Provocative, insightful and brilliantly written by Professor Wahbie Long, Nation on the Couch explores life in our beloved country through the lens of psychoanalysis.

By focusing on the idea of a ‘political unconscious’, it argues that there is much to be learnt from excavating the inner life of South Africans, which can illuminate the external problems that beset us from all sides. It will challenge readers to rethink the way we see ourselves, why we do what we do and why we are who we are. 

From 1994 to 2000, when South Africa was a young democracy, the country was stalked by a succession of brutal serial killers. Psychologist Micki Pistorius became the first profiler for the South African Police Service, playing a vital role in identifying and interrogating these killers, as well as training detectives nationally and in other countries. She broke ground with her theory on the origin of serial killers and is considered a trailblazer in her field.

Catch Me a Killer was originally released in 2003 and details the cases she worked on – from the Station Strangler and the Phoenix Cane Killer to Boetie Boer and the Saloon Killer. The book also features legendary detectives such as Piet Byleveld and Suiker Britz, as well as the FBI’s Robert Ressler.

Released alongside a major TV series based on the book, this new edition of Catch Me a Killer includes a new chapter and up-to-date information about some of the cases, such as the parole of Norman Afzal Simons in 2023. This is essential reading for all true crime aficionados.

South Africa has a broad and complex history that has greatly influenced the unique, diverse and democratic country that we know today. One of the many challenges South Africa faces is crime, with those crimes committed by youthful offenders being the most distressing - it is sadly not unusual to hear of youths who have been involved in murder, rape or robbery. In addition, sexual offences among children are occurring more frequently, and the number of child victims of abuse and domestic violence is also on the rise. An added and escalating danger for children is falling prey to ruthless traffickers and being used as sex workers or slaves. Despite specific laws having been promulgated to protect them, many children are still growing up in unforgiving environments that never allow them the opportunity to develop morally according to the prescriptions of a democratic society. Child and youth misbehaviour in South Africa addresses the complex and poorly understood phenomenon of youth misbehaviour. It discusses and analyses various theories on the nature and causes of deviant behaviour, and assesses them critically with regard to their applicability to South Africa. The book presents the relevant legal processes pertaining to young people, and reinforces theoretical explanations with research and real-world examples. The female youth offender is also discussed in depth in this edition. Child and youth misbehaviour in South Africa is aimed at enabling both practitioners and students to address the plight of the South African youth in a constructive way so they can become part of creating a safer South Africa for all its people. Professor Christiaan Bezuidenhout holds a BA (Criminology), BA Honours (Criminology), MA (Criminology), DPhil (Criminology) and an MSc (Criminology and Criminal Justice) from the University of Oxford. He is currently attached to the Department of Social Work and Criminology, University of Pretoria, where he teaches psychocriminology, criminal justice and contemporary criminology at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself?

From the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos comes a provocative hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated.

A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with fresh observations and important lessons in this completely revised edition of his classic, witty bestselling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture.This enlightening edition includes new information on: -The latest trends in online retail--what retailers are doing right and what they're doing wrong--and how nearly every Internet retailer from iTunes to Amazon can drastically improve how it serves its customers. -A guided tour of the most innovative stores, malls and retail environments around the world--almost all of which are springing up in countries where prosperity is new. An enormous indoor ski slope attracts shoppers to a mall in Dubai; an uber-luxurious Sao Paolo department store provides its customers with personal shoppers; a mall in South Africa has a wave pool for surfing. The new Why We Buy is an essential guide that offers advice on how to keep your changing customers and entice new and eager ones.

Software Simulation and Modeling in Psychology: MATLAB, SPSS, Excel and E-Prime describes all the stages of psychology experimentation, from the manipulation of factors, to statistical analysis, data modeling, and automated stimuli creation. The book shows how software can help automate various stages of the experiment for which operations may quickly become repetitive. For example, it shows how to compile data files (instead of opening files one by one to copy and paste), generate stimuli (instead of drawing one by one in a drawing software), and transform and recode tables of data. This type of modeling in psychology helps determine if a model fits the data, and also demonstrates that the algorithmic is not only useful, but essential for modeling data.

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period. About a century ago the idea of Einfuhlung (or empathy) was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field.

One of the greatest challenges that teachers face when starting out in their careers is learning how to deal with unruly and badly behaved learners so that the rest of the class can get on with the lesson. Teachers often say that they are not paid to discipline learners, they are paid to teach them. However, without discipline there can be little learning.

