# kb

id: music-thought-and-feeling-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music,_Thought,_and_Feeling-0.md
category: reference
title: Music, Thought, and Feeling
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music,_Thought,_and_Feeling
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:44.120216+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: music-thought-and-feeling-20260505-0
summary:
Music, Thought, and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of Music is a book written by psychologist William Forde Thompson and published in 2009 by Oxford University Press. The 2nd edition was published in 2014. == Reviews == In July, 2009, Victoria Williamson reviewed the book for Psychology of Music (Volume 37, Number 3). Williamson wrote "Music, Thought, and Feeling definitely fills a gap in the current literature. It is an excellent and, I am sure, extremely welcome resource for anyone who is planning a course on music cognition, either at undergraduate or graduate level. This is thanks to the combination of accessible and engaging language, clear structure, and relevant and illustrative resources. The demeanour of the book is one that assumes no specific artistic or scientific background: Just a desire to engage with the modern issues of music cognition." In his 2009 review of the book for Musicae Scientiae (Volume 13, Number 2), Tuomas Eerola wrote "Music, Thought, and Feeling is an important pedagogical contribution to the field as it not only manages to pull together the strings of the last thirty years of research from a broad range of topics within music cognition, but it performs this in a highly


id: myth-in-primitive-psychology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_in_Primitive_Psychology-0.md
category: reference
title: Myth in Primitive Psychology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_in_Primitive_Psychology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:45.330773+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: myth-in-primitive-psychology-20260505-0
summary:
Myth in Primitive Psychology is a 1926 book by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. == References == == External links == Full text of Myth in Primitive Psychology at HathiTrust Digital Library


id: the-nature-of-the-child-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Child-0.md
category: reference
title: The Nature of the Child
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Child
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:46.493070+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-nature-of-the-child-20260505-0
summary:
The Nature of the Child is a 1984 book by American psychologist Jerome Kagan. In a series of essays, Kagan challenges beliefs in child rearing and developmental psychology, namely that negative or positive attachments to parents necessarily results in a child's wellbeing as they mature. Kagan argues that such beliefs are unsupported and that a child's temperament relies more on biology and cognitive development. == References == Notes Sources == Commentary and reviews ==


id: neurosis-and-human-growth-the-struggle-toward-self-realization-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis_and_Human_Growth:_The_Struggle_Toward_Self-Realization-0.md
category: reference
title: Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis_and_Human_Growth:_The_Struggle_Toward_Self-Realization
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:47.625932+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: neurosis-and-human-growth-the-struggle-toward-self-realization-20260505-0
summary:
Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization is the magnum opus of German-American psychoanalyst Karen Horney. In it she outlines her theory of neurosis. In Horney's view, the key difference between neurosis and healthy growth is the difference between compulsive actions fueled by anxiety and spontaneous actions fueled by one's full range of emotions. If a person grows up able to maintain his or her spontaneity, that person grows up by a process which Horney calls self-realization. Horney describes self-realization as the development of a person's given potentialities, and compares it with the process of an acorn growing, given fertile soil, into a tree. The principal subject of the book, however, is what happens when a person's spontaneity is crushed in early life. The person will slowly lose touch with that spontaneity or "real self" and develop, instead, a reactive self which is constructed to respond to dangers of various kinds (see True self and false self). If a child's early environment is such that the child grows up seeing the world as basically hostile, compulsive actions will predominate and the child will grow up devoted to allaying anxiety. This development and its consequences for the adult personality are


id: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment-0.md
category: reference
title: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:48.796821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
summary:
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment is a nonfiction book by professors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass Sunstein. It was first published on May 18, 2021. The book concerns 'noise' in human judgment and decision-making. The authors define noise in human judgment as "undesirable variability in judgments of the same problem" and focus on the statistical properties and psychological perspectives of the issue. Examples they give include their own finding at an insurance company that the median premiums set by underwriters independently for the same five fictive customers varied by 55%, five times as much as expected by most underwriters and their executives. Another example is that two psychiatrists who independently diagnosed 426 state hospital patients agreed on which mental illness the patient suffered from only in half of the cases and a finding that French court judges were more lenient if it happened to be the defendant's birthday. Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein argue that noise in human judgment is a thoroughly prevalent and insufficiently addressed problem in matters of judgment. They write that noise arises because of factors such as cognitive biases, mood, group dynamics and emotional reactions. While contrasting statistical bias to noise, they describe cognitive bias


id: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment-1.md
category: reference
title: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:48.796821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
summary:
==== Typology ==== Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein propose the following typology/components of noise: level noise (arises due to different holistic views on the decision task among judges), stable pattern noise (arises due to permanent or semi-permanent differences between judges on how they react to certain circumstances in what is being judged), and occasion noise (arises due to factors temporarily affecting judgment, having little to do with the judgment/case itself). What the authors call 'the first lottery' in how one's case will be judged regards level noise and stable pattern noise and thus which judge is assigned to make the judgment, whereas 'the second lottery' regards occasion noise and thus whether or not the judge makes the judgment on an occasion beneficial or not to those affected by the judgment. ===== Relative contribution ===== Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein write that there is typically more noise than statistical bias. Within the noise, there is typically more pattern noise than level noise. Within the pattern noise, there is typically more stable pattern noise than occasion noise, which is often just a small share of the noise; stable pattern noise is typically larger than level noise on its own. This is all illustrated in


id: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment-2.md
category: reference
title: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:48.796821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
summary:
==== Decision hygiene ==== Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein use the term decision hygiene to describe the use of various techniques that can reduce noise in human judgment. The reason they favor the hygiene metaphor was that both the causes of noise in human judgment and the noise itself is difficult to see with the naked eye. They write that threats can harm you even though they are invisible, giving the analogy that if something goes wrong in the surgery room it is not necessarily because of scalpel misuse – it could be because the highly skilled surgeon forgot to perform proper hand hygiene before entering. Just as how washing one's hands protects against unidentified enemies we don't even see, decision hygiene can eliminate or diminish sources of noise we don't even think about. In the book, the authors present various decision hygiene techniques through different case study chapters. These techniques include both relatively small changes to the choice architecture (the physical and psychological environment in which the judgment is made) such as nudges (a concept made famous by Sunstein together with Richard Thaler) and larger changes. The latter include debiasing, use of algorithms/rules, use of guidelines, use of relative scales,


id: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment-3.md
category: reference
title: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:48.796821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
summary:
=== Critical response === Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment received generally positive scores among critics, with praise of the concept, its importance and the depth of analysis as to which it was treated. However, common critiques of the book were directed towards its understandability, inconsistency of style, and length. In the American Press, The Washington Post reviewed the book as "well-researched, convincing, and practical," and only criticized a lack of consistency in style: "some sentences and sections read like a psychology or statistics textbook, others like a scholarly article, and still others like the Harvard Business Review." The New York Times called it "tour de force of scholarship and clear writing". The Financial Times described it as a "humbling lesson in inaccuracy" and compared it to Kahneman's earlier work Thinking, Fast and Slow. They also pointed out that Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment may be more difficult to take for readers than Thinking, Fast and Slow because the former concerns a more narrow problem and therefore has a difficult time reaching the same level of entertainment. The Wall Street Journal Magazine listed the book in an "The Nine Best Books of Spring" article. In the British press, The


id: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment-4.md
category: reference
title: Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise:_A_Flaw_in_Human_Judgment
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:48.796821+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: noise-a-flaw-in-human-judgment-20260505-0
summary:
== Book development == Kahneman and Sibony worked on the concept and the drafting process intermittently for several years before bringing Sunstein in, and even conducted a study on noise at an insurance company in the shape of what they would later call a noise audit. They discussed the project with Sunstein in a meeting in New York in 2018. In the meeting they reportedly all realized the high potential of collaborating on the subject, and asked him to join that same day. The authors finalized the manuscript during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kahneman has said that the restrictions and difficulties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant adjusted writing process of video calls rather than meeting in person made the writing more productive, which meant that they were able to finish the book faster than what would otherwise have been the case: "We might not have finished the book if it hadn't been for the virus." The writing process was coordinated by decision making scientist Linnea Gandhi, who also did much of the editing. Gandhi also co-wrote the Harvard Business Review article that introduced the concept of noise in human judgment in 2016. In the Acknowledgements section of the


id: observations-on-man-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_on_Man-0.md
category: reference
title: Observations on Man
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_on_Man
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:49.984413+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: observations-on-man-20260505-0
summary:
Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations is 18th-century British philosopher David Hartley's major work. Published in two parts in 1749 by Samuel Richardson, it puts forth Hartley's principal theories: the doctrine of vibrations and the doctrine of associations. The first part of the text deals with the frame of the human body and mind and their mutual connections and influences, the second with the duty and expectations of mankind. == Intellectual background == Hartley's physical theory was drawn from certain speculations as to nervous action which Isaac Newton had published in his Principia (1687). Elements of Hartley's psychological theory were suggested by other writers, such as John Gay. For example, "in Hartley's theory, emotion is a fluid like electricity or water"—it flows from one experience to the next, a concept he called transference and lifted from the writings of Gay. Although Hartley acknowledges that Gay "put me upon considering the power of association" in relation to transference, he developed a different theory of association from Gay's. == Hartley's theories == Like John Locke, Hartley asserted that, before sensation, the human mind is a tabula rasa. Beginning with simple sensations, the mind eventually forms advanced states of


id: occult-science-in-medicine-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occult_Science_in_Medicine-0.md
category: reference
title: Occult Science in Medicine
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occult_Science_in_Medicine
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:51.137549+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: occult-science-in-medicine-20260505-0
summary:
Occult Science in Medicine is a book by the German doctor and theosophist Franz Hartmann, published in 1893. The aim of the book was to raise awareness amongst doctors and medical students about valuable medical knowledge from the past that has been ignored and catalogued as occult. On a broad level, the book is a comparison between the medical knowledge, practices and system contemporary to the author and those predicated by Theophrastus Paracelsus and supported by Theosophy in general. From a psychological perspective, there is a dualistic representation of the mind and of the body in relation to the constitution of man, diseases and their place in contemporary medicine. == Content == The book consists of five parts, with the most general topic discussed in Part 1 and the most specific points being made in Part 5. Each part is structured as a comparison between contemporary knowledge, science, medicine and their occult counterpart. === Part 1: The constitution of man === It is highlighted how Ancient medicine was a religious science, recognizing the source of universal life and how popular modern medicine recognizes no real truth because it is concerned only with the lowest plane of existence (i.e. the physical


id: of-two-minds-book-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Two_Minds_(book)-0.md
category: reference
title: Of Two Minds (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Two_Minds_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:52.326603+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: of-two-minds-book-20260505-0
summary:
Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology is a book written by the American psychiatrist Fredric Schiffer (MD degree in 1971) wherein he proposes that each person behaves as if there are two minds within the person, and that by recognizing and relating to the two separate minds, the therapist can promote healing and understanding of problems such as depression, anxiety, addictive behavior and delusional thoughts. The author writes that by "two minds in one person" he means that a "part of an individual ...has a unique set of memories, motivations, and behaviors alongside another part of him which has a different unique (though possibly similar) set of memories, motivations and behaviors." (Schiffer 2nd edition, 2021, p.30) The author locates a "mind" in each of the two physical halves (hemispheres) of the brain. and he "maintains that one hemisphere can be more immature than the other and that this imbalance leads to different mental disorders". During his counseling, as an exercise he has his patients cover all of one eye, and the inner half of the other eye, which the author feels selectively stimulates one cerebral hemisphere more than the other – activating the thoughts and feelings of


