Download or read book Obsession written by Lennard J. Davis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperately impassioned about our cars, we admire obsession in others: we demand that lovers be infatuated with one another in films, we respond to the passion of single-minded musicians, we cheer on driven athletes. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern. But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category—both a pathology and a goal. Behind this paradox lies a fascinating history, which Lennard J. Davis tells in Obsession. Beginning with the roots of the disease in demonic possession and its secular successors, Davis traces the evolution of obsessive behavior from a social and religious fact of life into a medical and psychiatric problem. From obsessive aspects of professional specialization to obsessive compulsive disorder and nymphomania, no variety of obsession eludes Davis’s graceful analysis.
Download or read book Curiosity Or Obsession written by F Edward Jersey and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman loses her way in life by being unable to control what she feels are curiosities. Her friends think it's more obsessions than curiosities. Her friends try to help her although it is difficult at times. When she eventually gets help from professionals, they help her see the light.
Download or read book Creating Romantic Obsession written by Kathleen Béres Rogers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us have, at one time, been obsessed with something, but how did obsession become a mental illness? This book examines literary, medical, and philosophical texts to argue that what we call obsession became a disease in the Romantic era and reflects the era’s anxieties. Using a number of literary texts, some well-known (like Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 “The Tell Tale Heart”) and some not (like Charlotte Dacre’s 1811 The Passions and Charles Brockden Brown’s 1787 Edgar Huntly), the book looks at “vigilia”, an overly intense curiosity, “intellectual monomania”, an obsession with study, “nymphomania” and “erotomania”, gendered forms of desire, “revolutiana”, an obsession with sublime violence and military service, and “ideality,” an obsession with an idea. The coda argues that traces of these Romantic constructs can be seen in popular accounts of obsession today.
Download or read book Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality written by ATF Press and published by ATF Press. This book was released on 2020-12-09 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The frontiers of religion and science have always been pushed forward by curious and obsessed individuals, like: the monk who kept banned books in a secret library under the nose of the pope; the explorers who searched for the lost tribes of Israel but found a new continent instead; the eccentric doctor and a mad monk who intuited scientific truths well before future generations would prove their theories correct; the archaeologists who discovered the goddess just in time for feminism; the utopians who never quite found what they were looking for; and a current flock of priests and nuns who go wherever knowledge takes them. It is a delicious quirk of history that individuals dismissed by their contemporaries as eccentrics and troublemakers are often those with the most impact on the world. Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and Spirituality is a captivating look at the famous and the forgotten who emerged in times of extreme change and social disruption to change science and spirituality for ever. During our current Covid19 pandemic, this collection is highly relevant to a world still seeking novel answers to the human condition and also drawn to old theories long ago debunked.
Download or read book Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy written by Zachary Stockill and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-10-18 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ARE YOU TIRED OF CONSTANTLY THINKING ABOUT YOUR PARTNER'S PAST RELATIONSHIPS? Are you interested in letting go of obsessive jealous thoughts, anxiety, and curiosity about your partner's past? Wouldn't it feel great to be completely free from retroactive jealousy, and be able to move forward in your relationship without worry about the past? What if I told you that you already have the "cure" for overcoming retroactive jealousy? You do-all you need is the proper guidance. And that's where "Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy" comes in. Written from the perspective of one who has struggled with, and eventually overcome, obsessive jealousy surrounding a partner's past, Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy is the only guidebook you will ever need to let go of jealous thoughts, curiosity, and anxiety about your partner's past relationships/sexual history. AFTER READING YOU WILL: have access to a multi-step program that will help you to let go of your jealousy and anxiety begin incorporating coping exercises into your daily routine which will eliminate your jealous thoughts as soon as they appear feel a new sense of optimism and confidence in your ability to grow and overcome retroactive jealousy understand what your jealousy is really about, and have a concrete plan of action for overcoming