Departments

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psychology

  • 2-1-15

    The Complex History of Pain: An Interview with Joanna Bourke

    by Robin Lindley

    In her groundbreaking new book "The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers," renowned British historian Joanna Bourke explores how the understanding of the human sensation of pain has evolved over the past three centuries in the English-speaking world.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    7-18-13

    Louis René Beres: What Does It Mean to Kill for a Cause?

    Louis René Beres is a professor of political science at Purdue University and the author of multiple books.Before any country can fashion an effective counter-terrorism policy, it needs a clear and purposeful understanding of "the enemy." For the United States, especially after discovering so-many behavioral contradictions in the Boston Marathon bombers, an underlying task must be to look more closely and explicitly at issues of normalcy. On the cover of yesterday's Rolling Stone, for instance (which was the source of widespread outcry) Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is both "glamorously" posed and called a "monster."Is it correct to assume that all or most of this country's terrorist foes are "abnormal"? Or does such a position ultimately hinder our urgent national security efforts? Would such an assumption represent little more than a ritualized political obligation -- a purely self-serving and ideologically obligatory policy stance -- or might it still be the considered outcome of rock solid and objective psychological science?

  • SOURCE: NYT
    1-14-13

    Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Psychologist Who Studied Depression in Women, Dies at 53

    Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist and writer whose work helped explain why women are twice as prone to depression as men and why such low moods can be so hard to shake, died on Jan. 2 in New Haven. She was 53.Her death followed heart surgery to correct a congenitally weak valve, said her husband, Richard Nolen-Hoeksema.Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema, a professor at Yale University, began studying depression in the 1980s, a time of great excitement in psychiatry and psychology. New drugs like Prozac were entering the market; novel talking therapies were proving effective, too, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, in which people learn to defuse upsetting thoughts by questioning their basis.