id: of-two-minds-book-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Two_Minds_(book)-1.md
category: reference
title: Of Two Minds (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Two_Minds_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:52.326603+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: of-two-minds-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Epilogue === Here, in the first edition of his book from 1998, the author presents other scientific studies which he is planning to perform to evaluate "Dual-Brain Psychology." === 2nd edition, published in 2021 === In the second edition, published in 2021, the author gives a "Preface to the 2nd Edition" which traces how his work, research and thinking have developed since his original edition twenty-three years earlier. The first and second edition of Schiffer's Of Two Minds are almost word-for-word the same. == Publication == The subtitle for the American edition is "The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology." The subtitle for the British edition is "A New Approach for Better Understanding and Improving Your Emotional Life." Both editions were published by imprints of Simon and Schuster. The subtitle for the second edition is simply "Dual-Brain Psychology." The book was also published in a German translation in 2007 by the publisher VAK. The title in German is Eine Brille für die Seele: Die neue Dual-Brain-Psychologie und ihre Anwendung bei Ängsten, Konflikten und Belastungen ("Glasses for the Soul: The New Dual-brain Psychology and Its Application to Fears, Conflicts and Stress"). == Reception == Schiffer writes in the preface to the


id: on-disobedience-and-other-essays-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Disobedience_and_Other_Essays-0.md
category: reference
title: On Disobedience and Other Essays
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Disobedience_and_Other_Essays
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:53.473752+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: on-disobedience-and-other-essays-20260505-0
summary:
On Disobedience and Other Essays is a 1981 book by the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. Published by Harper & Row, it is a collection of four previously published essays. "Let Man Prevail" and "Humanist Socialism" originally appeared in Erich Fromm, Let Man Prevail: A Socialist Manifesto and Program, 1960 "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem" originally appeared in Clara Urquhart, A matter of Life, 1963 "Prophets and Priest" originally appeared in Ralph Schoenman, Bertrand Russell, Philosopher of the Century: Essays in His Honour, 1967 == References ==


id: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History-0.md
category: reference
title: On the Beginning of Human History
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:54.685582+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-0
summary:
On the Beginning of Human History (Problems of Paleopsychology) is a philosophical and natural-scientific treatise by Soviet historian Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev, dedicated to the problems of anthropogenesis. The initial concept for a book on human prehistory dates back to 1924, although Porshnev directly addressed the topic of the emergence of Homo sapiens in the 1950s in connection with his interest in troglodytidae and the issue of the "snowman". After 1968, the researcher's work was entirely devoted to writing and publishing On the Beginning of Human History, which he considered the main research work of his life. The book presents a complex interdisciplinary study at the intersection of physical anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociology, philosophy of history, and other disciplines. The "beginning" highlighted in the title was, in the author's view, is a key to the entire complex of sciences about human society and the individual within society, creating a research program. For Porshnev, there was a fundamental distinction between humans and all other animals (an "evolutionary gap"), rooted in creativity, which is absent in any animal, even in rudimentary form. B. F. Porshnev's theory of anthropogenesis centers on the “individual-to-individual” model of interaction rather than the “individual-to-environment” approach. He traced the


id: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History-1.md
category: reference
title: On the Beginning of Human History
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:54.685582+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-0
summary:
According to Porshnev, ancient humans and troglodytids in a shared environment led to the strengthening of inhibition and prohibition mechanisms — modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted within a single community, with individuals of the former species serving as the primary food source for troglodytes, that led to the establishment of human sacrifices and initiation rituals imitating death in human culture. B. F. Porshnev theorized that gender relations among neoanthropes, including promiscuity, arose from the need to feed paleoanthropes by sacrificing part of their own population. Females produced many offspring, but a large share —likely males— was killed for this purpose. Surviving males formed isolated "provider" groups that "ransomed" neoanthrope young through hunting yields. These biological value differences between male and female neoanthropes, combined with an induced killing instinct, fostered war as a exclusively male pursuit. Wars occurred only among neoanthrope groups, with a taboo against paleoanthropes. The hypothesis described constant separation of females and young from adult males due to hunting mobility demands, preventing reunions. Other males temporarily joined female groups during migrations. Neoanthropes lacked a fixed family structure, instead forming transient associations across groups. Porshnev linked the emergence of cultural prohibitions (interdictions) to their inherent exceptions, rooted in the


id: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History-2.md
category: reference
title: On the Beginning of Human History
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beginning_of_Human_History
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:54.685582+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: on-the-beginning-of-human-history-20260505-0
summary:
== Theory's origin and development == At the time of writing On the Origin of Human History, B. F. Porshnev was internationally recognized as a specialist in 17th-century French history, though in the USSR he was often seen as a dogmatic Marxist-Leninist or mocked for his yeti research. Porshnev described his interests in the following way:For many years, I have heard caste-based reproaches: why am I dealing with this range of issues when my direct specialty is the history of 17th–18th century Europe? I take this opportunity to correct the misunderstanding: the science of the origin of human history—and, above all, paleopsychology—is my main specialty. If, in addition to this, I have devoted considerable time in my life to history, as well as philosophy, sociology, and political economy, this in no way discredits me in the aforementioned primary field of my research. But the questions of prehistory arise for me in aspects that my colleagues in related specialties do not study.Porshnev dated the concept to the mid-1920s (or 1924 in drafts), envisioning a trilogy with On the Origin… as the middle volume, though archives show the plan solidified in the mid-1960s amid his publications on ancient humans. 1930s manuscripts outlined


id: on-the-psychology-of-military-incompetence-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Psychology_of_Military_Incompetence-0.md
category: reference
title: On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Psychology_of_Military_Incompetence
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:55.829462+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: on-the-psychology-of-military-incompetence-20260505-0
summary:
On The Psychology of Military Incompetence is a work by Norman F. Dixon, first published in 1976, which applies insights from psychology to military history. After case studies of military and naval disasters from the preceding 120 years, mostly British, it offers in readable, not technical, style and analysis of the personality of the unsuccessful leader. Its conclusions are equally applicable to other less deadly forms of human organisation. == Synopsis == Starting from the premise that success or failure in military and naval operations may in large part be due to the personality of the general or admiral in command, the author first examines various historical disasters and the role of the commander in the resulting loss of life or liberty for the victims (which often included civilians as well). Among major British case studies, he cites the blunders in the Crimean War by Raglan, followed by the blunders of Buller in the Second Boer War. In the First World War, he looks at the casualty list of Haig on the Western Front and the ineptitude of Townshend in Mesopotamia. Between the wars he castigates Britain for its failure to modernise its forces, which led to years of disaster


id: oneirocritica-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirocritica-0.md
category: reference
title: Oneirocritica
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneirocritica
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:57.018176+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: oneirocritica-20260505-0
summary:
Oneirocritica (Greek: Ονειροκριτικά) (The Interpretation of Dreams) is an ancient Greek treatise on dream interpretation written by Artemidorus Daldianus in the 2nd century AD. It is the earliest extant Greek work on the subject, in five books, though in it Artemidorus mentions numerous other – now lost – works from which his own is at least partially derived, including the 1st-century Oneirocritica by Artemon of Miletus. The first three volumes were intended for the general public, providing an encyclopedic treatment of the subject matter of dreams, and the remaining two volumes were written for the private use of the author's son, a novice dream interpreter. Artemidorus inscribed the book "Artemidorus of Daldis", despite having been born in Ephesus, to commemorate the little-known birthplace of his mother in Lydia (3.66). Artemidorus suggests that dreams are unique to the individual, and that a person's waking life will affect the symbols in his dreams. He shows awareness of the dreaming mind's capacity to use metaphors in its messages. Michel Foucault, who discusses the Oneirocritica in The Care of the Self, the third volume of his The History of Sexuality (1976–1984), describes the text as a practical, experiential guide. According to Foucault, the work


id: opening-skinner-s-box-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opening_Skinner's_Box-0.md
category: reference
title: Opening Skinner's Box
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opening_Skinner's_Box
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:58.214236+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: opening-skinner-s-box-20260505-0
summary:
Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, ISBN 0393050955), is a book by Lauren Slater. In this book, Slater sets out to describe some of the psychological experiments of the twentieth century. Controversially, the author also describes the urban legend that B.F. Skinner raised his child in his Skinner box, a kind of Operant conditioning chamber, in a way which many perceived as being poorly researched and lending credit to a false claim. == Experiments covered == The work and experiments of B. F. Skinner The Milgram experiment of the 1950s, a controversial experiment designed to explain obedience to authority to a post-Holocaust world The Rosenhan experiment, which questioned the validity of psychiatric diagnosis in the 1970s Darley and Latané's helping behavior studies Leon Festinger's theory of Cognitive dissonance among cult members whose predicted apocalypse fails to arrive Rat Park, a study into drug addiction conducted by Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alexander in the late 1970s, which attempted to show that drugs do not cause addiction by demonstrating that the apparent addiction to opiate drugs commonly observed in laboratory rats exposed to it is attributable to their living conditions, and not


id: the-organism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Organism-0.md
category: reference
title: The Organism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Organism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:54:59.414413+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-organism-20260505-0
summary:
The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man is a book on psychology and neurology by Dr. Kurt Goldstein, first published under the title Der Aufbau des Organismus: Einführung in die Biologie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Erfahrungen am kranken Menschen, in 1934. A new edition of the English translation was published in 1995: The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man, with a foreword by Oliver Sacks, New York, Zone Books. After the rise of Hitler, Goldstein escaped to Amsterdam, supported by The Rockefeller Foundation, where he dictated his work, which would become his magnum opus, in just six weeks. Goldstein described the work being written while in a "time of enforced leisure" in the Netherlands during his flight from Nazi Germany, it was published with only minor revisions in English translation in 1939. Goldstein's work helped institute the field of phenomenological psychiatry. In The Organism, Goldstein declared that human life cannot be compared to a system which simply returns to a state of balance after stimulation from outside. Goldstein, after critiquing different attempts to classify the instincts, writes that all instinctual manifestations emerge from "the drive to self-actualization." At


id: the-paradox-of-choice-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice-0.md
category: reference
title: The Paradox of Choice
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:00.555104+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-paradox-of-choice-20260505-0
summary:
The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less is a book about overchoice written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyzes the behavior of different types of people (in particular, maximizers and satisficers). This book argues that the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. == Summary == "Autonomy and freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has had before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from it psychologically". This quote from his book summarises Schwartz's point of view with regards to having too many choices. == Publication history == The Paradox of Choice was published by Harper Perennial and was released in 2004, while the paperback version was released on


id: the-paradox-of-choice-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice-1.md
category: reference
title: The Paradox of Choice
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:00.555104+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-paradox-of-choice-20260505-0
summary:
=== Why We Suffer === Schwartz integrates various psychological models for happiness showing how the problem of choice can be addressed by different strategies. What is important to note is that each of these strategies comes with its own bundle of psychological complication. “Freedom of choice” leads people to feel powerless and frustrated, because choosing ‘one’ among many other options means giving up the rest of the opportunities. At the same time, since people can easily change and replace the choice, the absolute value of making a choice no longer exists. Choice and happiness. Schwartz discusses the significance of common research methods that utilize a happiness scale. He sides with the opinion of psychologists David Myers and Robert Lane, who independently conclude that the current abundance of choice often leads to depression and feelings of loneliness. Schwartz draws particular attention to Lane's assertion that Americans are paying for increased affluence and freedom with a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of community. What was once given by family, neighborhood and workplace now must be achieved and actively cultivated on an individual basis. The social fabric is no longer a birthright but has become a series of deliberated and demanding