it, and moving forward You might currently feel hopeless; like retroactive jealousy is something that you'll just be forced to "live with" until you die. You might even be severely depressed, mired in obsessive jealous thoughts and confusion. Overcoming Retroactive Jealousy will show you that you are suffering needlessly-and show you the way forward. In nineteen chapters, author Zachary Stockill outlines a series of time-tested effective strategies, practices, and exercises for confronting, and eventually overcoming, jealousy regarding your partner's past as painlessly, efficiently, and quickly as possible. A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Several years ago, I experienced "crippling" retroactive jealousy. It disrupted my career, destroyed my relationship, and provoked months of anguish and depression. But thankfully, through a process of self-exploration, hard work, growth, and discovery, I overcame it. Based on my experience, and several years of research and talking to fellow sufferers about their condition, I wrote this book to give you a step-by-step program to help you do the same, and overcome retroactive jealousy as quickly and easily as possible. I know that this step-by-step program is effective because since 2013 my book has helped "thousands" of readers get over retroactive jealousy, save their relationships, and regain control. In retrospect, my jealousy was a blessing in disguise. As I write to you today, I am undoubtedly a stronger, more confident, more loving, and overall better man for having gone through it. It might not seem like it now, but you too can use your jealousy to your advantage. Seriously--as you overcome retroactive jealousy, you will emerge a stronger, more confident, more attractive, and more loving person and partner. And it's my pleasure to guide you every step of the way. So whether you're struggling with your girlfriend's past, wife's past, husband's past, or your boyfriend's past, you need to know that you have the power to move forward, and kiss jealous thoughts goodbye. You can get a hold on your brain, and patterns of constant curiosity and obsessive thinking. You can move forward in your relationship without the burden and strain of retroactive jealousy. You can be the partner you want to be-you just have to understand where retroactive jealousy comes from, and how to deal with it. SO LET'S GET STARTED! Get your copy of the most popular guidebook on the market for overcoming retroactive jealousy, and join thousands of readers who have regained control, and found peace."
Download or read book A Novel Obsession written by Caitlin Barasch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Good Morning America Buzz Pick, and A Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by BuzzFeed, The Millions, Goodreads, Bustle, BookRiot, and The Nerd Daily "If you’ve ever felt tempted to ‘keep tabs on’ a partner’s ex on Instagram and then found yourself down a rabbit hole of their vacation posts from three years ago, this debut novel—which follows a 24-year-old New Yorker named Naomi who becomes obsessed with her boyfriend’s former girlfriend—is for you."—Vogue, “Best New Beach Reads” Twenty-four-year-old New York bookseller Naomi Ackerman is desperate to write a novel, but struggles to find a story to tell. When, after countless disastrous dates, she meets Caleb—a perfectly nice guy with a Welsh accent and a unique patience for all her quirks—she thinks she's finally stumbled onto a time-honored subject: love. Then Caleb's ex-girlfriend, Rosemary, enters the scene. Upon learning that Rosemary is not safely tucked away in Caleb’s homeland overseas, but in fact lives in New York and also works in the literary world, Naomi is threatened and intrigued in equal measure. If they both fell for the same man, what else might they have in common? The more Naomi learns about Rosemary, the more her curiosity consumes her. Before she knows it, her casual Instagram stalking morphs into a friendship under false pretenses—and becomes the subject of her nascent novel. As her lies and half-truths spiral out of control, and fact and fiction become increasingly difficult to untangle, Naomi must decide what—and who—she’s willing to sacrifice to write the perfect ending.
Download or read book Toward New Philosophical Explorations of the Epistemic Desire to Know written by Marianna Papastephanou and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-03-25 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores curiosity from many philosophical perspectives of relevance to various fields and disciplines such as educational studies, epistemology, political philosophy and history of thought. It advances and enriches scholarly research on curiosity while critiquing current approaches to the epistemic desire to know. Its interest in contemporary accounts of curiosity does not entail neglect of the conceptual history of this notion from antiquity to the present. Its focus on cultural and scientific appreciations of curiosity is global rather than local and inclusive of standpoints beyond established divisions such as the “modern versus postmodern” or the “analytic versus continental”. The book offers fresh and unique engagements with what motivates us to ask questions and how this motivation operates from an ethical, cultural and political point of view.
