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New Books in Psychology

New Books in Psychology

By: Marshall Poe
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 Interviews with Psychologists about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychologyNew Books Network Science
Episodes
  • Judith Weisenfeld, "Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake" (NYU Press, 2025)

    Judith Weisenfeld, "Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake" (NYU Press, 2025)
    Jun 24 2025
    In the decades after the end of slavery, African Americans were committed to southern state mental hospitals at higher rates as white psychiatrists listed “religious excitement” among the most frequent causes of insanity for Black patients. At the same time, American popular culture and political discourse framed African American modes of spiritual power as fetishism and superstition, cast embodied worship as excessive or fanatical, and labeled new religious movements “cults,” unworthy of respect. As Judith Weisenfeld argues in Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025), psychiatrists’ notions of race and religion became inextricably intertwined in the decades after the end of slavery and into the twentieth century, and had profound impacts on the diagnosis, care, and treatment of Black patients. This book charts how racialized medical understandings of mental normalcy pathologized a range of Black religious beliefs, spiritual sensibilities, practices, and social organizations and framed them as manifestations of innate racial traits. Importantly, these characterizations were marshaled to help to limit the possibilities for Black self-determination, with white psychiatrists’ theories about African American religion and mental health being used to promote claims of Black people’s unfitness for freedom. Drawing on extensive archival research, Black Religion in the Madhouse is the first book to expose how racist views of Black religion in slavery’s wake shaped the rise of psychiatry as an established and powerful profession. Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    55 mins
  • Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)

    Jeremy Stolow, "Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography" (MIT Press, 2025)
    Jun 20 2025
    Picturing Aura: A Visual Biography (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Jeremy Stolow is the first book of its kind: an extended historical, anthropological, and philosophical study of modern efforts to visualize the hidden radiant force encompassing the living body known as our aura. This rich, interdisciplinary study by Dr. Stolow chronicles the rise and global spread of modern instruments and techniques of picturing aura, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, exploring how its images are put to work in the diverse realms of psychical research, esotericism, art photography, popular culture, and the New Age alternative medical and spiritual marketplace.At their core, pictures of auras are boundary objects that operate simultaneously in multiple conceptual and practical realms, serving varying goals of making art, healing bodies, and exploring the cosmos. Drawing on extensive archival as well as field research, Stolow reconstructs a global history of this boundary-crossing enterprise through its evolving media technologies, markets, and cultural arenas. It is a story shaped through exchanges among professionals and amateurs, scientists and occultists, countercultural artists and entrepreneurs, metropolitans and hinterland figures. With more than 60 full-color illustrations, Picturing Aura brings to light a remarkable, entangled history of picture-making that challenges settled assumptions about religion, art, and science. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 20 mins
  • David P. Celani, "Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)

    David P. Celani, "Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2024)
    Jun 17 2025
    In this concise and introductory book, David Celani examines the work of Ronald Fairbairn, one of the pioneers of Object Relations Theory. Ronald Fairbairn: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025) adopts a unique approach to Fairbairn’s work and legacy. Organizing the book thematically, Celani makes connections between Fairbairn’s disparate and often convoluted papers, offering the reader a more accessible insight into the work of this eminent analyst. He looks in turn at Fairbairn’s field-defining work on Object Relations, split consciousness, repression and the impact of parental neglect on a child’s developing personality. Celani also explores Fairbairn’s assessment of infants’ dependency on their maternal figure and brings his ideas into the 21st century. Considering the work of Philip Bromberg in tandem with that of Fairbairn, Celani considers the practical, clinical and theoretical implications of Fairbairn’s model. This volume is essential reading for analysts in practice and training interested in the work of Fairbairn and the impact Object Relations have had on psychoanalysis as a whole. Celani conducts ongoing educational workshops on Fairbairn at the Object Relations Institute. David P. Celani is a retired psychologist and adjunct professor at the Object Relations Institute in New York City, USA. Akilesh Ayyar is a spiritual teacher and writer in New York. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology
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    1 hr and 47 mins
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