id: pathological-altruism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_Altruism-0.md
category: reference
title: Pathological Altruism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_Altruism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:01.761107+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: pathological-altruism-20260505-0
summary:
Pathological Altruism is a book edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson. It was published on 5 January 2012 by Oxford University Press, and contains 31 academic papers. Oakley defines pathological altruism as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm". == Overview == The book comprises a collection of essays which discuss negative aspects of altruism and empathy towards others, such as when altruism hurts the altruist, is taken to an unhealthy extreme, or causes more harm than good. Examples given include depression and burnout seen in healthcare professionals, an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, hoarding of animals, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. It is considered the first book to explore negative aspects of altruism and empathy. According to Oakley, anorexia, supporting addictions of other people (codependency), animal hoarding, depression, guilt and self-righteousness can be pathological altruism. Oakley has also stated that suicide bombings and genocides can be caused by pathological altruism, when perpetrators of these acts believe they are behaving altruistically towards those who share their ideology. Oakley further


id: the-pit-a-group-encounter-defiled-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit:_A_Group_Encounter_Defiled-0.md
category: reference
title: The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pit:_A_Group_Encounter_Defiled
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:02.936666+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-pit-a-group-encounter-defiled-20260505-0
summary:
The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled is a work of narrative nonfiction concerning book on Mind Dynamics (a.k.a. Leadership Dynamics and Holiday Magic), written by Gene Church and Conrad D. Carnes. The book was published Outerbridge & Lazard, Inc., in 1972, and was republished in a paperback edition in 1973, by Pocket Books. The book was later the basis for the 1983 film, Circle of Power. The title refers to the encounter group movement that was prevalent at the time, which evolved into what psychologists began to term Large Group Awareness Training. The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled is listed in the 1987 edition of Best Sellers, at the University of Scranton archives. The book was featured in The New York Review of Books, in 1973. == Authors == Gene Church had previously studied psychology at Ohio State University and Ohio University. He had enrolled in the Leadership Dynamics coursework as a requirement of his association with Holiday Magic. At the time of the book's publication, Conrad D. Carnes was an attorney practicing law with the firm of Carnes & Hornbeck in Columbus, Ohio. The authors later wrote a follow-up book, Brainwash, in 1983. Gene Church also gave a related


id: a-postcognitive-negation-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Postcognitive_Negation-0.md
category: reference
title: A Postcognitive Negation
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Postcognitive_Negation
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:04.056275+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: a-postcognitive-negation-20260505-0
summary:
A Postcognitive Negation: The Sadomasochistic Dialectic of American Psychology is a book written by Matthew Giobbi. It was published in 2010 by Atropos Press in New York City. The text was edited by Wolfgang Schirmacher. == References == == External links == Atropos Press, NYC/Dresden


id: powers-of-horror-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Horror-0.md
category: reference
title: Powers of Horror
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Horror
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:05.212057+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: powers-of-horror-20260505-0
summary:
Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (French: Pouvoirs de l'horreur. Essai sur l'abjection) is a 1980 book by Julia Kristeva. The work is an extensive treatise on the subject of abjection, in which Kristeva draws on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to examine horror, marginalization, castration, the phallic signifier, the "I/Not I" dichotomy, the Oedipal complex, exile, and other concepts appropriate to feminist criticism and queer theory. According to Kristeva, the abject marks a "primal order" that escapes signification in the symbolic order; the term is used to refer to the human reaction (horror, vomit) to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object, or between the self and the other. == Compared to Lacan == Kristeva's understanding of the "abject" provides a helpful term to contrast to Lacan's objet petit a (or the "object - cause of desire"). Whereas the objet petit a allows a subject to coordinate his or her desires, thus allowing the symbolic order of meaning and intersubjective community to persist, the abject "is radically excluded and," as Kristeva explains, "draws me toward the place where meaning collapses". It is neither object nor subject;


id: powers-of-horror-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Horror-1.md
category: reference
title: Powers of Horror
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Horror
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:05.212057+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: powers-of-horror-20260505-0
summary:
== Comparison with desire == The abject must also be distinguished from desire (which is tied up with the meaning-structures of the symbolic order). It is associated, rather, with both fear and jouissance. In phobia, Kristeva reads the trace of a pre-linguistic confrontation with the abject, a moment that precedes the recognition of any actual object of fear: "The phobic object shows up at the place of non-objectal states of drive and assumes all the mishaps of drive as disappointed desires or as desires diverted from their objects". The object of fear is, in other words, a substitute formation for the subject's abject relation to drive. The fear of, say, heights really stands in the place of a much more primal fear: the fear caused by the breakdown of any distinction between subject and object, of any distinction between ourselves and the world of dead material objects (reference page?). Kristeva also associates the abject with jouissance: "One does not know it, one does not desire it, one joys in it [on en jouit]. Violently and painfully. A passion". This statement appears paradoxical, but what Kristeva means by such statements is that we are, despite everything, continually and repetitively drawn to


id: the-practice-and-theory-of-individual-psychology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_and_Theory_of_Individual_Psychology-0.md
category: reference
title: The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_and_Theory_of_Individual_Psychology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:06.387243+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-practice-and-theory-of-individual-psychology-20260505-0
summary:
The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology is a work on psychology by Alfred Adler, first published in 1924. In his work, Adler develops his personality theory, suggesting that the situation into which a person is born, such as family size, sex of siblings, and birth order, plays an important part in personality development. Adler is among the many therapists who have noted the significance and impact of the relationship between attitudes towards oneself and others, and highlighting the relationship between regard for self and love of another. Adler claimed that the tendency to disparage others arises out of feelings of inferiority. Adler also describes the self as part of a reflection of the thoughts of others, seeing self-esteem as determined, in part, by feelings toward significant others. According to Adler, people are inherently motivated to engage in social activities, relate to other people, and acquire a style of life that is fundamentally social in nature. == References == == External links == Full text of The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (second edition) at the Internet Archive


id: predictably-irrational-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational-0.md
category: reference
title: Predictably Irrational
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:07.556130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: predictably-irrational-20260505-0
summary:
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions is a 2008 book by Dan Ariely, in which he challenges readers' assumptions about making decisions based on rational thought. Ariely explains, "My goal, by the end of this book, is to help you fundamentally rethink what makes you and the people around you tick. I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are—how we repeat them again and again—I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them". The book has been republished in a "revised & expanded edition", and has been adapted as the 2023 television series The Irrational. == Chapter summary == Ariely discusses many modes of thinking and situations that may skew the traditional rational choice theory. There are 15 chapters in total, and the following outline the main points. === The Truth About Relativity === In chapter 1, Ariely describes the ways in which people frequently regard their environment in terms of their relation to others; it is the way that the human brain is wired. People not only compare


id: predictably-irrational-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational-1.md
category: reference
title: Predictably Irrational
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:07.556130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: predictably-irrational-20260505-0
summary:
=== The Cost of Zero Cost === In chapter 3, Ariely explains how humans react to the words "free" and "zero". Humans make decisions without rationalizing the outcomes of their choices. To illustrate this point, Ariely conducted multiple experiments. The outcome was consistent: when faced with multiple choices, the free option was commonly chosen. With the opportunity to receive something for free, the actual value of the product or service is no longer considered. Ariely claims, "Most transactions have an upside and a downside, but when something is FREE! we forget the downside. FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is." Ariely's concept of "FREE!" applies not only to monetary and quantitative costs, but also to time. We forgo some of our time when we wait in line for free popcorn or to enter a museum on a free-entrance day. We could have been doing something else at that time. Ultimately, he demonstrates how such a simple concept can be used to drive business and social policy. For example, to reduce health cost, companies could offer free regular checks. Employees would be more willing to get


id: predictably-irrational-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational-2.md
category: reference
title: Predictably Irrational
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:07.556130+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: predictably-irrational-20260505-0
summary:
=== The High Price of Ownership === In chapter 8, Ariely discusses how we overvalue what we have, and why we make irrational decisions about ownership. The idea of ownership makes us perceive the value of an object to be much higher if we own the object. This illustrates the phenomenon of the endowment effect—placing a higher value on property once possession has been assigned. The author begins the chapter by using an example of how a lottery for highly sought-after Duke University basketball tickets inflates students' sense of value for the tickets. Students who actually received the tickets valued them ten times more than the students who did not receive them. Ariely gives three reasons why we do not always think rationally when it comes to our possessions: Ownership is such a big part of our society that we tend to focus on what we may lose rather than on what we may gain. The connection we feel to the things we own makes it difficult for us to dispose of them. We assume that people will see the transaction through our eyes. Ariely also lists the "peculiarities" of ownership as he calls them. One of them is that


id: the-pregnant-man-and-other-cases-from-a-hypnotherapist-s-couch-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pregnant_Man_and_Other_Cases_from_a_Hypnotherapist's_Couch-0.md
category: reference
title: The Pregnant Man and Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pregnant_Man_and_Other_Cases_from_a_Hypnotherapist's_Couch
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:08.678926+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-pregnant-man-and-other-cases-from-a-hypnotherapist-s-couch-20260505-0
summary:
The Pregnant Man and Other Cases from a Hypnotherapist's Couch is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book describes seven real patients, disguised for anonymity, who Barrett treated with hypnotherapy. They are presented in chronological order, beginning when the author was a trainee, so that much information about hypnosis is woven into the stories as Barrett herself is learning. The title character is a transgender man who develops false pregnancy after the death of his boyfriend. Other patients include an asthmatic with a heavy smoking habit, a wealthy aristocrat with a fear of flying, a writer who suddenly cannot read, and two very different cases of multiple personality. The book concludes with a section on how interested readers can locate a reputable hypnotherapist. == Reviews == "Written with an Oliver Sacks-like openness to psychological realism, Barrett's reminiscences are nothing if not mesmerizing." – Entertainment Weekly "As the title indicates, some strange cases turn up in a hypnotherapist's office, and there's a choice assortment of them in this little collection that both entertains and explicates the hypotherapist's art. ... From a


id: the-primal-scream-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Primal_Scream-0.md
category: reference
title: The Primal Scream
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Primal_Scream
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:09.833247+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-primal-scream-20260505-0
summary:
The Primal Scream. Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (1970; second edition 1999) is a book by the psychologist Arthur Janov, in which the author describes his experiences with patients during the months he developed primal therapy. Although Janov's claims were questioned by psychologists, the book was popular and brought Janov fame and popular success, which inspired other therapists to start offering primal therapy. == Summary == This book gives an account of the development of Primal Therapy. The book starts with an account of a group therapy session in 1967, during which a young man (Danny Wilson) underwent some kind of emotional catharsis during the therapy session. The young man was encouraged by Janov to call out for his mommy and daddy, which he did, only to fall into involuntary convulsions. After which, the young man announced "I can feel", and he then had some kind of emotional resolution. In the remainder of the book, Janov develops a general theory of neurosis. Janov claims that neurosis is caused by repressed emotional pain from childhood trauma, and can be cured by reliving and expressing. Janov claims in the book that all neurosis is caused by repressed childhood emotional trauma, and


