The subject of midlife has been dominated by the woes of aging--menopause, divorce, hormone replacement therapies, aging parents, and fleeing children. Now a broad-ranging new work by clinical psychologist Linda N. Edelstein, Ph.D., "The Art of Midlife," describes the freedom and authenticity that can be made a cornerstone of the middle years. She describes three healthy and predictable phases. First, women relinquish old ways, untying themselves from the past and mourning the losses of youth and its illusions. By placing less emphasis on the needs of others, women can live more creatively and enjoy the present. The women Dr. Edelstein studied have been able to move to the next step, in which they reconnect to themselves. They regain their authentic voices, simplify life, and allow long buried aspects of themselves to emerge. Finally, women refocus their futures. With courage, they embrace new people, ideas, activities, and work--and pursue adult dreams regardless of external rewards.

Creations of the Mind presents sixteen original essays by theorists from a wide variety of disciplines who have a shared interest in the nature of artifacts and their implications for the human mind. All the papers are written specially for this volume, and they cover a broad range of topics concerned with the metaphysics of artifacts, our concepts of artifacts and the categories that they represent, the emergence of an understanding of artifacts in infants' cognitive development, as well as the evolution of artifacts and the use of tools by non-human animals. This volume will be a fascinating resource for philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, and the starting point for future research in the study of artifacts and their role in human understanding, development, and behaviour. Contributors: John R. Searle, Richard E. Grandy, Crawford L. Elder, Amie L. Thomasson, Jerrold Levinson, Barbara C. Malt, Steven A. Sloman, Dan Sperber, Hilary Kornblith, Paul Bloom, Bradford Z. Mahon, Alfonso Caramazza, Jean M. Mandler, Deborah Kelemen, Susan Carey, Frank C. Keil, Marissa L. Greif, Rebekkah S. Kerner, James L. Gould, Marc D. Hauser, Laurie R. Santos, Steven Mithen

Behavioural public policies, or nudges, have become increasingly popular in recent years, with governments keen to use light-touch interventions to improve the success of their public policies. In this unique book, Peter John explores nudges, their successes and limitations, and sets out a bold manifesto for the future of behavioural public policy. This book traces the beginnings of nudge in behavioural economics and tracks the adoption of its core ideas by policy-makers, providing examples of successful applications. By considering the question ?how far to nudge??, John reviews why it is crucial for governments to address citizen behaviours, and reviews the criticisms of nudge and its ethical limitations. Looking to its future, this book proposes the adoption of a radical version of nudge, nudge plus, involving increased feedback and more engagement with citizens. How Far to Nudge? will be a vital text for students of behavioural public policy and policy analysis, as well as for anyone looking for an introduction to nudge policy and an explanation for its growth in popularity.

A generic statement is a type of generalization that is made by asserting that a "kind" has a certain property. For example we might hear that marshmallows are sweet. Here, we are talking about the "kind" marshmallow and assert that individual instances of this kind have the property of being sweet. Almost all of our common sense knowledge about the everyday world is put in terms of generic statements. What can make these generic sentences be true even when there are exceptions? A mass term is one that does not "divide its reference;" the word water is a mass term; the word dog is a count term. In a certain vicinity, one can count and identity how many dogs there are, but it doesn't make sense to do that for water--there just is water present. The philosophical literature is rife with examples concerning how a thing can be composed of a mass, such as a statue being composed of clay. Both generic statements and mass terms have led philosophers, linguists, semanticists, and logicians to search for theories to accommodate these phenomena and relationships.
The contributors to this interdisciplinary volume study the nature and use of generics and mass terms. Noted researchers in the psychology of language use material from the investigation of human performance and child-language learning to broaden the range of options open for formal semanticists in the construction of their theories, and to give credence to some of their earlier postulations--for instance, concerning different types of predications that are available for true generics and for the role of object recognitions in the development of count vs. mass terms. Relevant data also is described by investigating the ways children learn these sorts of linguistic items: children can learn how to sue generic statements correctly at an early age, and children are adept at individuating objects and distinguishing them from the stuff of which they are made also at an early age.

Why is there evil, and what can scientific research tell us about the origins and persistence of evil behavior? Considering evil from the unusual perspective of the perpetrator, Baumeister asks, How do ordinary people find themselves beating their wives? Murdering rival gang members? Torturing political prisoners? Betraying their colleagues to the secret police? Why do cycles of revenge so often escalate?
Baumeister casts new light on these issues as he examines the gap between the victim's viewpoint and that of the perpetrator, and also the roots of evil behavior, from egotism and revenge to idealism and sadism. A fascinating study of one of humankind's oldest problems, "Evil" has profound implications for the way we conduct our lives and govern our society.

This book explores the trace of the emotional undercurrent stirred by money from its beginnings in childhood to its consolidation into adult life, through love and work, for individuals and society alike, and with an emphasis on ordinary development, rather than on pathology.

