Psychology teachers and students alike must by now either be on holiday, or be desperately looking forward to being on holiday. Some lighter reading recommendations (with links to summaries or reviews) for those who just can’t get enough psychology are:
Alexandra Horowitz – On Looking – 12 stories of walking through a city with different experts (one being a dog!).This is really good for TOK as well as a good discussion on schema creation.
Robert M. Sapolsky – Behave and Why Zebras Don’t get Ulcers – why we do what we do, and why zebras don’t. Great insight and humorous asides in both.
Ethan Watters – Crazy like US – the McDonaldization of psychiatry. Very easy, historical view of how typically Western conceptions of mental illness have been exported to the rest of the world, and the effects of this.
Lisa Genova – Still Alice – fiction, but could so easily be fact, about a 50 year old female professor who develops early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Told from her perspective. Lisa Genova has written two other fictional accounts relevant to psychology, but this is (in my opinion) far and away the best. Heartbreaking.
Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Christopher is on the autistic spectrum in his behaviour, and perceives the world entirely logically, like his favourite detective Sherlock Homes. When a neighbour’s dog is killed, he sets out to solve the murder.
Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl – This tells the story of Nick, a man who becomes the main suspect when his wife mysteriously goes missing. Though he initially seems an unlikely killer, looks can be deceiving. Tense thriller.
Emma Donaghue – Room – This novel of a boy and his kidnapped mother in extreme isolation is a great study for child development. A sensitive telling of a horrific story.
Meg Haston – Paperweight – a newish novel (2017) that follows 17-year-old Stevie’s journey as she struggles not only with her eating disorder and her guilt over her brother’s death. Mesmerising and sensitive.
Leslie McGill – Running Scared – another novel about an eating disorder, but quite different from Paperweight.
Finally, the best-ever fiction book written about addiction, written by Beatrice Sparks many years ago, Go Ask Alice ticks all the boxes for me.
Enjoy your reading, and maybe you have some recommendations?
Psychology Sorted 