id: private-lies-book-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Lies_(book)-0.md
category: reference
title: Private Lies (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Lies_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:10.974202+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: private-lies-book-20260505-0
summary:
Private Lies: Infidelity and Betrayal of Intimacy is a non-fiction book by psychiatrist and family therapist Frank Pittman, M.D. Private Lies was first published in hardcover edition in 1989 by W. Then, W. Norton & Company by the same publisher in a paperback edition in 1990. Dr. Pittman's book has been referred to as "widely quoted", by Psychology Today. It has been cited by 24 other books on marriage and family therapy counseling. == Books by Frank Pittman == Turning Points: Treating Families in Transition and Crisis, Frank Pittman, M.D., A Norton Professional Book, (Hardcover), W. W. Norton & Company; 1st ed edition, May 1987, ISBN 0-393-70040-2, ISBN 978-0-393-70040-4 Private Lies: Infidelity and Betrayal of Intimacy, Frank Pittman, M.D., W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition November 1990, ISBN 0-393-30707-7, ISBN 978-0-393-30707-8 Mentiras Privadas (Spanish edition), Amorrortu Editores, September 1994, ISBN 950-518-543-X, ISBN 978-950-518-543-6 Man enough: fathers, sons and the search for masculinity, Frank Pittman, M.D., Perigee Trade; Reprint edition October 1, 1994, ISBN 0-399-51883-5, ISBN 978-0-399-51883-6 Grow Up!: How Taking Responsibility Can Make You a Happy Adult, Golden Guides from St. Martin's Press, ISBN 1-58238-040-6, ISBN 978-1-58238-040-7, July 30, 1999 == See also == Psychotherapy Family therapy Mental health


id: psychologie-der-berufsarbeit-und-der-berufsberatung-psychotechnik-ii-spezieller-teil-20260505-0
category: reference
title: Psychologie der Berufsarbeit und der Berufsberatung (Psychotechnik) II Spezieller Teil
tags: science, encyclopedia
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:12.130835+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: psychologie-der-berufsarbeit-und-der-berufsberatung-psychotechnik-ii-spezieller-teil-20260505-0
file:
data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologie_der_Berufsarbeit_und_der_Berufsberatung_(Psychotechnik)_II_Spezieller_Teil-0.md

summary:
Psychologie der Berufsarbeit und der Berufsberatung (Psychotechnik) II Spezieller Teil (Die praktische Anwendung der psychologischen Eignungsprüfung in den verschiedenen Berufen) is an advice manual for career counseling written by Theodor Erismann and Martha Moers in 1922. Its title translates to Psychology of Work and Career Counseling (Psychotechniques) II Specialized Part (The Practical Application of Psychological Aptitude Tests in Various Careers). Published by Walter de Grunter & Co. in Berlin, it is the second instalment of a series on career counselling. The first volume contains information on the following topics: I. Grundzüge der Psychophysik der Berufsarbeit (Basics of Occupational Psychophysics) II. Berufsberatung auf psychologischer Grundlage (Psychology-based Career Counseling) III. Allgemeine Berufsberatung auf Grundlage der Intelligenzprüfung (Career Counseling Based on Intelligence Testing). While the first book highlights the importance of taking aptitude into account while choosing a career, as well as the applications of career counseling in general, the second volume goes further into aptitude testing for specific jobs. The main section of the book lists common occupations of the time, explores which characteristics and skills are vital for success in the respective fields, and finally introduces established tests for these. Often, intelligence tests based on the work of William Stern are

source_url:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychologie_der_Berufsarbeit_und_der_Berufsberatung_(Psychotechnik)_II_Spezieller_Teil


id: psychology-gone-wrong-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_Gone_Wrong-0.md
category: reference
title: Psychology Gone Wrong
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_Gone_Wrong
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:13.311619+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: psychology-gone-wrong-20260505-0
summary:
Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Sides of Science and Therapy is a 2015 book written by Tomasz Witkowski and Maciej Zatonski. It covers mistakes, frauds and abuses of academic psychology, psychotherapy, and psycho-business. In the book the authors review the history of fraudulent research and questionable research practices; the willingness of many psychologists to embrace pseudoscientific ideas and practices (psychoanalysis, recovered-memory therapy, projective testing, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), etc.), exaggerated claims for the efficacy of psychological interventions, and so on. In each case the authors support their thesis with abundant references. == Outline of the book == Part one of the book, chapters 1 through 7, seeks to demonstrate and to analyse flaws of the academic psychology and its impact on reality. Part two, chapters 8 through 15 presents pseudoscientific concepts in psychotherapy. Part three, chapters 16 through 19 examines problems of psycho-business. === Part I: Fraudsters in the Temple of Science: Some Sins of Academic Psychology === The authors describe how disasters of social control like forced sterilizations and uncritical application of questionable IQ tests were instigated by psychologists who relied on their own flawed thinking rather than on empirical evidence from scientific studies. They tell stories about researchers who


id: psychology-led-astray-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_Led_Astray-0.md
category: reference
title: Psychology Led Astray
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_Led_Astray
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:14.530681+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: psychology-led-astray-20260505-0
summary:
Psychology Led Astray: Cargo Cult in Science and Therapy is a book written by Tomasz Witkowski and published in 2016. == Outline == Part One, comprising chapters 1 through 6, seeks to answer the question about the reliability of psychology as a science. Part Two, comprising chapters 7 through 10, presents pseudo-scientific concepts in psychotherapy as a kind of uncontrollable experiment on humans. Part Three, comprising chapters 11 through 17, examines a range of dubious, unsupported, and discredited (though still thriving) treatments and therapeutic practices and diagnostic categories devoted to children's problems and needs (e.g., educational kinesiology, attachment therapy, trauma debriefing, Facilitated Communication, Dolphin Therapy). The book ends with a letter to Richard Feynman, chastising him for calling the whole field a cargo cult. Witkowski emphasizes examples of good science in psychology that have had demonstrable benefits for society. == Reception == Writing a review for Science-Based Medicine, Hall wrote: "Witkowski has written a new book that is certain to ruffle a lot of feathers. He uncovers cargo cult practices in psychology, unmasking therapies that are devoid of science, dangerous, and even cruel, especially those directed at children. Even if you don't agree with calling these travesties of science cargo


id: the-psychology-of-religion-and-coping-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Religion_and_Coping-0.md
category: reference
title: The Psychology of Religion and Coping
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Religion_and_Coping
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:15.751440+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-psychology-of-religion-and-coping-20260505-0
summary:
The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice by Kenneth Pargament was published in the United States in 1997. It is addressed to professional psychologists and researchers, and has been reviewed in many professional journals. Originally hardbound, it was republished as a paperback in 2001. By 2010, it had been cited more than 450 times in the psychology literature. == Topics covered == The Psychology of Religion and Coping contains 12 chapters that include an introduction and 11 other chapters divided into 4 parts. The parts are entitled: Part One. A perspective on religion (2 chapters) Part Two. A perspective on coping (2 chapters) Part Three. The religion and coping connection (4 chapters) Part Four. Evaluative and practical implications (3 chapters) The book also includes 5 appendices. == Reviews and influence == Reviews have appeared in The American Journal of Psychiatry, The Gerontologist, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Religious Studies Review Death Studies, and elsewhere. In the American Journal of Psychiatry, Armando R. Favazza, a widely-published author and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, wrote that "This is a very fair and respectful book.... The book sets a new


id: the-psychology-of-self-esteem-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem-0.md
category: reference
title: The Psychology of Self-Esteem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:16.915039+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-psychology-of-self-esteem-20260505-0
summary:
The Psychology of Self-Esteem is a book by Nathaniel Branden, first published in 1969. It explains Branden's theories of human psychology, focusing on the role of self-esteem. Most of the book was written during Branden's association with Ayn Rand, and it reflects some of her philosophical ideas. The book's success helped to popularize the idea of self-esteem as an important element of self-improvement. == Synopsis == The book is divided into two parts. In Part One ("The Foundations"), Branden explains his views on human nature and the science of psychology. He discusses his theories about consciousness, volition, emotions (with particular attention to emotional repression) and mental health. The material in Part One is about philosophical and psychological theory and does not focus on self-esteem, which is the predominant subject in Part Two ("The Psychology of Self-Esteem"). He describes self-esteem as "the integrated sum of self-confidence and self-respect", which he describes respectively as "a sense of personal efficacy and a sense of personal worth." Branden considers self-esteem to be one of the most important factors in human psychology. Branden contrasts healthy self-esteem with conditions that he views as psychological problems. First is what he calls "pseudo-self-esteem," which he describes as "an


id: the-psychology-of-self-esteem-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem-1.md
category: reference
title: The Psychology of Self-Esteem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:16.915039+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-psychology-of-self-esteem-20260505-0
summary:
== Reception == The book was a popular success and has sold over a million copies. It has been credited with spreading ideas about self-esteem to general audiences. Self-help expert Tom Butler-Bowdon warned that "readers find this book tough going", particularly in the earlier chapters, but described it as "one of the earliest classics of the popular psychology genre". Critics such as sociologist Frank Furedi and neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall cited the book as an example of what they see as a cultural trend of over-emphasizing the significance of self-esteem. Psychology professor Robyn Dawes said that Branden propagated a false "belief that human distress can be traced to deficient self-esteem", which Dawes describes as based in bias rather than evidence. Author Charles Murray, although critical of the self-esteem movement in general, is somewhat more positive about Branden. Murray said it would have been better if other promoters of self-esteem "had focused on self-esteem as Branden described it—an internalized sense of self-responsibility and self-sufficiency." In contrast, author Alfie Kohn supported the idea that self-esteem was important, but criticized Branden for founding his work "in Ayn Rand's glorification of selfishness." Branden's connection to Rand was also criticized by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who said


id: psychopathia-sexualis-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathia_Sexualis-0.md
category: reference
title: Psychopathia Sexualis
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathia_Sexualis
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:18.080432+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: psychopathia-sexualis-20260505-0
summary:
Psychopathia Sexualis: eine klinisch-forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study, also known as Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathetic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-forensic Study) is an 1886 book by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing and one of the first texts about sexual pathology. The book details a wide range of paraphilias and focuses on male homosexuality/bisexuality (the "antipathetic instinct" of the subtitle). The book coined the terms "sadism and masochism" as well as borrowing the term "bisexual" from botanical nomenclature. == Background == Psychopathia Sexualis sought to create a taxonomy of human sexual behavior based on Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing's analysis of case studies. Krafft-Ebing assumed that sex for the purpose of procreation was normal, and all other types of sexual intercourse were signs of disease, either emotional or physical. Masochism, which Krafft-Ebing focuses on at length, is, for example, defined as a particular erotic sensibility, in which the individual is, "in his sexual feelings and thoughts, dominated by the idea of being absolutely and unconditionally subjected to a person of the other sex". The Psychopathia Sexualis is notable for being one of the earliest works on homosexuality. Krafft-Ebing combined Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' Urning theory with Bénédict Morel's theory


