Books and your psychology

Evening All

The two books that have really influenced me must be "Reason and Morality", (1978) and "The Community of Rights", (1996) both by Alan Gewirth and try to rationally justify universal human rights and then identify the type of society that could embody those rights.

However, if we are talking only about psychology then it would have to be anything by Eric Fromm, in particular "To Have or to Be", or "The Crisis of Psychoanalysis".

Cheers

Steve

Where to start!?!?

Several books have very strongly influenced how I think - one is Anthony de Mello's "Awareness". Another is Marion Milner's "A life of one's own". Another is Carl Roger's "On becoming a person". Sheldon Kopp's "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him". Thomas Merton's "The Seven Storey Mountain". Alice Miller's "The Drama of being a Child".

Novels that have influenced me: Constance Holme "The Lonely Plough"; Doris Lessing "Shikasta" and "The Marriages of Zones Three, Four and Five" and "The Good Terrorist"; Robertson Davies "Bred in the Bone". Ford Madox Ford "The Good Soldier".

Better stop!

Kathleen

Hi, I know this is not totally on point, but has anyone read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time"? It's about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome - I have just finished reading it and it really affected me. I could empathize with the hero's pain and confusion - even though I don't have the same condition, there have been times when my own condition (depression) has resulted in severe emotional detachment and dissociation from reality. The confusion and distress that this causes is hard to describe - but the author (Mark Haddon) captures it perfectly. I think all psychiatrists/psychologists/mental health workers should read this book!

The Dog in the Nighttime is excellent, I agree! My son has Asperger Syndrome (although not as severely as the hero!), so I was most interested to see how Haddon would deal with this in a fictional context. I think he managed to convey the detachment well, although I might quibble with some aspects - but then it's fiction, not a documentary, and not meant to be a documentary. It's an exploration of an alien world, just like a science fiction novel.

Kathleen