Recent years have seen the rise of a remarkable partnership between the social and computational sciences on the phenomena of emotions. Rallying around the term Affective Computing, this research can be seen as revival of the cognitive science revolution, albeit garbed in the cloak of affect, rather than cognition. Traditional cognitive science research, to the extent it considered emotion at all, cases it as at best a heuristic but more commonly a harmful bias to cognition. More recent scholarship in the social sciences has upended this view.
Increasingly, emotions are viewed as a form of information processing that serves a functional role in human cognition and social interactions. Emotions shape social motives and communicate important information to social partners. When communicating face-to-face, people can rapidly detect nonverbal affective cues, make inferences about the other party's mental state, and respond in ways that co-construct an emotional trajectory between participants. Recent advances in biometrics and artificial intelligence are allowing computer systems to engage in this nonverbal dance, on the one hand opening a wealth of possibilities for human-machine systems, and on the other, creating powerful new tools for behavioral science research.
Social Emotions in Nature and Artifact reports on the state-of-the-art in both social science theory and computational methods, and illustrates how these two fields, together, can both facilitate practical computer/robotic applications and illuminate human social processes.

More than just a therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis as a school of thought has redefined our ideas on sexuality, the self, morality, family, and the nature of the mind for much of the twentieth century. At its broadest, Freud's thinking on civilization and social forces provides a context in which to consider the history of political struggle among individuals and societies. This volume explores a central paradox in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and practice and the ways in which they were used. Why and how have some authoritarian regimes utilized psychoanalytic concepts of the self to envisage a new social and political order? How did psychoanalysis provide both theoretical and practical elements to legitimize resistance to those same regimes? How can a school of thought be co-opted so deftly by different groups for different political ends? Bringing together contributions from innovative scholars of history, politics, and psychoanalysis, this volume analyzes the various outcomes of this fascinating and influential theory's development under a wide spectrum of governments that restricted political and cultural freedoms from the 1930s to the present. The regimes analyzed range from Fascist Italy, Vichy France, and Spain and Hungary under Fascism and Communism; modern Latin American dictatorships, such as Brazil and Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s; and the influence of Hoover, McCarthy, and the larger Cold War on psychoanalysis in America. A fresh addition to an enormous body of scholarship, this will be required reading for academics interested in the relationship between politics and non-political systems of thoughts and beliefs, the transnational circulation of ideas, social movements, and the intellectual and social history of psychoanalysis.

Philip Pettit has drawn together here a series of interconnected essays on three subjects to which he has made notable contributions. The first part of the book discusses the rule-following character of thought. The second considers how choice can be responsive to different sorts of factors, while still being under the control of thought and the reasons that thought marshals. The third examines the implications of this view of choice and rationality for the normative regulation of social behaviour.

Ethicists and psychologists have become increasingly interested in the development of virtue in recent years, approaching the topic from the perspectives of virtue ethics and developmental psychology respectively. Such interest in virtue development has spread beyond academia, as teachers and parents have increasingly striven to cultivate virtue as part of education and child-rearing. Looking at these parallel trends in the study and practice of virtue development, the essays in this volume explore such questions as: How can philosophical work on virtue development inform psychological work on it, and vice versa? How should we understand virtue as a dimension of human personality? What is the developmental foundation of virtue? What are the evolutionary aspects of virtue and its development? How is virtue fostered? How is virtue exemplified in behavior and action? How is our conception of virtue influenced by context and by developmental and social experiences? What are the tensions, impediments and prospects for an integrative field of virtue study? Rather than centering on each discipline, the essays in this volume are orgnaized around themes and engage each other in a broader dialogue. The volume begins with an introductory essay from the editors that explains the full range of philosophical and empirical issues that have surrounded the notion of virtue in recent years.

'Frosh knows his material extremely well; he raises interesting questions and offers some suggestive insights...His interweaving of social theory with psychodynamic explanation is sophisticated and compelling...The book is valuable for its thoughtful and informed insights on contemporary psychoanalytic theories of the self and its pathologies' Contemporary Psychology Identity Crisis examines the psychological responses of people to the excitements and terrors that characterise the modern world. Beginning with a description of modernist and post-modernist accounts of contemporary life, it then moves into detailed discussions of narcissism and psychosis - two states of mind that seem to characterise the 'crises of self' to which the modern world gives rise. Identity Crisis will be of interest to students in a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, psychoanalysis, politics and cultural studies.

