Download or read book A History of Delusions written by Victoria Shepherd and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-06-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Fascinating and compassionate’ Horatio Clare The King of France – thinking he was made of glass – was terrified he might shatter…and he wasn’t alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France’s asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead. For centuries we’ve dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks – they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas. In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.
Download or read book The Delusions of Crowds written by William J. Bernstein and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “disturbing yet fascinating” exploration of mass mania through the ages explains the biological and psychological roots of irrationality (Kirkus Reviews). From time immemorial, contagious narratives have spread through susceptible groups—with enormous, often disastrous, consequences. Inspired by Charles Mackay’s nineteenth-century classic Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, neurologist and author William Bernstein examines mass delusion through the lens of current scientific research in The Delusions of Crowds. Bernstein tells the stories of dramatic religious and financial mania in western society over the last five hundred years—from the Anabaptist Madness of the 1530s to the dangerous End-Times beliefs that pervade today’s polarized America; and from the South Sea Bubble to the Enron scandal and dot com bubbles. Through Bernstein’s supple prose, the participants are as colorful as their “desire to improve one’s well-being in this life or the next.” Bernstein’s chronicles reveal the huge cost and alarming implications of mass mania. He observes that if we can absorb the history and biology of this all-too-human phenomenon, we can recognize it more readily in our own time, and avoid its frequently dire impact.
Download or read book Dreams and Delusions written by Fritz Richard Stern and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays by historian Fritz Stern ponders the promise and catastrophe of twentieth-century German history. It is now reissued with a new introduction by the author.
Download or read book A Colorful History of Popular Delusions written by Robert E. Bartholomew and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This eclectic history of unusual crowd behavior describes a rich assortment of mass phenomena ranging from the amusing and quirky to the shocking and deplorable. What do fads, crazes, manias, urban legends, moral panics, riots, stampedes, and other mass expressions of emotion have in common? By creating a typology of such behavior, past and present, the authors show how common extraordinary group reactions to fear or excitement are. And they offer insights into how these sometimes dangerous mob responses can be avoided. We may not be surprised to read about the peculiarities of the European Middle Ages, when superstition was commonplace: like the meowing nuns of France, "tarantism" (a dancing mania) in Italy, or the malicious anti-Semitic poison-well scares. But similar phenomena show up in our own era. Examples include the social-networking hysteria of 2012, which resulted in uncontrollable twitching by teenage girls in Leroy, NY; the "phantom bus terrorist" of 2004 in Vancouver, Canada; and the itching outbreak of 2000 in South Africa. Vivid, detailed, and thoroughly researched, this is a fascinating overview of collective human behavior in its many unusual forms.
Download or read book Lessons from the History of Medical Delusions written by Worthington Hooker and published by . This book was released on 1850 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Delusion in Death written by J. D. Robb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Eve Dallas must foil a terrorist plot in this explosive thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. It was just another after-work happy hour at a bar downtown—until the madness descended. And after twelve minutes of chaos and violence, more than eighty people lay dead. Lieutenant Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events. Surviving witnesses talk about seeing things—monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive anyone into temporary insanity—if not kill them outright. But that doesn’t explain who would unleash such horror—or why. Eve’s husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, but he’s convinced the attack wasn’t directed at him. It’s bigger than that. And if Eve can’t figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it’s airborne…
Download or read book Useful Delusions The Power and Paradox of the Self Deceiving Brain written by Shankar Vedantam and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.
