Short Stuff: Oedipus Complex

Many college students take a Psychology 101 class, but not many of them actually absorb and remember the material. If you like the study of the mind but would rather pass on dry lectures, The Psychology Book offers a broad overview of psychology and how it’s changed over time, exploring its various fields and the major figures and theories in those fields. The authors bring a wide range of expertise to the book, including clinical psychology, business psychology, journalism, writing and editing, and music.

In our guide, we’ll explore the origins of psychology before moving chronologically through six major fields: behaviorism, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, and differential psychology. We’ll also add historical context, criticisms and limitations of certain theories, and updated research that supports or contradicts some theories.

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, revolutionized the understanding of the human mind and laid the foundation for psychoanalysis. In this groundbreaking work, Freud presents his theory that dreams are expressions of repressed wishes and desires that can reveal your deepest motivations, conflicts, and psychological issues. He also offers a method to analyze these nocturnal visions and uncover their hidden meanings.

Freud’s work on dream interpretation was born from his clinical experience treating patients, and it quickly became a cornerstone of psychoanalytic practice. While some of Freud’s claims have been debated over the years, his insights about the significance of dreams and the unconscious mind continue to influence psychology and popular culture. By learning to interpret dreams using Freud’s methods, you can gain valuable self-understanding and insight into your psychological problems. This guide will explore Freud’s revolutionary ideas and their lasting impact on our understanding of the human psyche. Throughout, our commentary will compare Freud’s ideas to modern research and alternative traditions of dream interpretation.

Science and reason create technological marvels, but they’re less successful at shaping human behavior. Since humans are irrational creatures, irrationality can be a useful tool for pushing various agendas big and small. In Alchemy, Rory Sutherland suggests that to solve economic and political problems, we should leverage people’s illogical—and even magical—ways of thinking. If business and political leaders can better understand the human psyche, they can use it to tackle the issues of the modern world.

As vice chairman of the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, Sutherland merged commercial advertising with behavioral science to “hack” the human mind. In this guide, we’ll examine what Sutherland believes are the faulty assumptions of standard economics, the peculiar quirks of human perception, and why meaning is more important than fact. We’ll delve into the underlying research on behavioral psychology and discuss the implications of using irrationality to influence the public at large.

In the age of science, we’ve turned our backs on the myths our ancestors believed in. However, could it be that in giving up those stories, we’ve lost a crucial part of the human experience? In Maps of Meaning, Jordan Peterson argues that mythology provides a psychological tool that helps us create meaning in a chaotic world. Beneath their fanciful trappings, creation stories and heroic quests give us the moral foundations of society and the tools for adapting to life’s challenges. Perhaps even more importantly, myths teach us to recognize our individual capacity for good and evil.

In this guide, we’ll examine Peterson’s arguments on how myth affects the mind, mythology’s fundamental archetypes and stories, and how to apply the lessons of myth to live a more well-rounded life. We’ll also look at alternative interpretations of mythological stories, what science says about the intersection of myth and cognitive development, as well as how the symbols of myth have taken new form in the stories of today.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces explores the common themes and story elements that define the world’s mythologies—the hero’s journey. Through the cycle of initiation, separation, and return, the hero undergoes great trials and tribulations, experiences death and rebirth, and gains new powers that enable mankind’s ultimate redemption.

Far from being obsolete relics from long-extinguished civilizations, the myths of the ancients have profound lessons for today’s reader. By studying the struggles, transformations, and redemptions of the great heroes, we come closer to discovering the universal truths of the human condition and unlocking the divine potential that lies inside us all.

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, revolutionized the understanding of the human mind and laid the foundation for psychoanalysis. In this groundbreaking work, Freud presents his theory that dreams are expressions of repressed wishes and desires that can reveal your deepest motivations, conflicts, and psychological issues. He also offers a method to analyze these nocturnal visions and uncover their hidden meanings.

Freud’s work on dream interpretation was born from his clinical experience treating patients, and it quickly became a cornerstone of psychoanalytic practice. While some of Freud’s claims have been debated over the years, his insights about the significance of dreams and the unconscious mind continue to influence psychology and popular culture. By learning to interpret dreams using Freud’s methods, you can gain valuable self-understanding and insight into your psychological problems. This guide will explore Freud’s revolutionary ideas and their lasting impact on our understanding of the human psyche. Throughout, our commentary will compare Freud’s ideas to modern research and alternative traditions of dream interpretation.

