Mental Health Biography

Wilhelm Reich and the Function of the Orgasm; Great Minds Series, Vol. 11 - the 2017 revised, updated and reformatted edition - is a study about one of the greatest authorities on the discovery of the bioenergy for modern science and medical science. The author understands his engagement for Reich as a contribution to the rehabilitation of one of the greatest but also one of the most misunderstood scientists of the 20th century.

Mark Vonnegut set out in search of Eden with his VW bug, his girlfriend, his dog, and his ideals, but genetic predisposition and a whole lot of shit going down made him crazy in a culture that told him mental illness is a myth and schizophrenia is a sane response to an insane society. Describing his experiences during the late '60s and early '70s, Eden Express reveals how Mark went from being a recent college grad who was in love and living communally on a farm to having nervous breakdowns.

Awakenings - which inspired the major motion picture - is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and their extraordinary transformations.

Between December 1968 and October 1969, a hooded serial killer called Zodiac terrorized San Francisco. Claiming responsibility for 37 murders, he manipulated the media with warnings, dares, and bizarre cryptograms that baffled FBI code-breakers. Then, as suddenly as the murders began, Zodiac disappeared into the Bay Area fog. After painstaking investigation and more than 30 years of research, Robert Graysmith finally exposes Zodiac's true identity.

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

Building from Bunny’s viral memes, Hello Higher Self is a self-care manifesto, calling on listeners to radically shift their perspectives from the Learned Hierarchal Beliefs (LHBs) we’ve all internalized to the self-acceptance we were born into, aka our Higher Selves. This book shines a light into eighteen areas of life where LHBs often lurk—from creativity, to work, to relationships, to race, to sexual pleasure. Bunny’s mix of meditative advice, written exercises, and personal examples make for a jaw-dropping listen.

What drives someone to commit an act of terrible violence? Drawing from her thirty years of experience in providing therapy to people in prisons and secure hospitals who have committed serious offenses, Dr. Gwen Adshead provides fresh and surprising insights into violence and the mind. Through a collaboration with coauthor Eileen Horne, Dr. Adshead brings her extraordinary career to life in a series of unflinching portraits.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most popular personality test in the world. It is used regularly by Fortune 500 companies, universities, hospitals, churches, and the military. Its language of personality types - extraversion and introversion, sensing and intuiting, thinking and feeling, judging and perceiving - has inspired television shows, Online dating platforms, and Buzzfeed quizzes. Yet despite the test's widespread adoption, experts in the field of psychometric testing, a $2 billion industry, have struggled to validate its results - no less account for its success.

At twenty-eight, fresh from Stanford’s MBA program and steeped in the move-fast-and-break-things ethos of Silicon Valley, Andy Dunn was on top of the world. He was building a new kind of startup—a digitally native, direct-to-consumer brand—out of his Manhattan apartment. Bonobos was a new-school approach to selling an old-school product: men’s pants. Against all odds, business was booming.

On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. Soon twelve were dead and fifty-eight were wounded. A Dark Night in Aurora uses the twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts never seen by the public and Reid’s research to bring the listener inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.

By the age of 13, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she'd done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough. Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder.

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Reviews) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity.

Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made some strange mistakes over the years, it’s not until she accosts a stranger in a grocery store (whom she thinks is her husband) that she realizes something is amiss. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical.

The Noonday Demon examines depression in personal, cultural, and scientific terms. Drawing on his own struggles with the illness and interviews wit fellow sufferers, doctors and scientists, policymakers and politicians, drug designers and philosophers, Solomon reveals the subtle complexities and sheer agony of the disease.

What is genius? The word evokes iconic figures like Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a fourth grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. The Hidden Habits of Genius explores the meaning of this contested term, and the unexpected motivations of those we have dubbed "genius" throughout history, from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk.

Ever wonder what your therapist is really thinking? Now you can find out...a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist's world. Meet Lori Gottlieb, an insightful and compassionate therapist whose clients present with all kinds of problems. There’s the struggling new parents; the older woman who feels she has nothing to live for; the self-destructive young alcoholic; and the terminally ill 35-year-old newlywed.

As M. E. Thomas says of her fellow sociopaths, we are your neighbors, co-workers, and quite possibly the people closest to you: lovers, family, friends. Our risk-seeking behavior and general fearlessness are thrilling, our glibness and charm alluring. Our often quick wit and outside-the-box thinking make us appear intelligent - even brilliant. We climb the corporate ladder faster than the rest, and appear to have limitless self-confidence.... Who are we? We are highly successful, non-criminal sociopaths and we comprise 4% of the American population (that's 1 in 25 people!).

Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.

It's never too late to chase your dreams: Before she discovered running, Nita Sweeney was 49-years-old, chronically depressed, occasionally manic, and unable to jog for more than 60 seconds at a time. Using exercise, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn't know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink.

In the very depths of the human soul there is a darkness. It is an entity which most of us may never get to know; for others, however, this darkness grows for years until it takes hold of them and permeates every inch of their body. This darkness is evil incarnate, and it is in the hearts and minds of some of the most dangerous and despicable human beings to have walked this same earth we live in today. In the following volumes, you shall discover the stories of six murderers so tainted by darkness that their horrific accounts still bring fear to men and women of our present day.