Download or read book Delusions of Everyday Life written by Leonard Shengold and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are all more primitive and irrational than we care to acknowledge, says Dr. Leonard Shengold in this profound and eloquent book. We all suffer to some degree from delusions--vestiges of infantile mental functioning that continue into adult life and that at times of crisis manifest themselves in narcissistic thoughts of omnipotence, immortality, or perfection. Dr. Shengold argues that we can never eliminate these delusions of everyday life, but we can lessen their effect if we acknowledge, or "own", them. He asserts that insight into what we are and what has happened to us is a prerequisite for caring about others and for accepting the transient conditions of life--both necessary to attain happiness. Dr. Shengold discusses delusions we all experience as well as delusions associated with paranoia, perversions, being in love, and identification with delusional parents. He illustrates his ideas by referring to the lives and works of such literary figures as Shakespeare, Swift, Tolstoy, Pascal, Rilke, Randall Jarrell, Dickens, Hardy, and, especially, Samuel Butler. Dr. Shengold also brings in relevant clinical material because, as he points out, delusions of everyday life are at the heart of misunderstanding and conflict in life and of resistance to change in psychological treatment. These delusions must be attenuated if therapy is to be successful.
Download or read book Suspicious Minds written by Joel Gold and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Truman Show delusion and other strange beliefs"--Cover.
Download or read book Delusions and the Madness of the Masses written by Lawrie Reznek and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We all think that we can tell the difference between someone who is mad, or whom psychiatrists call psychotic, and someone who is sane. But can we really tell who is mad and who is not? Do we really know what madness is and how it should be recognized? Have psychiatrists made a sensible distinction between the patient who believes that aliens are beaming messages to him from a foreign planet, and the religious fanatic who believes God communicates to him via automatic writing? Is there a difference between the paranoid patient who believes that the FBI is after him, and the sizeable proportion of our normal population that believe that the US government orchestrated the 9-11 bombings? Here, Reznek hopes to shed light on the delusions of the masses-those delusions that are common to everyday people living so-called ordinary lives. He provides an understanding of madness and the psychological processes that drive us to adopt delusions, arguing that it is a mistake to view only schizophrenic patients as delusional, while excluding large groups of society from such an analysis. If we abandon the idea that whole communities cannot share a delusion, we can come to a better understanding about why the world is such a dangerous place.
Download or read book Imperial Delusions written by Carl Boggs and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this hard-hitting critique, Carl Boggs argues that the United States is dominated by a new militarism, one that has become more potent and menacing since 9/11. He skillfully explores the origins and development of this new militarism and show its devastating effects on American society.
Download or read book The Delusion written by Laura Gallier and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.
Download or read book Night of Delusions written by Keith Laumer and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It starts out as a weird but seemingly understandable assignment, bodyguarding a mad politician whose keepers have decided to let him "escape" as a sort of reality therapy. But to understand the Senator, Florin must enter the Machine, an reality will never be the same. From now on he's a Knight of Delusions.
Download or read book On Delusion written by Jennifer Radden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delusions play a fundamental role in the history of psychology, philosophy and culture, dividing not only the mad from the sane but reason from unreason. Yet the very nature and extent of delusions are poorly understood. What are delusions? How do they differ from everyday errors or mistaken beliefs? Are they scientific categories? In this superb, panoramic investigation of delusion Jennifer Radden explores these questions and more, unravelling a fascinating story that ranges from Descartes’s demon to famous first-hand accounts of delusion, such as Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Radden places delusion in both a clinical and cultural context and explores a fascinating range of themes: delusions as both individually and collectively held, including the phenomenon of folies á deux; spiritual and religious delusions, in particular what distinguishes normal religious belief from delusions with religious themes; how we assess those suffering from delusion from a moral standpoint; and how we are to interpret violent actions when they are the result of delusional thinking. As well as more common delusions, such as those of grandeur, she also discusses some of the most interesting and perplexing forms of clinical delusion, such as Cotard and Capgras.
Download or read book THERAPY S DELUSIONS written by Ethan Watters and published by Scribner. This book was released on 1999-04-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two acclaimed authors deliver an attack on talk therapy, from its Freudian underpinnings to contemporary practice, and expose the failure of this "pseudoscience" that still holds enormous sway over the American mind.
Download or read book The History of Mental Symptoms written by G. E. Berrios and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-04-11 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important and unique survey of the historical background to the descriptive categories of psychopathology.
Download or read book Delusions of Gender How Our Minds Society and Neurosexism Create Difference written by Cordelia Fine and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-08-08 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains.