id: religions-values-and-peak-experiences-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions,_Values,_and_Peak_Experiences-0.md
category: reference
title: Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions,_Values,_and_Peak_Experiences
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:19.286323+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: religions-values-and-peak-experiences-20260505-0
summary:
Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences is a 1964 book about psychology by Abraham Maslow. Maslow addressed the motivational significance of peak experiences in a series of lectures in the early 1960s, and later published these ideas in book form. == Overview == In contrast with the preoccupation of Freudian psychopathology, Maslow insisted on a "psychology of the higher life" which was to attend to the question "of what the human being should grow toward." In his work, Maslow described the experience of one's life as meaningful as being based on a feeling of fulfillment and significance. Maslow's theory of "peak-experiences" has been compared to William James' "healthy-minded" religion. Maslow hypothesized a negative relationship between adherence to conventional religious beliefs and the ability to experience peak moments. In Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences, Maslow stated that the peak experience is "felt as a self- validating, self-justifying moment which carries its own intrinsic value with it." Furthermore, the person is the "creative center of his (or her) own activities." == See also == Maslow's hierarchy of needs Peak experience == References ==


id: rewriting-the-soul-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting_the_Soul-0.md
category: reference
title: Rewriting the Soul
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting_the_Soul
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:20.506159+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rewriting-the-soul-20260505-0
summary:
Rewriting the Soul is a 1995 book by the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking, who offers an account of the formative influences that shape people’s understandings of their lives and their understanding of the lives of those around them. Hacking's work is both a theoretical account of the concepts and modes of agentic engagement through which people encounter the world and make sense of themselves, and a psychological account of how minds relate to memories and the fragility of this relationship, especially in the lives of people exposed to extremes of suffering and cruelty. Through a study of the history and manifestations of multiple personality disorder, Hacking describes how people come to an understanding of their lives through their own memories and autobiographies. Hacking describes the shifting shared meanings that shape our memories and become the threads with which people weave their biographies. == Argument == To develop his argument, Hacking offers an account of how those engaged with MPD have inquired into its reality over historical time and describes the concepts and practices that developed through those inquiries. In the past three decades of the twentieth century, therapy tended to take an individual with an amorphous and confused array of


id: rewriting-the-soul-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting_the_Soul-1.md
category: reference
title: Rewriting the Soul
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewriting_the_Soul
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:20.506159+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: rewriting-the-soul-20260505-0
summary:
The philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe wrote that a human action is intentional if the question 'Why,' taken in a certain sense (and evidently conceived as addressed to him), has application (Intention, par. 5-8). An agent can answer the 'why' question by giving a reason or purpose for her action. "To do Y" or "because I want to do Y" would be typical answers to this sort of "why?"; though they are not the only ones, they are crucial to the constitution of the phenomenon as a typical phenomenon of human life (sections 18-21). The agent's answer helps supply the descriptions under which the action is intentional. Anscombe was the first to clearly spell out that actions are intentional under some descriptions and not others. In her famous example, a man's action (which we might observe as consisting in moving an arm up and down while holding a handle) may be intentional under the description 'pumping water' but not under other descriptions such as 'contracting these muscles', 'tapping out this rhythm', and so on. Intentional actions are actions under a description. The implications of this philosophy of intentional action were extended by Hacking in Rewriting the Soul. His argument is


id: the-sadist-book-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sadist_(book)-0.md
category: reference
title: The Sadist (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sadist_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:21.607761+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-sadist-book-20260505-0
summary:
The Sadist (German: Der Sadist) is a book published by psychiatrist Karl Berg, following the confessions of Peter Kürten, a notorious German serial killer known as both The Vampire of Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Monster who committed a series of assaults and murders, primarily between 1929 and 1930. The book was originally written in German. The first English edition was issued in 1938, by Acorn Press. A second edition was published by William Heinemann Medical Books in 1945. == References ==


id: the-science-of-weird-shit-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Weird_Shit-0.md
category: reference
title: The Science of Weird Shit
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Weird_Shit
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:22.801202+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-science-of-weird-shit-20260505-0
summary:
The Science of Weird Shit: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal is a 2024 non-fiction book by British psychologist Chris French, published by MIT Press. The book explores the psychological and cognitive mechanisms behind paranormal beliefs and experiences, including ghost encounters, alien abductions, reincarnation, and near-death phenomena. French examines phenomena such as sleep paralysis, cognitive biases, and pareidolia to shed light on why people perceive supernatural events and what these perceptions reveal about human cognition. The book includes a foreword by Richard Wiseman. == Reception == In a May 2024 review for New Scientist, Wendy Grossman commended Chris French's book for its nuanced exploration of paranormal phenomena through the lens of psychology. Grossman highlighted French's balanced approach in examining experiences like sleep paralysis and cognitive biases such as pareidolia, appreciating his mix of academic knowledge and practical application. She noted that French's goal isn't to dismiss people's beliefs but to contextualize them within psychological understanding. Brian Reffin Smith, in his review for Leonardo Reviews, praised the book for its clear-headed and sympathetic exploration of why people believe in the paranormal. Smith highlighted how French demystifies phenomena ranging from alien abductions to near-death experiences by unraveling the psychological processes behind these


id: seduction-of-the-innocent-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent-0.md
category: reference
title: Seduction of the Innocent
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:24.153886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: seduction-of-the-innocent-20260505-0
summary:
Seduction of the Innocent is a book by German-born American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a harmful form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. The book was taken seriously at the time in the United States, and was a minor bestseller that alarmed American parents and galvanized them to campaign for censorship. At the same time, a U.S. Congressional inquiry was launched into the comic book industry. Subsequent to the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, the Comics Code Authority was established by publishers to self-censor their titles. In the decades since the book's publication, Wertham's research has been disputed by scholars. == Overview and arguments == Seduction of the Innocent cited overt or covert depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and other adult fare within "crime comics" – a term Wertham used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time, but superhero and horror comics as well. The book asserted that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children. Comics, especially the crime/horror titles pioneered by EC Comics, were not lacking in gruesome images; Wertham reproduced these extensively, pointing out what he saw as recurring


id: seduction-of-the-innocent-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent-1.md
category: reference
title: Seduction of the Innocent
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_of_the_Innocent
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:24.153886+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: seduction-of-the-innocent-20260505-0
summary:
== Criticism == According to a 2012 study by Carol L. Tilley, Wertham "manipulated, overstated, compromised, and fabricated evidence" in support of the contentions expressed in Seduction of the Innocent. He misprojected both the sample size and substance of his research, making it out to be more objective and less anecdotal than it truly was. He generally did not adhere to standards worthy of scientific research, instead using questionable evidence for his argument that comics were a cultural failure. Wertham used New York City adolescents from troubled backgrounds with previous evidence of behavior disorders as his primary sample population. For instance, he used children at the Lafargue Clinic to argue that comics disturbed young people, but according to a staff member's calculation seventy percent of children under the age of sixteen at the clinic had diagnoses of behavior problems. He also used children with more severe psychiatric disorders which required hospitalization at Bellevue Hospital Center, Kings County Hospital Center, or Queens General Hospital. Statements from Wertham's subjects were sometimes altered, combined, or excerpted so as to be misleading. Relevant personal experience was sometimes left unmentioned. For instance, in arguing that the Batman comics condoned homosexuality because of the relationship between


id: the-senses-and-the-intellect-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senses_and_the_Intellect-0.md
category: reference
title: The Senses and the Intellect
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Senses_and_the_Intellect
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:25.311099+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-senses-and-the-intellect-20260505-0
summary:
The Senses and the Intellect is a book by Alexander Bain that was first published in 1855 and published by John William Parker in London. In this treatise, Bain described two principal divisions of the mind, the senses and the intellect. The discussion on the other two aspects of the mind, the emotions and the will, was published by Bain four years later, in 1859, under the title The Emotions and the Will. == Context == Bain had an academic background in moral philosophy and logic and is considered to be an associationist, alongside figures like John Locke, David Hume and his friend - John Stuart Mill. In the early 1840s, Bain developed a keen interest in psychology, particularly in exploring the human senses through physiology. His work during this period culminated in a paper presented in 1844 titled On the Definition and Classification of the Human Senses, where he introduced the concepts of the muscular sense and organic sensibilities. Drawing from the associationist approach and displaying scepticism towards metaphysics, he expanded contemporary psychology in multiple ways. In the context of the will, he prioritized physiological explanations over metaphysical ones, using reflexes as proof that a type of will exists


id: sex-and-the-love-life-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_Love_Life-0.md
category: reference
title: Sex and the Love Life
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_Love_Life
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:26.472164+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sex-and-the-love-life-20260505-0
summary:
Sex and the Love Life by the American author William J. Fielding is a non-fictional book published in 1927 in New York. It deals with the contemporary understanding of sexuality and its relation to the love life in many fields of life. The book consists of 14 chapters and a glossary in which all biological, sexual and medical terms that are discussed in the book itself are defined and explained. The first chapter gives an introduction to different conceptions of the function of sex and mentions cultural influences on these conceptions. Chapter Two deals with the Development of the Love Life and focuses especially on the sex life of the child. Besides that, Man’s and Woman’s Sexual Nature are described in Chapter three and four respectively, whereby biological aspects of the male and female reproductive systems are elaborated on in detail. In the fifth chapter the author gives advice about the Preparation of Marriage and in the sixth Chapter Sex Hygiene in Marriage is the topic. Hygiene is not referring solely to personal hygiene but rather to how sexual intercourse can be used to improve marital happiness and satisfaction. Women’s Love Rights are presented in the following chapter (chapter 8)


id: sex-and-the-love-life-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_Love_Life-1.md
category: reference
title: Sex and the Love Life
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the_Love_Life
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:26.472164+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sex-and-the-love-life-20260505-0
summary:
=== Chapter 9: Birth Control in Relation to the Love Life === This chapter deals mainly with the contemporary misunderstanding of contraception in general. All too often it was equalized with abortion and murder of an embryo. Fielding begins with enlightening the reader and explains the advantages of contraception, one of which concerning a moral aspect: "a practice which increases marital happiness, which assures people of greater economic security [...] and which permits more extensive educational and cultural advantages to the fewer and better children that are born [...] is a good practice". Furthermore, he argues that the fear of pregnancy (as many women experienced at that time) would lead to marital disharmony and that contraceptive methods should be used to establish an unstressed atmosphere between married couples. Fielding also criticizes the church's position towards contraception at that time by saying that "the church [...] has been and still is the most powerful influence against the principle of parenthood by choice instead of accident". The institutional church would be ignorant of the benefits that contraception offers to the people. The position that is still held by the Catholic Church, namely that "Contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-0.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women (1981) is a book about the development of sexual orientation by the psychologist Alan P. Bell and the sociologists Martin S. Weinberg and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith, in which the authors reevaluate what were at the time of its publication widely held ideas about the origins of heterosexuality and homosexuality, sometimes rejecting entirely the factors proposed as causes, and in other cases concluding that their importance had been exaggerated. Produced with the help of the American National Institute of Mental Health, the study was a publication of the Institute for Sex Research. Together with its Statistical Appendix, Sexual Preference was the conclusion of a series of books including Homosexuality: An Annotated Bibliography (1972) and Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (1978), both co-authored by Bell and Weinberg. Using data derived from interviews conducted in 1969 and 1970 with subjects in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bell et al. attempted to test explanations of sexual orientation put forward by psychoanalysts and social scientists. They found that while homosexual men were more likely than heterosexual men to have felt especially close to their mothers, this had almost no effect on the development