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, revolutionized the understanding of the human mind and laid the foundation for psychoanalysis. In this groundbreaking work, Freud presents his theory that dreams are expressions of repressed wishes and desires that can reveal your deepest motivations, conflicts, and psychological issues. He also offers a method to analyze these nocturnal visions and uncover their hidden meanings.

Freud’s work on dream interpretation was born from his clinical experience treating patients, and it quickly became a cornerstone of psychoanalytic practice. While some of Freud’s claims have been debated over the years, his insights about the significance of dreams and the unconscious mind continue to influence psychology and popular culture. By learning to interpret dreams using Freud’s methods, you can gain valuable self-understanding and insight into your psychological problems. This guide will explore Freud’s revolutionary ideas and their lasting impact on our understanding of the human psyche. Throughout, our commentary will compare Freud’s ideas to modern research and alternative traditions of dream interpretation.

Love and desire aren’t driven by the same things. In fact, sometimes their ingredients are polar opposites. The ingredients for a loving, stable relationship are commitment, intimacy, and egalitarianism, while the ingredients for desire are mystery, distance, risk, and playfulness. Throw in some external pressures such as cultural messages and parenthood, and it might seem impossible to have a good erotic life within a long-term relationship.

Mating in Captivity looks at what makes up our individual sense of desire and our desire for our partners. Although desire and love may have some fundamental contradictions, there are ways to balance the clashes, and ways to manage extra-relationship stresses.

We all have a deep-rooted need to be loved, but often a rift opens between our romantic partners and ourselves. Why does this happen, and can anything be done?

In Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt suggest that we unconsciously seek out romantic partners to help us resolve unfinished business from our childhood. When our partners fail to meet our unconscious expectations, our relationships fall apart. To prevent this, Hendrix and Hunt designed a process to change the way couples interact, allowing them to learn about their unconscious needs and to transform their lives into a conscious, loving union.

This guide will explore the psychological principles that affect how we relate to those closest to us, what science and relationship experts reveal about how our childhoods shape our adult lives, and how a struggling couple can learn to talk to each other, heal, and grow. We’ll also examine how the authors’ approach compares to other methods of couples therapy and to the ideas of other relationship experts.

The Happiness Hypothesis explores the nature of human happiness, blending the philosophical and theological wisdom of ancient thinkers with insights from the field of positive psychology. Our satisfaction is driven by how our mental filters interpret the events in our lives, with the human brain perpetually divided against itself in the struggle between the desires created by our emotions and the attempts of reason to control them. The key to happiness is to use reason to focus the mind away from desires that will only bring fleeting happiness, while giving in to those desires that will bring lasting fulfillment.

Many college students take a Psychology 101 class, but not many of them actually absorb and remember the material. If you like the study of the mind but would rather pass on dry lectures, The Psychology Book offers a broad overview of psychology and how it’s changed over time, exploring its various fields and the major figures and theories in those fields. The authors bring a wide range of expertise to the book, including clinical psychology, business psychology, journalism, writing and editing, and music.

In our guide, we’ll explore the origins of psychology before moving chronologically through six major fields: behaviorism, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, and differential psychology. We’ll also add historical context, criticisms and limitations of certain theories, and updated research that supports or contradicts some theories.

Trauma can stem from abuse to a severe car accident to wartime combat—and cause a lifetime of flashbacks, nightmares, isolation, insomnia, hypervigilance, and rage. In The Body Keeps the Score, the author explores how diagnosing and treating trauma has evolved as new technologies, research, and fields of science emerged.

Trauma’s impact is not only mental, emotional, and neurological, but also physiological: Trauma rewires the brain to put people in a constant state of stress or numbness, leading to a host of physical problems.

In this summary, you’ll learn:

• Why trauma survivors feel like their trauma is never-ending
• How flashbacks make parts of the brain shut down and others to go into overdrive
• Why some trauma survivors can’t recognize themselves in the mirror
• How activities like choral singing, yoga, and theater can be therapeutic