Download or read book Why written by Mario Livio and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-07-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—in this “lively, expert, and definitely not dumbed-down account” (Kirkus Reviews) as he explores our innate desire to know why. Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? “Have you ever wondered why we wonder why? Mario Livio has, and he takes you on a fascinating quest to understand the origin and mechanisms of our curiosity. I thoroughly recommend it.” (Adam Riess, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, 2011). Curiosity is not only at the heart of mystery and suspense novels, it is also essential to other creative endeavors, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. In the ever-fascinating Why? Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? An astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience, Livio has firsthand knowledge of his subject which he explores in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.
Download or read book The Orchestration of Joy and Suffering written by Corinne F. Gerwe and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the link between intense childhood experiences, persistent behaviors and chronic addiction; outlines a novel treatment methodology. Elegant and heart-wrenching.
Download or read book The Torture Machine written by Flint Taylor and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With his colleagues at the People’s Law Office (PLO), Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases that have exposed corruption and cover-up within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and throughout the city’s political machine, from aldermen to the mayor’s office. [TAYLOR’s BOOK] takes the reader from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark—and the historic, thirteen-year trial that followed—through the dogged pursuit of chief detective Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the CPD that used barbaric methods, including electric shock, to elicit false confessions from suspects. Taylor and the PLO gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the CPD, breaking the department’s “code of silence” that had enabled decades of cover-up. The legal precedents they set have since been adopted in human rights legislation around the world.
Download or read book Curiosity written by Barbara M. Benedict and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.
Download or read book Curiosity written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-04-03 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published by Bodley Head, 2012.
Download or read book Late Bloomers written by Rich Karlgaard and published by Crown. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking exploration of how finding one's way later in life can be an advantage to long-term achievement and happiness. “What Yogi Berra observed about a baseball game—it ain't over till it's over—is true about life, and [Late Bloomers] is the ultimate proof of this. . . . It’s a keeper.”—Forbes We live in a society where kids and parents are obsessed with early achievement, from getting perfect scores on SATs to getting into Ivy League colleges to landing an amazing job at Google or Facebook—or even better, creating a start-up with the potential to be the next Google, Facebook or Uber. We see coders and entrepreneurs become millionaires or billionaires before age thirty, and feel we are failing if we are not one of them. Late bloomers, on the other hand, are under-valued—in popular culture, by educators and employers, and even unwittingly by parents. Yet the fact is, a lot of us—most of us—do not explode out of the gates in life. We have to discover our passions and talents and gifts. That was true for author Rich Karlgaard, who had a mediocre academic career at Stanford (which he got into by a fluke) and, after graduating, worked as a dishwasher and night watchman before finding the inner motivation and drive that ultimately led him to start up a high-tech magazine in Silicon Valley, and eventually to become the publisher of Forbes magazine. There is a scientific explanation for why so many of us bloom later in life. The executive function of our brains doesn’t mature until age twenty-five, and later for some. In fact, our brain’s capabilities peak at different ages. We actually experience multiple periods of blooming in our lives. Moreover, late bloomers enjoy hidden strengths because they take their time to discover their way in life—strengths coveted by many employers and partners—including curiosity, insight, compassion, resilience, and wisdom. Based on years of research, personal experience, interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and countless people at different stages of their careers, Late Bloomers reveals how and when we achieve our full potential. Praise for Late Bloomers “The underlying message that we should ‘consider a kinder clock for human development’ is a compelling one.”—Financial Times “Late Bloomers spoke to me deeply as a parent of two millennials and as a coach to many new college grads (the children of my friends and associates). It’s a bracing tonic for the anxiety they are swimming through, with a facts-based approach to help us all calm down.”—Robin Wolaner, founder of Parenting magazine
Download or read book Tools for Food written by Corinne Mynatt and published by Hardie Grant Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guild of Food Writer’s Awards, Highly Commended in ‘First Book’ category (2022) Tools For Food explores the history of 250 of our most-loved and intriguing kitchen items and how they've changed the way we live. From 12th century Mongolian fire pots, to 17th century Chinese scissors, from beloved Tupperware food containers to the iconic Alessi lemon squeezer, this culinary journey covers well-loved items, as well as lesser known objects. From primitive tools to high-end objects conceived by brands such as Le Creuset, Joseph Joseph, IKEA, Tala, Rosti, Pyrex, Oxo Good Grips, Droog, Staub and many more, the reader will be taken on a journey around the globe, exploring how and what we cook has changed over the centuries, showing similarities and diversity across times and cultures. From basic necessities to design objects, each image is accompanied by a text detailing its origin, as well as interesting facts about its relationship between culture and cooking.
