The Study of the Mind: A Psychological Book Club discussion

Who inlfuenced you most in your psychology career, passion, intrest (How you use psychology)?

This could be a person that most of us will know through psychology text, a professor, a celebrity, or your parents... I am sure the areas are endless.

I actually have two.

The first is Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison she wroteAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. I was given this book as a graduation gift as inspiration for my next career move. I have a deeply personal connection with this book/author is because her own battle with bipolar disorder is very much like my own. When I graduated with my degree in psychology I thought to myself would I be taken seriously if people knew I was bipolar in the psychology field and I battled should I be in constant hiding in psychology world when it came to that part of my life. Her book was one reason I decided to move forward with my psychology career.

The second person is Clifford Beers . He was a mental patient in the 1900's and upon his release wrote A Mind That Found Itself. This man was educated and with his mental health problems and ended up in a mental health asylum. He wrote about his experience (to things that went through and some of the things he caused himself) and really shed light on the mental health world in 1900's and the need for change. One of my biggest and personal goals is to hopefully remove the stigma that surrounds mental illness.

In terms of people I haven’t met, I think John Douglas had a huge influence on my choice to go into psychology. I loved Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit, and it gave me such an insight into criminal profiling. Not to sound gushing, but John Douglas was a real pioneer of behavioural science in the FBI, and along with people like Robert Ressler, they changed the way forensic psychology and criminal profiling was viewed by law enforcement.
Even though the area of psychology that I work in is not forensic, my first novel is very much concerned with forensic psychology, and there are elements of this in short stories and other writing I've done too. I think a lot of that comes from my ‘introduction’ to profiling and behavioural science through the books of John Douglas.

In terms of people I do know, one of my old psychology lecturers (who shall remain nameless!) most definitely influenced me to look into how the things we do/say/feel are based largely around our past and how it shapes our psychology. I’ve been so influenced in fact that my next book will be around this theme, and the protagonist will be named after my lecturer – which is why at the moment I think he should remain nameless..!

This is a really interesting topic Courtney, thanks for starting it!

The three people who really kindled my interest in psychology, and related fields, are Dan Airely, author of .'Predictable Irrationality' and numerous Ted Talks, Sherlock Holmes and Dupin, and mentalist Derren Brown. I should think that why they interested me is not a difficult deduction, for anyone who had seen/read of them.

My initial interest in psychology was definitely sparked by C.G. Jung, in particular his book The Undiscovered Self with Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams. Reading this endowed me with a sense of duty towards the individual, rather than the statistical average, to realize that every case is unique and that often generalizing can lead us further away from the truth. Rollo May and his book Freedom and Destiny were also highly influential.

I first started studyig psychology after reading How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker and more recently have been interested in Behavioural Economics thanks to Daniel kahneman's work

Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science And Psychoanalysisby Richard Webster and The Freudian Fallacyby E.M. Thornton prompted me to look into the early history of psychoanalysis which has remained a source of fascination for me ever since.

What drew me to psychology was the January Schofield. I read about her battle with schizophrenia, and was instantly drawn to the field of psychology. I'm also a fan of Sigmund Freud and Jung, and is currently working my way through college to obtain a bachelor degree.

Courtney wrote: "I actually have two.

The first is Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison she wrote . I was given this book as a graduation gift as inspiration for my next career mo..."

AMEN to Dr. Jamison. When I read An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
and Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament both about her personal experience with Bipolar Disorder, I was fascinated. Her experiences seemed so much like mine and to know that someone so, how should I say it tactfully...ill, could be so successful, gives me a lot of hope.

Right now I am into neurology, but the book I am reading is The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force is more about neuropsychology...the coexistance of mind with matter (the brain). I can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak by reading neurology and psychology.