This is the first comparative study of the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the psychoanalayst Jacques Lacan. The book explores the conflict between the two thinkers that arose from their differing views of ethics: Ricoeur's universalist stance drew on a phenomenological reading of Kant, whereas Lacan's was a relativist position, derived from a psychoanalytic reading of Freud and De Sade. "Ricoeur and Lacan" gives a full critical overview of the work of both figures, tracing the origins and development of their principal ideas, and identifying key similarities and differences. The book identifies and explores the key philosophical influences upon their work: Descartes; Kant; Nietzsche; Husserl; Freud; Marcel; and Jaspers. It gives an original perspective upon the development of ethics within Continental philosophy, providing clear and cogent analysis. Finally, it evaluates the importance of Ricoeur and Lacan in the development of ethical and political theory since the 1980s, with particular reference to the work of Slavoj Zizek. Not only a valuable and original addition to the literature on two major thinkers, "Ricoeur and Lacan" is also an important study of contemporary Continental ethics.

A familiar trope of cognitive science, linguistics, and the philosophy of psychology over the past forty or so years has been the idea of the mind as a modular system-that is, one consisting of functionally specialized subsystems responsible for processing different classes of input, or handling specific cognitive tasks like vision, language, logic, music, and so on. However, one of the major achievements of neuroscience has been the discovery that the brain has incredible powers of renewal and reorganization. This "neuroplasticity," in its various forms, has challenged many of the orthodox conceptions of the mind which originally led cognitive scientists to postulate hardwired mental modules. This book examines how such discoveries have changed the way we think about the structure of the mind. It contends that the mind is more supple than prevailing theories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence acknowledge. The book uses language as a test case. The claim that language is cognitively special has often been understood as the claim that it is underpinned by dedicated-and innate-cognitive mechanisms. Zerilli offers a fresh take on how our linguistic abilities could be domain-general: enabled by a composite of very small and redundant cognitive subsystems, few if any of which are likely to be specialized for language. In arguing for this position, however, the book takes seriously various cases suggesting that language dissociates from other cognitive faculties. Accessibly written, The Adaptable Mind is a fascinating account of neuroplasticity, neural reuse, the modularity of mind, the evolution of language, and faculty psychology.

Alain Badiou has claimed that Quentin Meillassoux's book After Finitude (Bloomsbury, 2008) "opened up a new path in the history of philosophy." And so, whether you agree or disagree with the speculative realism movement, it has to be addressed. Lacanian Realism does just that. This book reconstructs Lacanian dogma from the ground up: first, by unearthing a new reading of the Lacanian category of the real; second, by demonstrating the political and cultural ingenuity of Lacan's concept of the real, and by positioning this against the more reductive analyses of the concept by Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saul Newman, Todd May, Joan Copjec, Jacques Ranciere, and others, and; third, by arguing that the subject exists intimately within the real. Lacanian Realism is an imaginative and timely exploration of the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalysis and contemporary continental philosophy.

Publisher's note on this book: This book is a radical leap into the apex of philosophy, psychology, and the science of seeing what's real for oneself. Written in a dense and penetrating style that is designed to induce deep thinking and thoughtful reflection, the book explains how to attain lucidity, a type of acute, profound awareness that serves as the fundamental base for Gnosis, individual illumination. It may not be an easy read the first time through, but it will be well worth it. The book is meant to be studied and reflected upon many times. This book is impeccable, more of an experience than just a book with profound information. It is a potent toolshed of ideas that will be of interest to psychologists, philosophers, social scientists, meditators, contemplatives, or anyone who wants to know what's really going on and how to SEE in a very clear and luminous way.

In recent years, the field of psychology has seen an increasing interest in the aftereffects of psychological trauma. Work has been published that examines the psychological sequelae of rape, incest, combat, natural disaster, fire, and, in a few cases, hostage-taking. This is the first book that takes a long-term perspective, by asking questions such as: How did survivors view their experience through the lens of time? Were there any positive effects associated with the experience? The author examines how hostage victims perceive their victimization, and how they go about the task of rebuilding their assumptive world. In sharing the intimate details of this process, the hostage survivors have allowed us to be close observers in their efforts to redefine their world and themselves. They have served to expose the internal and external forces that have helped or hindered their efforts. It is important for those in human services, as well as management in higher-risk professions, to understand the trauma from the survivors' perspective. They need to know what is helpful to survivors and what is not. Common sense assumptions of those in authority are often wrong. Moreover, the initial post-release shock and the overwhelming press of emotions and events make it difficult for survivors to discern and express their genuine needs. The passage of time can help to distill and organize thoughts and feelings. In deepening our understanding of the needs of victims, this study has enhanced our ability to be of service.

Good Stuff is divided into two main parts; Part I addresses Positive Attributes and Part II, Positive Actions. The former contains chapters on Courage, Resilience, and Gratitude. The latter contains chapters on Generosity, Forgiveness, and Sacrifice. Together, the six chapters constitute a harmonious gestalt of the relational scenarios that assure enrichment of human experience. This book offers socioclinical meditations to temper Freud's view that human beings are essentially 'bad' and whatever goodness they can muster is largely defensive. By elucidating the origins, dynamics, social pleasures, and clinical benefits of courage, resilience, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, and sacrifice, this book sheds light on a corner of human experience that has remained inadequately understood by psychoanalysts and other mental health professionals.