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-1.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Overview of the study === Bell et al.′s objective was to test the explanations of how people become heterosexual or homosexual proposed by psychoanalysts and social scientists, including psychoanalytic theories attributing homosexuality to a failure to resolve Oedipal conflicts. In their view, theories about the origins of sexual orientation had usually not been rigorously tested prior to their study, partly because some of them, including those advanced by psychoanalysts, use concepts which are hard to "pin down and operationalize." They anticipated that psychologists and psychoanalysts would object to their work on methodological grounds, such as that no attempt was made to access unconscious material, or that the interviews, which lasted only a few hours, could never reveal what truly occurred in someone's childhood. They argued, however, that the fact that their data was not obtained from clinical sources was a strength, that attempting to access unconscious material risks selective interpretation of the data, and that "if the differences between homosexual and heterosexual patterns of development are really as great as psychoanalytic theory claims" then such differences would be reflected to at least some extent in the reports of their respondents. Aware that some scholars might reject any view of


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-2.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Findings on white men === Bell et al. found that homosexual men were more likely than heterosexual men to have felt especially close to their mothers. Male respondents who were unusually close to their mothers were more likely to describe themselves as having been feminine children, but only a minority of boys with this kind of background became homosexual. Bell et al. concluded that male homosexuality is not the "result of an unusually strong maternal identification", and that mothers have only a small influence on their sons′ psychosexual development. Homosexual men were less likely to give positive descriptions of their fathers, but more likely to have negative feelings toward their fathers, to dislike, hate, or fail to feel close to them, or to consider them hostile or detached. They were also more likely to feel more similar to their mothers than to their fathers, or to prefer to be like their mothers. Bell et al. concluded that, "Unfavorable relationships with fathers" have a weak connection to "gender nonconformity and early homosexual experiences". Few male respondents had engaged in childhood sex play, and it did not seem to be important in the development of homosexuality. Homosexual men were less likely


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-3.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Findings on white women === Homosexual women were more likely to describe their relationships with their mothers as negative, and their mothers as having been hostile or rejecting. These measures were combined into a single measure, "Hostile-Rejecting Mother", which appeared to have only minimal influence on the development of sexual preference. Homosexual women were less likely to describe their mothers as having been pleasant people. This and two other connected variables were combined into a composite measure called "Unpleasant Mother", which had a weak and indirect connection with adult homosexuality. Homosexual women identified less strongly with their mothers, though this appeared to have very little influence on adult sexual preference, having only indirect effects, dependent upon its encouragement of childhood gender nonconformity. Homosexual women gave less favorable descriptions of their relationships with their fathers, and were more likely to have negative feelings toward them, and to describe them as having been hostile or detached. These variables were combined into a measure called "Detached-Hostile Father", which appeared to encourage childhood gender nonconformity and adolescent homosexual involvement. Homosexual women were less likely to identify with their fathers, but the "Identification with Father" variable appeared to be unimportant. Few female respondents reported


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-4.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Conclusions === Bell et al. rejected many accepted ideas about the development of homosexuality. They concluded that psychodynamic theories exaggerate the role of parents in the development of their sons' sexual orientation, and that the psychoanalytic model that attributes male homosexuality to dominant mothers and weak fathers is inadequate. They found the idea that "cold, detached" fathers and poor father-son relationships predispose boys toward homosexuality more plausible, but emphasized that these factors have only an indirect connection to sexual preference. They suggested that relationships with parents might play a greater role in the development of female homosexuality, although they found having a cold or distant father less significant as a cause of female than of male homosexuality. They also rejected sociological theories such as the idea that homosexuality results from labeling by others. Overall, they concluded that sexual preference is likely to be already determined by the time boys and girls reach adolescence, and that there is a powerful link between gender nonconformity and the development of homosexuality in both sexes, but especially in men. Although stressing that their model "applies only to extant theories and does not create new ones", they wrote that they had identified "a pattern


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-5
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-5.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
== Reception == === Mainstream media === Prior to its publication, Jane E. Brody wrote in The New York Times that Sexual Preference was likely to cause controversy because of its findings and its reliance on path analysis and its subjects' memories. Brody noted that path analysis could be misused and that it "can only explore existing notions, not create new ones." According to Brody, Bell said that he expected the study to be condemned by both "radical gays" and psychoanalysts, the psychologist John Paul De Cecco questioned the "theoretical basis" of Sexual Preference and the reliability and validity of relying on recollections of childhood, and the psychoanalyst Irving Bieber described Bell et al.′s findings as inconsistent with his clinical experience. Sexual Preference attracted considerable media attention in 1981, receiving positive reviews from the historian Paul Robinson in Psychology Today and Richard P. Halgin in Library Journal, a negative review from the sociologist John Gagnon in The New York Times, a notice in Newsweek, and a discussion in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which focused on the controversy surrounding the book. The following year, the book received a negative review from Michael Ignatieff in the London Review of Books. The


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-6
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-6.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Gay media === Sexual Preference received a positive review from Robert Herron in Christopher Street and a mixed review from George Smith in The Body Politic, while in The Advocate it received a note from the editor and mixed reviews from the biologist Doug Futuym and the social scientist Richard Wagner. Herron credited Bell et al. with disproving mistaken ideas about the causes of homosexuality and described it as a "massively impressive achievement". However, he criticized the authors for their use of the term "sexual preference" and for failing to define "homosexuality". He also believed that they should have stated unambiguously, instead of simply suggesting, that homosexuality is innate, and maintained that as social scientists, they could not properly assess research on biological influences on homosexuality. Smith considered the study useful for its challenge to established views about the causes of homosexuality. However, he was unconvinced by its conclusion that homosexuality has a biological basis and found its account of the subject remote from real experience. Smith argued that while Bell et al.′s path analysis suggested that various variables cause one another, this was "an illusion created by statistical manipulation", and concluded that their category of "Gender Nonconformity" was


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-7
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-7.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Scientific and academic journals, 1981–1982 === Sexual Preference received a positive review from J. Kenneth Davidson, Sr. in the Journal of Marriage and Family, mixed reviews from the sociologist John DeLamater in Science and the sex researcher James D. Weinrich in The Quarterly Review of Biology, and negative reviews from the psychologist Clarence Tripp in the Journal of Sex Research and the sociologist Ira Reiss in Contemporary Sociology. The book was also discussed by DeCecco in the Journal of Sex Research and Bell in Siecus Report. Criticisms made of the work included that its authors' conclusions were based on an unrepresentative or dubiously representative sample of homosexuals, and that their reliance on path analysis and adult recall of early childhood feeling was problematic. Davidson wrote that Bell et al. were aware that their work would be criticized on methodological grounds, and that they carefully addressed potential criticisms. He suggested that media reports had distorted their views about the possibility than homosexuality has a biological basis, writing that they acknowledged that their study did not provide the data to resolve this issue. Although he considered it regrettable that it took them more than a decade to publish their analysis of


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-8
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-8.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Scientific and academic journals, 1983–1986 === Cheryl L. Gillespie gave Sexual Preference a mixed review in Family Relations. She commended Bell et al. for using a sophisticated methodology and trying to avoid "poorly designed measures and biased interpretation of data". Nevertheless, she found their methodology and interpretation of data open to question, writing that although their San Francisco Bay Area sample was arguably non-representative, they wrote as though the study was representative of the larger population, that they did not sufficiently explore the issue of bias in their subjects' self-reports, which might have been motivated by the subjects' ideology or desire to please the researchers by telling them what they thought they wanted to hear, and that they relegated the fact that respondents who had been exposed to scientific information regarding homosexuality were more likely to characterize their parents in accord with psychoanalytic models of emotionally absent fathers and domineering mothers to a footnote. She also suggested that readers might find Sexual Preference boring. Thomas Ford Hoult argued in the Journal of Homosexuality that Bell et al.′s conclusion that childhood gender nonconformity and adult sexual orientation have a biological basis is a legitimate hypothesis, but one that it is


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-9
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-9.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Scientific and academic journals, 1987–1996 === De Cecco wrote in the Journal of Sex Research that Sexual Preference had no independent theoretical basis because it was conceived as an attempt to disprove theories viewing homosexuality as a mental or social pathology, and that Bell et al. were mistaken to conclude that, because such theories are incorrect, sexual orientation must be innate. He accused them of being motivated by "a misguided compassion for homosexuals", arguing that such compassion is actually a form of arrogance. The philosopher Frederick Suppe described Sexual Preference as very important study in the Journal of Homosexuality. He wrote that it failed to duplicate the findings of Bieber et al. or the predictions of symbolic interactionism, labeling theory, and societal reaction theory approaches. He considered its sample of homosexuals, while highly biased, to nevertheless be the most representative ever made, and argued that biased samples can be adequate for the purposes of refuting theories propounded in other studies "so long as the types of subjects used in those other studies constitute a subsample of the replicative study′s sample and the latter's population does not go beyond the claimed scope of the replicated studies." He maintained that Bell


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-10
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-10.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Other evaluations, 1981–1987 === The gay rights activist Dennis Altman noted that Bell et al.′s conclusion that there is a powerful link between gender nonconformity and the development of homosexuality depended on the memories of their respondents, who were likely to have been influenced by social expectations about how homosexuals should conform to gender roles. He observed that Bell et al.′s data was collected in 1969 and 1970, prior to the "growth of the modern gay movement and the development of the macho style among gay men", and criticized them for confusing "social roles with what is inborn", thereby underestimating the extent to which masculinity and femininity are social constructs. The psychologist William Paul and the sex researcher Weinrich maintained that Sexual Preference documented social diversity well and was the largest study conducted specifically on homosexuality, but that it was limited by the problems Bell et al. encountered in trying to obtain a representative sample. They suggested that because Bell et al. collected their data in 1969, they may have missed "cultural developments in the gay younger generation of the late 1960s and early 1970s." The gynecologist William Masters, the sexologist Virginia E. Johnson and the physician Robert C.


