A Modest Construct | psychology

Posts tagged `psychology`

¶ Stuff

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee: Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; Year: 2010; Pages: 304

Hoarding recently got a representative–for better or worse–in pop culture with the arrival of TLC’s Hoarding: Buried Alive; I’ll leave it to your own judgment if this is a good or bad thing, or just how “pop culture” TLC is, but in any case, it goes to show the tabloid power of psychological problems. Everyone gapes and gawks at home filled to the ceilings with piles of accumulated junk and wonders how these squirrely people can live their lives this way.

Stuff is an attempt by a noted academic and active therapist in the field (Randy Frost, along with a coauthor who is rarely mentioned by name) to summarize the state of scientific knowledge about hoarding, where it comes from, why it doesn’t easily conform to stereotypes, and how at least some of these people can be successfully treated.

§5788 · July 25, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, nonfiction, psychology, reviews, science

¶ Drive

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink: Publisher: Riverhead; Year: 2009; Pages: 256

My interest in Drive was piqued by a presentation that Pink gave during a TED talk. The idea itself is interesting, but it also dovetails nicely with my general focus of study during my MBA coursework , namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. That might sound a little like jargon; it gets easier.

§5761 · July 15, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, business, nonfiction, psychology, reviews

¶ Steven Pinker defends Twitter, but who’s attacking it?

Steven Pinker has a new op-ed in the New York Times where, ever the gallant hero of relativism in the way that most linguists and social scientists are, he defends new forms of mass and social media from their loudest detractors. His two salient examples are Powerpoint and Twitter. While the former has been a fixture of academic or professional communication for well over a decade, the latter is a relative newcomer and currently receives the same mix of pointed dislike and frenzied exuberance usually reserved for the novel.

Let it not be said that I am discomfited or alarmed by new forms of media; that I’m posting this to a blog after finding the article on Facebook, cross-posted from Twitter itself, may say something about my attitude toward the new and the popular. At the same time, I am extraordinarily distrustful of smiling cretins who like to whitewash the tendency of pop-culture to both reflect and encourage those things about ourselves which are ultimately damaging—the execrable Everything Bad is Good For You is a good example of just how facile such attempts can be.

§5679 · June 11, 2010 · 1 comment · Tags: pop culture, psychology, sociology, technology

¶ The Wild Things

The Wild Things by Dave Eggers: Publisher: McSweeney's; Year: 2009; Pages: 300

Everyone does or should know about Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, a seminal children’s book that has brought joy to (dare I say?) millions of childrens and adults alike—perhaps even more by adults than by children. It’s a simple story of a naughty young boy who flees to his imagination and back again, but of course much ink has been expended to justify it, parse it, explain it, and praise it, and it’s been built into more of a cultural phenomenon than a book.

Since it was already an opera and a cartoon, it was only a matter of time before it became a movie in 2009. Everyone knew that Spike Jonze (he of Adaption fame, as well as other Charlie Kaufman scripts) directed it, but what I didn’t know until well after the initial spate of movie trailers is that Dave Eggers—the writer, publisher, and philanthropist—had done the screenplay. And it wasn’t until even later that I realized he also did a novelization, which brings us to The Wild Things.

§4886 · January 25, 2010 · 2 comments · Tags: Book Reviews, books, fiction, psychology, reviews

¶ Perfect Rigor

Perfect Rigor by Masha Gessen: Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; Year: 2009; Pages: 256

I still remember reading for the first time about Grisha Perelman’s solution to the Poincaré Conjecture on Slashdot back in 2004. I knew nothing about the Poincaré Conjecture other than it was famous—one of those big question marks in mathematics like Fermat’s Last Theorem—and therefore big news.

What generated even more press than the solution to the math itself—which, by most journalistic standards, is a dead end—is the fact that the genius behind the proof is a very odd duck indeed. By the time this review is posted, Grigori “Grisha” Perelman has become a near-total recluse at his apartment in St. Petersberg, Russa, which he shares with his mother. He doesn’t talk to anyone—even his old friends—and has claimed to have left the field of mathematics entirely.

§4873 · January 19, 2010 · (No comments) · Tags: Book Reviews, books, mathematics, nonfiction, psychology, reviews