Download or read book Celebrity and Entertainment Obsession written by Michael S. Levy and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrity culture surrounds us. We are inundated with information about actors and actresses, athletes, musicians, and others who have become famous or infamous. Although we never will likely meet or get to know them, our interest in them seems boundless. We are literally obsessed with being entertained as well as with the people who entertain us. Who our celebrities are has also shifted; in the past, celebrity status was bestowed on men and women of great accomplishment, those who had given the world something to be proud of and to celebrate. Conversely, today’s celebrities are generally people involved in entertainment—from TV newscasters to people who appear on reality television programs, as well as some who are simply famous for being famous. What remains an enigma is why we, as a society, are so infatuated with being entertained, as well as with those who entertain us and appear in the media. This book makes sense of this spectacle by explaining the reasons for this obsession from a psychological, social, and historical perspective. It suggests that we have become addicted in much the same way that a person becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol. Finally, the author offers his observations on how to free our minds from this captivation. Anyone interested in understanding more about our need to live vicariously through the rich and famous will find answers in this book.
Download or read book Tracking Wonder written by Jeffrey Davis and published by Sounds True. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover how the lost art of wonder can help you cultivate greater creativity, resilience, meaning, and joy as you bring your greatest contributions to life. Beyond grit, focus, and 10,000 hours lies a surprising advantage that all creatives have—wonder. Far from child’s play, wonder is the one radical quality that has led exemplary people from all walks of life to move toward the fruition of their deepest dreams and wildest endeavors—and it can do so for you, too. “Wonder is a quiet disruptor of unseen biases,” writes Jeffrey Davis. “It dissolves our habitual ways of seeing and thinking so that we may glimpse anew the beauty of what is real, true, and possible.” Rich with wisdom, inspiring stories, and practical tools, Tracking Wonder invites us to explore how the lost art of wonder can inspire a life of greater joy, possibility, and purpose. You’ll discover: The six facets of wonder—key qualities to help you cultivate the art of wonder in your work, relationships, and lifeHow wonder can help us fertilize creativity, sustain the motivation to pursue big ideas, navigate uncertainty and crises, deepen our relationships, and moreThe biases against wonder—moving beyond societal and internalized resistance to our inherent giftsWhy experiencing wonder isn’t really about achieving goals—though that happens—but about how we live each dayInspiring stories of people whose experiences of wonder helped them move through the unthinkable to create extraordinary livesPractical exercises, tools, and reflections to help you begin your own practice of tracking wonder A refreshing counter-voice to the exhausting narrative hyper-productivity, Tracking Wonder is a welcome guide for experiencing more meaning and joy in the present moment as you bring your greatest contributions to life.
Download or read book The Perfection of the Paper Clip written by James Ward and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Change the way you look at office supplies forever with this wonderfully enlightening and quirky exploration of the fascinating backstories of everyday objects, such as the humble and perfectly designed paper clip and the utilitarian, irreplaceable pencil. How many of humanity’s brightest ideas started out on a scrap of paper or in the margins of a notebook? In a delightfully witty and fresh voice, James Ward—cofounder of the Boring Conference and collector of the arcane—explores the secret histories of deskbound supplies, from pencils to fluorescent ink, and the gleaming reams of white paper we all take for granted, encouraging a deeper appreciation and fascination for the things that surround us each day. In the spirit of The Evolution of Useful Things and A History of the World in 100 Objects, Ward transforms the mundane into remarkable stories of invention, discovery, and even awe. The Perfection of the Paper Clip is “a hugely entertaining experience for the reader…this engaging book is an absolute must” (Booklist).