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-11
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-11.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Other evaluations, 1988–1989 === The psychoanalyst Richard C. Friedman maintained that despite the differing perspectives of their authors, the studies by Bell et al. and Bieber et al. were "in basic agreement with regard to childhood gender identity / gender role abnormalities in pre-homosexual children." He considered Bell et al.′s claim that path analysis made it possible to give each influence on homosexuality a particular weight at a particular time of childhood development unlikely, since retrospective methods cannot be converted to prospective methods. He wrote that the meaning of data depends on the models used to interpret them, and that Bell et al.′s models differ from those accepted by "psychodynamically oriented investigators." The sociologist Miriam M. Johnson described Bell et al.′s study as the "largest, best-designed, and one of the least heterosexist investigations" of the development of sexual preference. In her view, its only possible bias is that because of its nature and San Francisco location "activist" homosexuals were over-represented. Johnson argued that "this bias would probably work against finding support for any hypotheses concerning parental influences, because activist homosexuals have ordinarily been opposed to psychoanalytic speculations about parental involvements." Johnson concluded, however, that the study's credibility was enhanced


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-12
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-12.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Other evaluations, 1990–1997 === The philosopher Edward Stein maintained that Bell et al.′s data undermine the hypothesis that a person's sexual orientation is determined by the sex of the first person he or she has sex with. Gonsiorek and Weinrich maintained that Bell et al.′s view that sexual orientation is set by early childhood is also held by most other experts on the topic, including Green and Money. They described Bell et al. as "essentialists", who, unlike supporters of social constructionism, maintain that "homosexual desire, identity, and persons exist as real in some form, in different cultures and historical eras". Gonsiorek and Douglas C. Haldeman both credited Bell et al. with disproving psychoanalytic theories about the development of homosexuality. The economist Richard Posner credited Bell et al. with providing evidence that "childhood gender nonconformity is a good predictor of both male and female homosexuality". He also believed that they showed that boys are not more likely to become homosexual the more adult siblings they have, and provided evidence against the idea that adult homosexuality results from seduction or early homosexual experiences. The psychologist Kenneth Zucker and the psychiatrist Susan Bradley described Sexual Preference as a "classic study". They maintained


id: sexual-preference-book-20260505-13
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)-13.md
category: reference
title: Sexual Preference (book)
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Preference_(book)
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:27.778790+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: sexual-preference-book-20260505-0
summary:
=== Other evaluations, 1998–present === The anthropologist Gilbert Herdt argued that Sexual Preference, like the Kinsey scale, places "too much emphasis upon discrete acts of sex and not enough stress upon the cultural context and total developmental outcomes to which those acts are related." He called the study a "quantitative sociological" survey of homosexuality that decontextualizes "the culture and lives at issue", arguing that all developmental changes need to be viewed in the context of social structure. Stein described Sexual Preference as one of the most detailed and frequently cited retrospective studies relating to sexual orientation. In his view, while the study has been criticized on various grounds, including that all of its subjects were living in San Francisco, arguably an atypical place with respect to the sexual orientation of its inhabitants, Bell et al.′s conclusions about theories attributing sexual orientation to the effects of experience have been accepted and confirmed. He observed that many other studies have been conducted on childhood gender nonconformity partly because of Bell et al.′s findings relating it to homosexuality. The psychologists Stanton L. Jones and Mark Yarhouse described Sexual Preference as a famous study. They maintained that because Bell et al.′s data suggest that


id: shaping-psychology-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaping_Psychology-0.md
category: reference
title: Shaping Psychology
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaping_Psychology
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:28.990306+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: shaping-psychology-20260505-0
summary:
Shaping Psychology: Perspectives on Legacy, Controversy and the Future of the Field is a 2020 book written by Polish psychologist Tomasz Witkowski. It is a collection of conversations with influential psychologists from the early 21st century, featuring interviews with notable figures who have significantly impacted the field and covering a broad spectrum of specializations from research, mental health, critical psychology, and neuroscience, as well as the open science movement. Interviewees include Elizabeth Loftus, Jerome Kagan, Michael I. Posner, Scott Lilienfeld, Robert Sternberg, Robert Plomin, Susan Blackmore, Joseph E. LeDoux, Noam Chomsky, Roy Baumeister, Erica Burman, Brian Nosek, Vikram Patel, Daniel Kahneman, and Carol Tavris. These experts discuss the controversies, crises, and future prospects of psychology, sharing their views on the challenges in the field, their careers, and their formative experiences. == Reception == In her review for Science-Based Medicine and Skeptical Inquirer, Harriet Hall offered insights into the book, noting: Tomasz Witkowski's new book [...] provides an intriguing look at the current state of psychology, its problems and possible solutions, and hopes for the future. [...] I have met several of the people Witkowski interviewed, but now I feel as if I have spent more time with them and know


id: the-six-pillars-of-self-esteem-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Pillars_of_Self-Esteem-0.md
category: reference
title: The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Six_Pillars_of_Self-Esteem
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:30.134501+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-six-pillars-of-self-esteem-20260505-0
summary:
The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem is a psychology book written by Nathaniel Branden. The book describes what Branden believes are the key elements that raise or lower the self-esteem of an individual. Branden's six pillars are: The Practice of Living Consciously The Practice of Self-Acceptance The Practice of Self-Responsibility The Practice of Self-Assertiveness The Practice of Living Purposefully The Practice of Personal Integrity == Reviews == The book received negative reviews from Library Journal, which called it "repetitive, verbose, and somewhat rambling", and Kirkus Reviews, which called it "Inflated and repetitious". Reason gave a positive review, calling Branden's exploration of self-esteem "an important mission for our time" and the book "a call to consciousness and participation". == References == == External links == The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem at the Internet Archive


id: spent-sex-evolution-and-consumer-behavior-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent:_Sex,_Evolution,_and_Consumer_Behavior-0.md
category: reference
title: Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent:_Sex,_Evolution,_and_Consumer_Behavior
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:31.287835+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: spent-sex-evolution-and-consumer-behavior-20260505-0
summary:
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior is a 2009 book by Geoffrey Miller. The book presents an evolutionary analysis of marketing, arguing that consumers seek pleasure and seek to display favorable traits to others. == References ==


id: spoilt-rotten-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten-0.md
category: reference
title: Spoilt Rotten
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:32.443556+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: spoilt-rotten-20260505-0
summary:
Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality (subtitle in US editions: How Britain is Ruined by Its Children) is a non-fiction book by the British writer and retired doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, originally published in 2010. Polemical in nature, the book contends that sentimentality has become culturally entrenched in British society, with harmful consequences. The author uses a range of cultural, educational, political, media and literary issues—including falling standards in education, UK aid policies for African development, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and the work and life of Sylvia Plath—to illustrate what he sees as the danger of abandoning logic in favour of sentimentality, which he describes as "the progenitor, the godparent, the midwife of brutality". Much of Dalrymple's analysis is underpinned by his experience of working with criminals and the mentally ill. Spoilt Rotten received a mostly favourable reception in the media. Dalrymple was praised for carrying out a thought-provoking and convincing analysis of a newly emerged cultural phenomenon which sees emotion substituted for reason. Some critics, however, accused the author of cynicism and misanthropic pessimism in his approach, and the historian Noel Malcolm claimed that Dalrymple had overreached in his


id: spoilt-rotten-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten-1.md
category: reference
title: Spoilt Rotten
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:32.443556+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: spoilt-rotten-20260505-0
summary:
=== Chapter Four: The Demand for Public Emotion === Dalrymple analyses the media attention and reaction to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and how certain media interpreted a perceived lack of emotion on the part of the girl's parents as evidence of guilt. Dalrymple writes that the "demand that emotion should be shown in public, or be assumed not to exist and therefore indicate a guilty mind, is now not an uncommon one", and cites two similar cases involving Joanne Lees and Lindy Chamberlain. Dalrymple then analyses the outcry from the public and the media to the lack of emotion shown by the Queen after the death of Princess Diana, and contends that "the tabloid newspapers carried out what can only be called a campaign of bullying against the sovereign" and that those gathered outside Buckingham Palace were "bullying rather than expressing any genuine grief". He concludes by asserting that the sentimentality shown by both the media and the public "was inherently dishonest in a way that parallels the dishonesty that lies behind much sentimentality itself". === Chapter Five: The Cult of the Victim === Dalrymple analyses the poet Sylvia Plath, whom he describes as the "patron saint of self-dramatization",


id: spoilt-rotten-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten-2.md
category: reference
title: Spoilt Rotten
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoilt_Rotten
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:32.443556+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: spoilt-rotten-20260505-0
summary:
== Critical reception == After it was released the book received a mostly positive response in the media. In The Spectator, Jonathan Sumption praised the book, writing "The public hysteria surrounding such high-profile incidents as the death of the Princess of Wales and the search for Madeleine McCann, or the eccentricities of the MacPherson report on the death of Stephen Lawrence are analysed with the author's customary mixture of shrewdness, cynicism and misanthropic pessimism. These phenomena have of course been analysed before, and many of the same points have been made. But Dalrymple is good at relating them to broader trends in our society". The book was described by Toby Young in The Daily Telegraph as being an "excellent new book attacking the cult of sentimentality" and that Dalrymple also "makes a convincing case that standards in British education have plummeted in the last few decades". Young also reviewed the book on his blog No Sacred Cows, where he wrote, "...the remarkable thing about Spoilt Rotten is that Dalrymple never lets his anger obscure his compassion. Throughout the book you get a powerful sense that his outrage is rooted in a commitment to social justice. Yes, he believes members of


id: studies-in-machiavellianism-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_Machiavellianism-0.md
category: reference
title: Studies in Machiavellianism
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_Machiavellianism
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:33.583857+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: studies-in-machiavellianism-20260505-0
summary:
Studies in Machiavellianism is a book published in 1970 by psychologists Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis. It is a collection of 38 studies into the interpersonal personality variable that they dubbed Machiavellianism. It is the first book on the subject, the first use of the word "Machiavellianism" as the name of a personality variable, and would launch an entire field of study. == Overview == In the aftermath of World War II, psychologist Richard Christie set out to study the thought processes and actions of those who manipulated others, such as political ideologues and religious extremists. He found that there was many studies on those who followed the organizations and movements, but the only literature on those who actually led them were psychiatric in nature. Starting from the basics, Christie hypothesized that a "manipulator" or "operator" would possess the following characteristics: A relative lack of affect in interpersonal relationships A lack of concern for conventional morality A lack of gross psychopathology (i.e. a lack of mental illness) Low ideological commitment From these characteristics, Christie would begin to build psychometrics to evaluate these traits within an individual. In creating his psychometric, he first began by seeking out historical figures such


id: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-2-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._2-0.md
category: reference
title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 2
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._2
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:34.773184+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-2-20260505-0
summary:
Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 2 is a book published in 1900 written by Havelock Ellis (1859–1939), an English physician, writer and social reformer. The book deals with the phenomenon of sexual inversion, an outdated term for homosexuality, as well as heterosexual trans people. It is part of Ellis' seven-volume series Studies in the psychology of sex. The book has seven chapters describing the prevalence, nature and theories in the 19th century about sexual inversion in men and women. Various case studies are presented and discussed. Ellis recognised a need to address the topic of sexual inversion especially in England: ... in England, more than in any other country, the law and public opinion combine to place a heavy penal burden and a severe social stigma on the manifestations of an instinct which to these persons who possess it frequently appears natural and normal. However, the publication of the book was suppressed in England at first and it was published in the United States instead. == Historical context == "Homosexual practices in private, between two consenting parties, are absolutely unpunished [...]" in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and other European countries. In the 18th century sex between men was


id: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-2-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._2-1.md
category: reference
title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 2
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._2
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:34.773184+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-2-20260505-0
summary:
=== Chapter V, the nature of sexual inversion === This chapter is an analysis and summary of the earlier case studies. Sexual inversion in the cases presented seems not to be heritable. Records of inversion or other abnormalities are not conspicuously frequent among the case studies. Most of the subjects have good general health. In most of the subjects the homosexual instinct appeared in early life without a previous affection for the opposite sex. Ellis associates precocious puberty with sexual inversion. Ellis excludes suggestion as a cause of sexual inversion. Also, masturbation in male cases is reported as predisposing to inversion whereas there was no such relationship observed for the female cases. Most of the subjects are adverse towards sexual relationships with the opposite sex. However, there are close and genuine friendships between sexual inverts and members of the opposite sex. Many subjects investigated by Ellis show artistic talent. Lastly, most of the subjects regard their sexual inversion as being equal to heterosexuality so they do not think that their sexual instinct is immoral. === Chapter VII, the theory of sexual inversion === Ellis attempts to define several terms and clarify the terminology around the topic of sexual inversion. The


