book, Contolling People: The Paradoxical Nature of Being Human , will be aware of contemporary developments of Willam T. Powers’ essentially cybernetic Perceptual Control Theory (PCT...
Oct 26, 2018•55 min
Balancing work and a personal life can be a challenge for many of us, and we often make things worse by buying into myths that interfere with our effectiveness and happiness but are unsupported by social science. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Yael Schonbrun interviews psychology professors and authors Drs. Miriam Liss and Holly Schiffrin about their book, Balancing the Big Stuff: Finding Happiness in Work, Family, and Life . They tackle topics i...
Oct 19, 2018•57 min
In Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity (Princeton University Press, 2018), Theodore Porter uncovers the unfamiliar origins of human genetics in the asylums of Europe and North America. Rather than beginning his story with Gregor Mendel or 1909, the date when Wilhelm Johannsen coined the term “gene,” Porter takes us back to King George III. After a political and medical crisis, doctors and researchers began to record and collect data on the causes of mental illness. In...
Oct 11, 2018•55 min
S chizophrènes au XXe siècle: des effets secondaires de l’histoire [Schizophrenics in the Twentieth Century: The Side Effects of History] is a strong argument in support of the history of psychiatry “from below.” Using vast archival resources and ample patient files, Hervé Guillemain demonstrates convincingly how schizophrenia in France was a socially constructed category—one that circumscribed and further stigmatized individuals who were already marginalized and left behind in a changing politi...
Oct 09, 2018•41 min
Evolution science and behavioral science both have strong theories that can help us understand humans in context, and yet, until now, the two fields have been mostly separate. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Steven Hayes and Dr. David Sloan Wilson share how they are collaborating to bridge this divide. They discuss their recent co-edited book, Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Predicting, and I...
Sep 27, 2018•1 hr 17 min
In this inspirational episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Steven Hayes , co-developer of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), about the future of evidence-based therapy. Dr. Hayes describes the core processes involved in effective change and presents a model that breaks free from diagnoses and protocols. Dr. Hayes shares how he uses principles of process as a parent, leader and ally to underrepresented populations in psychology. ...
Sep 19, 2018•1 hr
In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Diana Hill interviews Dr. Dan Siegel about his new book, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence (TarcherPerigree, 2018). Dr. Siegel describes interpersonal neurobiology and how he has learned from mathematics, anthropology, biology, physics, sociology, and neuroscience to understand the mind. He discusses a powerful practice called The Wheel of Awareness, which cultivates focus, interoception and inter-connecti...
Sep 14, 2018•1 hr 1 min
In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter state-sanctioned psychiatric diagnoses of insanity. Reich discusses the interesting literary preoccupations of Soviet psychiatrists and psychiatric discourse in the post-Stalin era to help readers understand the context of these diagnoses of madness. Her book mines the works and experi...
Sep 10, 2018•54 min
In this this interview, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Deirdre Fay , LICSW discusses how she integrates yoga, meditation and attachment theory into healing trauma. Ms. Fay discusses the intersection between yoga philosophy and attachment theory. She explores why embodiment is important in the healing of trauma and how she cultivates a “nourishing opposite” when shame accompanies a traumatic response. Ms. Fay leads us through two experiential exercises, Modified Half ...
Sep 06, 2018•51 min
Ever since the first clinical account of autism was published by Dr. Leo Kanner in 1943, Western culture has tended to mythologise the disorder as impenetrable, non-verbal and characterised by silence. As such, in both medical literature and popular culture, autistic individuals are depicted as incomprehensible and Other, problems to be rectified or puzzles to be solved. In contrast to this view of autism as an inscrutable enigma, Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to ...
Sep 03, 2018•1 hr 47 min
While most children experience some fear and anxiety, some develop more extreme forms of anxiety that can impair their daily functioning. In this episode, cross-posted from the podcast Psychologists Off The Clock , Dr. Veronica Raggi , expert on childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders, discusses her book Exposure Therapy for Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: A Comprehensive Guide (New Harbinger Publications, 2018). Dr. Raggi provides some information about anxiety in young people,...
Aug 30, 2018•1 hr 4 min
