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The idea of the self is immediately familiar to everyone, yet elusive to define and understand. From pioneering researcher Roy F. Baumeister, this volume synthesizes a vast body of knowledge to provide a panoramic view of the human self--how it develops and functions, why it exists, and what problems it encounters on the journey through life. What are the benefits of self-knowledge, and how attainable is it? Do we have one self, or many? What is the relationship of self and society? In 28 concise chapters, Baumeister explains complex concepts with clarity and insight. He reveals the central role played by the self in enabling both individuals and cultures to thrive.
Modern Western biography has become one of the most popular and most controversial forms of literature. Critics have attacked its tendency to rely on a strong narrative drive, its focus on a single person's life and its tendency to delve ever more deeply into that person's inner, private experience, though these tendencies seem to have only increased biography's popularity. To date, however, biography has been a rarely studied literary form. Little serious attention has been given to the light biographies can shed on philosophical problems, such as the intertwining of knowledge and power, or the ways in which we can understand lives, or terms like 'the self'. Should selves be seen as relational or as autonomous? What of the 'lies and silences' of biographies, the ways in which embodiment can be ignored? A study of these problems allows engagement with a range of philosophers and literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, Lorraine Code, Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Ray Monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Ricoeur, Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor. Biography can be a dangerous art, claiming to know 'just how you feel'. This book explores the double-edged nature of biography, looking at what it reveals about both narratives and selves.
Self-awareness is the bedrock of emotional intelligence that enables you to see your talents, shortcomings, and potential. But you won't be able to achieve true self-awareness with the usual quarterly feedback and self-reflection alone. This book will teach you how to understand your thoughts and emotions, how to persuade your colleagues to share what they really think of you, and why self-awareness will spark more productive and rewarding relationships with your employees and bosses. This volume includes the work of: Daniel Goleman Robert Steven Kaplan Susan David HOW TO BE HUMAN AT WORK. The HBR Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master.
In Our Mothers, Ourselves, Henry Cloud and John Townsend show how understanding how our mothers have profoundly influenced our lives can set us on a path toward wholeness and growth. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has shaped your worldview, your relationships, your marriage, your career, your self-image - your life. Our Mothers, Ourselves can help you identify areas that need reshaping, to make positive choices for personal change, and to establish a mature relationship with Mom today. The Phantom Mom The China Doll Mom The Controlling Mom The Trophy Mom The Still-the-Boss Mom The American Express Mom You'll learn how your mom affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. Our Mothers, Ourselves is a biblical, realistic, and empowering route to wholeness and growth, to deeper and more satisfying bonds with your family, friends, and spouse - and to a new, healthier way of relating to your mother. This book was previously titled The Mom Factor.
Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.
A reader-friendly yet in-depth overview of the latest research on mood as the way we are tuned to the world. This book examines the central role that mood plays in determining our outlook on life and our ability to cope with its challenges. The central theme is that mood determines how we are tuned to the world. Tuning emerges over the course of our earliest development as environmental and genetic influences form the neural circuits and set how they function across the lifespan in daily life and under conditions of stress. How each person is tuned becomes the basis for resilience or vulnerability to events. Some will take events in stride; others may become angry, anxious, or sad. A child psychiatrist with decades of clinical experience treating patients, the author stresses that relationships play a central role in shaping our mood. Security or insecurity, loss or the fear of loss of key relationships, especially in childhood, can have telling effects on the way we view the world. A chapter is devoted to each of the disorders where mood is a central issue: depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and antisocial disruptive disorders. The author then discusses the various talking therapies and the main classes of medication often administered to treat emotional disturbances. Burke concludes by summarizing the latest research on preventing mood disorders and discussing the impact that illness can have on emotional well-being and the role of mood in resilience and recovery.
John M. Doris presents a new account of agency and responsibility, which reconciles our understanding of ourselves as moral agents with psychological research on the unconscious mind. Much philosophical theorizing maintains that the exercise of morally responsible agency consists in judgment and behavior ordered by accurate reflection. On such theories, when human beings are able to direct their lives in the manner philosophers have dignified with the honorific 'agency', it's because they know what they're doing, and why they're doing it. This understanding is compromised by quantities of psychological research on unconscious processing, which suggests that accurate reflection is distressingly uncommon; very often behavior is ordered by surprisingly inaccurate self-awareness. Thus, if agency requires accurate reflection, people seldom exercise agency, and skepticism about agency threatens. To counter the skeptical threat, John M. Doris proposes an alternative theory that requires neither reflection nor accurate self-awareness: he identifies a dialogic form of agency where self-direction is facilitated by exchange of the rationalizations with which people explain and justify themselves to one another. The result is a stoutly interdisciplinary theory sensitive to both what human beings are like—creatures with opaque and unruly psychologies-and what they need: an account of agency sufficient to support a practice of moral responsibility.
Working with the Shadow is not working with evil, per se. It is working toward the possibility of greater wholeness. We will never experience healing until we can come to love our unlovable places, for they, too, ask love of us. How is it that good people do bad things? Why is our personal story and our societal history so bloody, so repetitive, so injurious to self and others? How do we make sense of the discrepancies between who we think we are—or who we show to the outside world—versus our everyday behaviors? Why are otherwise ordinary people driven to addictions and compulsions, whether alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, infidelity, or the Internet? Why are interpersonal relationships so often filled with strife? Exploring Jung’s concept of the Shadow—the unconscious parts of our self that contradict the image of the self we hope to project--Why Good People Do Bad Things guides you through all the ways in which many of our seemingly unexplainable behaviors are manifestations of the Shadow. In addition to its presence in our personal lives, Hollis looks at the larger picture of the Shadow at work in our culture—from organized religion to the suffering and injustice that abounds in our modern world. Accepting and examining the Shadow as part of one’s self, Hollis suggests, is the first step toward wholeness. Revealing a new way of understanding our darker selves, Hollis offers wisdom to help you to acquire a more conscious conduct of your life and bring a new level of awareness to your daily actions and choices.
This book explores what identity is, what factors contribute to it, how it develops, and the impacts that a strong or weak sense of self can have on a person's health, happiness, and future. Many teens grapple with the seemingly simple question, "Who am I?" and struggle to integrate their experiences at school, at home, and with friends into their burgeoning sense of identity. How teens see themselves can influence the friends they choose, the decisions they make, and their mental and physical well-being. Having a strong sense of self can help them resist peer pressure, avoid risky behaviors, and make choices and plans that align with their values and interests. Yet research shows that such factors as heavy social media use can have a strongly negative effect on healthy identity formation for today's teens. Who Am I? Understanding Identity and the Many Ways We Define Ourselves examines the subjects of identity and identity formation across the lifespan, with special emphasis on the teenage years. Beyond simply discussing relevant psychological theories, the book focuses on how identity formation happens in the real world and how it affects the daily lives of teens. It also includes a collection of fictional case studies that provide concrete, relatable illustrations of concepts discussed in the book.