id: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-7-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._7-0.md
category: reference
title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 7
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._7
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:35.995363+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-7-20260505-0
summary:
Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Volume 7 is a book published in 1928 by the English physician and writer Havelock Ellis (1859–1939). Ellis was an expert of human sexuality but was impotent until the age of 60 and married to an open lesbian for much of his life. He later discovered that he could be aroused by the sight of a woman urinating. Terming this sexual deviation undinism, it is one of several topics covered in the seventh and final volume of his studies in the psychology of sex. Ellis began writing the first of the seven books in 1900, exploring topics such as sexual inversion (homosexuality), sexuality in women, and erotic symbolism throughout the volumes. Volume seven was originally published in the United States due to the stigma surrounding transgenderism, homosexuality, and other sexual deviations in England at the time. The book contains 9 chapters, each exploring a sexual deviation or potential influences. It is largely composed of case studies and directly quotes the individuals he examined, providing the raw descriptions and perspectives of the individuals, rather than his own version of their deviations. == Historical context == In the 1700s, Molly houses began appearing all over the


id: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-7-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._7-1.md
category: reference
title: Studies in the Psychology of Sex Vol. 7
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_Vol._7
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:35.995363+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: studies-in-the-psychology-of-sex-vol-7-20260505-0
summary:
== Reception and influence == All seven volumes of Studies in the Psychology of Sex were widely accepted in the scientific community, even with the progressive perspectives in which it portrayed human sexuality and perversions. Despite this, the book was not published in England until the middle of the 20th century, as it was strongly believed that putting Ellis' ideas into the public would increase the rates of individuals with sexual perversions. For a long time, concepts like eonism and undinism were assumed to be effects of other psychological disorders such a schizophrenia. Ellis' innovative take on these perversions and their origins attempted to normalise them and demonstrate that these individuals can be functioning members of society. A few years prior to Ellis' publication of the first volume in his series, Krafft-Ebbing, an Austrian professor of psychiatry, also took an interest in the sexual impulses of transgender individuals. After the publications of both Krafft-Ebbing's and Ellis' studies, other sexologists and psychologists began to show interest in these studies as well. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German sexologist, began to similarly explore the sexual impulses and behaviours of transgender individuals, and eventually gender reassignment surgery. With the help of medical professionals, the first


id: the-territorial-imperative-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative-0.md
category: reference
title: The Territorial Imperative
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:38.326971+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-territorial-imperative-20260505-0
summary:
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations is a 1966 nonfiction book by American writer Robert Ardrey. It characterizes an instinct among humans toward territoriality and the implications of this to property ownership and nation building. The Territorial Imperative was influential at the time, and encouraged public interest in human origins. The Territorial Imperative is the second book in Ardrey's Nature of Man Series; it is preceded by African Genesis (1961) and followed by The Social Contract (1970) and The Hunting Hypothesis (1976). It was illustrated by Ardrey's wife, the South African actress and illustrator Berdine Ardrey (née Grunewald). Ardrey dedicated The Territorial Imperative to Henry Eliot Howard, who was noted for being one of the first to describe in detail the territorial behaviors of birds. == Synopsis == The Territorial Imperative develops the theses originally introduced in African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man, which was published five years earlier. In African Genesis, Ardrey posited that man originated in Africa instead of Asia, that he is driven by inherited instincts to acquire land and defend territory, and that the development of weapons was a fundamental turning


id: the-territorial-imperative-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative-1.md
category: reference
title: The Territorial Imperative
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:38.326971+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-territorial-imperative-20260505-0
summary:
== Legacy == The Territorial Imperative was widely read and exerted a cultural influence. It quickly became an international bestseller and was translated into dozens of languages. Ardrey's work in general, and The Territorial Imperative in particular, is often credited with arousing popular interest in ethology, anthropology, and human origins. Geoffrey Gorer, for example, in his Encounter review of The Territorial Imperative, writes: "Almost without question, Robert Ardrey is today the most influential writer in English dealing with the innate or instinctive attributes of human nature, and the most skilled populariser of the findings of paleo-anthropologists, ethologists, and biological experimenters." Ralph Graves claims "[Ardrey] today can claim major credit for having introduced the public to the new field of ethology, the study of animal behavior and its relationship to man." Commenting upon Ardrey's legacy on the occasion of his death, the South African anthropologist Dr. Phillip Tobias stated, "He has made an incalculable contribution to the science of human evolution. Thousands of people around the world, especially in the United States, were made aware of the fascination and the importance of studies on man's place in nature [through his writing]." The work influenced several notable figures. Stanley Kubrick cited Ardrey


id: the-analysis-of-mind-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Mind-0.md
category: reference
title: The Analysis of Mind
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Mind
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:39.503673+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-analysis-of-mind-20260505-0
summary:
The Analysis of Mind is a book published in 1921 by Bertrand Russell. The book uses philosophical ideas from the period of its publication, to describe how the mind works. The book attempts to define the mind, through the same way the physical world is explained, primarily through the use of sensations. == Context == Prior to the publication of "The Analysis of Mind", the mind's understanding was covered by philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Reid. Descartes first published his mind-body dualism theory in the 17th century. He framed that the mind and body are inherently different kinds of substances. It proposes that the mind is in charge of imagination, emotions and sensations, which don't follow the laws of physics that govern the body. In 1689, Locke shifted the debate of the mind with regards to experience, arguing that all knowledge comes from sensory experience, and therefore, learning is originated from experiencing the world. He issued "An essay concerning human understanding", which in the 21st century is recognized as the start of empiricism. Building on this, in the 18th century, authors such as Berkeley and Reid, discuss about new philosophical doctrines, like idealism and realism, respectively. Berkeley


id: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-0
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki-0.md
category: reference
title: The Fern and the Tiki
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:40.676360+00:00
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The Fern and the Tiki is a book by American psychologist David Ausubel, written during his Fulbright Research Fellowship in New Zealand in 1957/58. Subtitled An American View of New Zealand National Character, Social Attitudes and Race Relations, the book critically examines how New Zealanders' self-image aligned with the ideal personality traits of the country's national character at the time. Building on ideas from Ausubel's earlier research in New Zealand, and followed by a psycho-ethnological study of Māori youth, The Fern and the Tiki concludes that the perception held by many Pākehā of themselves as egalitarian New Zealanders living in a country with excellent race relations was a myth. At the time of publication, this and other criticisms in the book of child-rearing and education in the country sparked considerable controversy and left a lasting impact on how students, academics, and policymakers discuss and respond to the treatment of Māori by the predominantly Pākehā culture, as well as other social issues. == Background and context == In 1957 Ausubel was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant to study in New Zealand. He was welcomed to Victoria University of Wellington by Professor Ernest Beaglehole, who was said to be looking for an


id: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-1
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki-1.md
category: reference
title: The Fern and the Tiki
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:40.676360+00:00
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parent: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-0
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== Publication and methodology == Although Ausubel was back in the United States by this time, The Fern and the Tiki was published in 1960. The preface notes that Ausubel's expertise lay in his training as a psychiatrist and psychologist, specifically focused on education issues, personality development, and social relationships. For this work, he gathered data from observations, formal and informal interviews, and "specially designed personality tests." The aim of the book was "to present an objective and critical analysis of important problems facing the people of New Zealand, such as discipline, coeducation, conformity, standards of public controversy, juvenile delinquency, and the improvement of Māori-Pākehā relations". The primary focus was on Pākehā, with Māori characteristics considered only in the context of New Zealand race relations. This involved describing the attitudes and characteristics of Pākehā New Zealanders, particularly their self-perception, interactions with others, and responses to societal issues. Ausubel's frame of reference for the book is based on his American experience and includes direct comparisons between the two cultures, and examples of the American 'visitor'—either in the third person or as Ausubel himself—encountering a self-image among New Zealanders that was "markedly at variance with the visitor's observations." He concedes that, as


id: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-2
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki-2.md
category: reference
title: The Fern and the Tiki
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:40.676360+00:00
instance: kb-cron
parent: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-0
summary:
== Format and key ideas == Three chapters of the book explore the national character of New Zealanders. Ausubel identified a "blend of British and pioneering traits...[including]...the perceived virtues of both traditions and the vices of neither". In valuing their British heritage, New Zealanders see themselves as "reserved, unsentimental, respectful of authority, mindful of discipline, and prone to understatement". Instead of "British snobbishness, arrogance, haughty condescension and patronizing airs", the national image is one of "genial friendliness and an amiable, easygoing egalitarianism". Ausubel acknowledges that some of this was valid, but claims New Zealanders show considerable sentimentality in their choice of movies, often write "maudlin" in-memoriam notices, watch "gushingly sentimental" movies and participate in very emotional farewell ceremonies. He further questions whether New Zealanders are as friendly and hospitable as their self-image proclaimed. A "strong undercurrent of hostility toward foreigners" is noted, reflected in the resentment toward Americans, with Ausubel concluding that "the tide of anti-American feeling among the rank and file of New Zealanders today is probably stronger than ever before in history." Ausubel was surprised by how personally accountable he was held by "elderly gentlemen" for the behavior of American servicemen, [who] "dated New Zealand girls during World


id: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-3
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki-3.md
category: reference
title: The Fern and the Tiki
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:40.676360+00:00
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parent: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-0
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== Reception == A 1960 review in Landfall said the book had a "jaundiced undercurrent...[and]...it is obvious that [Ausebel's] disappointment in and his disillusionment about New Zealand unset him bitterly". The reviewer said Ausubel seemed unaware how to approach people in the country and what he saw as smugness, "may be in fact a mask for sincere and considerable feelings of inferiority - and in a small bourgeois country, a feeling of nakedness". A later commentator suggested that the position taken by Smithells reflected how New Zealanders felt about the book as late as 2002 in that if "he [Ausubel] had limited himself to Māori-Pākehā relationships and not risked insulting New Zealanders' culture, his work would have been better received". Kemble Welch, a senior pathologist at Whangarei Hospital who had worked for many years amongst Maori communities, said Ausubel's conclusion that New Zealand's colour bar was "so big and baneful" that there was reason to be pessimistic about the country's future, was difficult to be tested using scientific methodology. Welch called the reliability of the data gathered by Ausubel into question due to the fact that [he] "does not refer to any other reports or statistics, so relies entirely on


id: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-4
file: data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki-4.md
category: reference
title: The Fern and the Tiki
tags: science, encyclopedia
source_url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fern_and_the_Tiki
date_saved: 2026-05-05T08:55:40.676360+00:00
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parent: the-fern-and-the-tiki-20260505-0
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== Legacy == Interviewed in 2000, Geoffrey Palmer clearly recalled from his student days that the book had been very controversial but significant in shaping his consciousness, while Moana Jackson said that as a young Māori at the time, the content had not surprised him, and the challenging of Pākehā myths in the book was a forerunner of later more public critiquing of these by Māori. Writing in 2002, Harry Kersey, who later worked in New Zealand as a Fulbright Scholar examining the Maori issues in the country's politics, noted how consistently the book is cited in other publications about race relations in the country. In 1999, New Zealand, historians Paul Spoonley and Augie Fleras claimed Ausubel was accurate in predicting that race relations would only be put to the test when the two races had more contact with each other, and concluded that the book inferred antagonism was not provoked by "uppity Maori" in the 1970s, rather being "deeply rooted in New Zealand history and chronically embedded in society". James Ritchie reflected on his research into the nature of prejudice in New Zealand during the 1950s and said that Ausubel's work had "filled out the details." Richie noted that