In this book, Chris Eliasmith presents a new approach to understanding the neural implementation of cognition in a way that is centrally driven by biological considerations. He calls the general architecture that results from the application of this approach the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA), based on the Semantic Pointer Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, higher-level cognitive functions in biological systems are made possible by semantic pointers. These pointers are neural representations that carry partial semantic content and can be built up into the complex representational structures necessary to support cognition. The SPA architecture demonstrates how neural systems generate, compose, and control the flow of semantics pointers. Eliasmith describes in detail the theory and empirical evidence supporting the SPA, and presents several examples of its application to cognitive modeling, covering the generation of semantic pointers from visual data, the application of semantic pointers for motor control, and most important, the use of semantic pointers for representation of language-like structures, cognitive control, syntactic generalization, learning of new cognitive strategies, and language-based reasoning. He agues that the SPA provides an alternative to the dominant paradigms in cognitive science, including symbolicism, connectionism, and dynamicism.

Consciousness is a perennial source of mystification in the philosophy of mind: how can processes in the brain amount to conscious experiences? Robert Kirk uses the notion of `raw feeling' to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ourselves as subjects of experience; he argues that there is no need for recourse to dualism or private mental objects. The task is to understand how the truth about raw feeling could be strictly implied by narrowly physical truths. Kirk's explanation turns on an account of what it is to be a subject of conscious perceptual experience. He offers penetrating analyses of the problems of consciousness and suggests novel solutions which, unlike their rivals, can be accepted without gritting one's teeth. His sustained defence of non-reductive physicalism shows that we need not abandon hope of finding a solution to the mind-body problem.

This book is a philosophical exploration of disorientation and its significance for action. Disorientations are human experiences of losing one's bearings, such that life is disrupted and it is not clear how to go on. In the face of life experiences like trauma, grief, illness, migration, education, queer identification, and consciousness raising, individuals can be deeply disoriented. These and other disorientations are not rare. Although disorientations can be common and powerful parts of individuals' lives, they remain uncharacterized by Western philosophers, and overlooked by ethicists. Disorientations can paralyze, overwhelm, embitter, and misdirect moral agents, and moral philosophy and motivational psychology have important insights to offer into why this is. More perplexing are the ways disorientations may prompt improved moral action. Ami Harbin draws on first person accounts, philosophical texts, and qualitative and quantitative research to show that in some cases of disorientation, individuals gain new forms of awareness of political complexity and social norms, and new habits of relating to others and an unpredictable moral landscape. She then argues for the moral and political promise of these gains. A major contention of the book is that disorientations have 'non-resolutionary effects': they can help us act without first helping us resolve what to do. In exploring these possibilities, Disorientation and Moral Life contributes to philosophy of emotions, moral philosophy, and political thought from a distinctly feminist perspective. It makes the case for seeing disorientations as having the power to motivate profound and long-term shifts in moral and political action. A feminist re-envisioning of moral psychology provides the framework for understanding how they do so.

Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind surveys philosophical issues raised by the situated movement in cognitive science, that is, the treatment of cognitive phenomena as the joint products of brain, body, and environment. The book focuses primarily on the hypothesis of extended cognition, which asserts that human cognitive processes literally comprise elements beyond the boundary of the human organism. Rupert argues that the only plausible way in which to demarcate cognitions is systems-based: cognitive states or processes are the states of the integrated set of mechanisms and capacities that contribute causally and distinctively to the production of cognitive phenomena--for example, language-use, memory, decision-making, theory construction, and, more importantly, the associated forms of behavior. Rupert argues that this integrated system is most likely to appear within the boundaries of the human organism. He argues that the systems-based view explains the existing successes of cognitive psychology and cognate fields in a way that extended conceptions of cognition do not, and that once the systems-based view has been adopted, it is especially clear how extant arguments in support of the extended view go wrong.
Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind also examines further aspects of the situated program in cognitive science, including the embedded and embodied approaches to cognition. Rupert asks to what extent the plausible incarnations of these situated views depart from orthodox, computational cognitive science. Here, Rupert focuses on the notions of representation and computation, arguing that the embedded and embodied views do not constitute the radical shifts in perspective they are often claimed to be. Rupert also argues that, properly understood, the embodied view does not offer a new role for the body, different in principle from the one presupposed by orthodox cognitive science.
"Rupert's book is a good read. It is a sustained, systematic, critical examination of the idea that minds are not simply ensconced inside heads, but extend into both bodies and the world beyond the body.... There is much to admire in this book. It is well-structured and well-written, adopting a self-consciously naturalistic perspective on how to understand the mind -- through our best, even if imperfect, empirical sciences in the domain of cognition. By presenting and critiquing a number of explicit arguments for and against the specific views that Rupert considers, Cognitive Systems advances the field."-- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
"Rupert's treatment is a state of the art sustained attack on various forms of the 'extended mind hypothesis'. It is rigorous and challenging, and will be of interest to a quite a large audience of researchers (graduates and above) in philosophy and in cognitive science. Rupert studiously avoids the 'straw men' that populate some recent critiques, and raises deep and sympathetic challenges that go to the core of the program."
--Andy Clark, Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh

Because of their vital role in the emergence of humanity, tools and their uses have been the focus of considerable worldwide study. This volume brings together international research on the use of tools among primates and both prehistoric and modern humans. The book represents leading work being done by specialists in anatomy, neurobiology, prehistory, ethnology, and primatology. Whether composed of stone, wood, or metal, tools are a prolongation of the arm that acquire precision through direction by the brain. The same movement, for example, may have been practiced by apes and humans, but the resulting action varies according to the extended use of the tool. It is therefore necessary, as the contributors here make clear, to understand the origin of tools, and also to describe the techniques involved in their manipulation, and the possible uses of unknown implements. Comparison of the techniques of chimpanzees with those of prehistoric and modern peoples has made it possible to appreciate the common aspects and to identify the differences. The transmission of ability has also been studied in the various relevant societies: chimpanzees in their natural habitat and in captivity, hunter-gatherers, and workmen in prehistoric and in modern times. In drawing together much valuable research, this work will be an important and timely resource for social and behavioral psychologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and animal behaviorists.

This title, now in its second edition, is an introduction to the psychological system known as transactional analysis (TA). It is aimed at the general reader as well as at TA trainees and practitioners.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Leading scholar Tom R. Tyler provides a timely and engaging introduction to the field of law and psychology. This Advanced Introduction outlines the main areas of research, their relevance to law and the way that psychological findings have shaped - or failed to shape - the corresponding areas of law. Key features include: broad coverage of the key topics in the field accessible, non-technical presentation of research findings focus on the relevance of psychological theories to topics in law emphasis on the institutional realities within which law functions discussion of the problems of bringing research findings into the legal system. Presenting an informative overview of this rapidly developing area, the Advanced Introduction to Law and Psychology will be a key resource for students and scholars of law, psychology and the social sciences. It will also be of benefit to psychologists and legal practitioners.

It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.

Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too.

In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.

It is time for a new view of human nature.

The common, existing distance between children and adults is the basis of this work, which has been addressed in many literary and cultural works throughout history. Not being able to remember how we, now adults, thought as children -like their spontaneity or magic and omnipotent form of thinking- would leave children completely isolated, like a helpless immigrant in a foreign land. This book attempts to comprehend, how parents' misunderstanding, can induce loneliness and helplessness in children, that with time will become traumatic, and will remain unconsciously present in all of us forever. It will continue to repeat using infantile emotions, children form of thinking, and experiencing as well, loneliness, anxiety, depression, fears and the chronic need of finding a 'rescuer', in the form of power, fame, drugs, money, religion, and so on. This very innovative approach to the understanding of children's segregation and its repercussion on adult's emotional life, will be of invaluable interest to all practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and parents included.

From the bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind, a surprising and inspiring exploration of the healing power of music.

We are only just beginning to appreciate the healing power of music. In recent years, a wave of scientific research has upended everything we once knew about its effects on our brains: not only in reducing stress, but also in enhancing cognitive function, slowing the spread of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, even strengthening our immune systems.

Here, a neuroscientist and celebrated musician introduces a bold new paradigm for medical treatment, rooted in the unexpected influence of music on our minds and bodies. From explaining how ‘rhythmic auditory stimulation’ can fight multiple sclerosis, to examining why Tracy Chapman’s songs might just help cure PTSD, Professor Daniel Levitin offers surprising insights into the new science of music as medicine.

Along the way, he explores how each of us can use music to calm our thoughts, repair our memories and heal our deepest psychological wounds. The result is both a surprising tour through the science of music, and a joyful celebration of humanity’s oldest obsession.

Beneath the surface we are all connected . . . 'An authentically soothing, powerful, thought-provoker.' MATT HAIG 'On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.' MAX PORTER 'On Connection came to me when I needed it most, and reminded me that the links we have to places, people, words, ourselves, are what keep us alive.' CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS This is a book about connection. About how immersing ourselves in creativity can help us cultivate greater self-awareness and bring us closer to each other. Drawing on two decades of experience as a writer and performer, Kae Tempest champions the role of creativity - in whatever form we choose to practice it - as an act of love, helping us establish a deeper relationship to our true selves, and to others and the world we live in. Honest, hopeful and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is an inspiring personal meditation that will transform the way you see the world. 'Persuasive and profound.' OBSERVER 'Tempest's prose is crisp and thoughtful.' NEW STATESMAN