21 Best Personal Memoirs, Psychology Books
Personal Memoirs, Psychology is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Personal Memoirs, Psychology audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 21 Personal Memoirs, Psychology audiobooks below.
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The Silence of Your Name
- By: Alexandra Marshall
- Narrator: Alexandra Marshall
- Length: 9 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.57(7 ratings)
4.57(7 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDThe Silence of Your Name revolves around the suicide of Marshall’s charismatic and idealistic young husband, Tim Buxton, while they were in Ghana with Operation Crossroads Africa–a progenitor of the Peace Corps. Marshall weaves in herThe Silence of Your Name revolves around the suicide of Marshall’s charismatic and idealistic young husband, Tim Buxton, while they were in Ghana with Operation Crossroads Africa–a progenitor of the Peace Corps. Marshall weaves in her husband’s hidden family history, one tied to Boston’s wealthy social scene and the deaths of notorious Black Sun publisher Harry Crosby and Tim’s aunt Josephine Rotch Bigelow. By allowing readers to experience these distinct periods of time in great detail, Marshall illuminates the toxic effects of denial across classes and generations.
As Marshall moves on with her life, now a novelist and young widow, she must navigate her way in the ’70s publishing world with the guidance of her friend Philip Roth, while still processing the grief of losing her husband. Decades later, Marshall finds herself in the footprints of her past, journeying to Ghana and reuniting with a royal Queen-Mother and the steadfast community that offered her its support decades earlier. As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Megan Marshall writes, she “is relentless in her quest for understanding and release from grief and guilt … but wisdom comes incrementally and her readers partake eagerly at each stage until we, too, have learned that grief may be transformed into love–and brilliant, soothing prose.”
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He Came In With It
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrator: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: July 21, 2020
- Language: English
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4.36(126 ratings)
4.36(126 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDIn an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations of families enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son,In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations of families enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens permanently off the conventional course.
Like the ten Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning–even cancer and a brain tumor– play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal of artmaking and drugs. With no time for hand-wringing, Miriam advances, convinced she can fix everything, while a devastated Craig retreats to their property in rural Washington State as home becomes a battlefield.
It is while cleaning out a closet that Miriam discovers a cache of drawings and journals written by Nick throughout his spiral into schizophrenia. She begins a solitary forensic journey into the lonely labyrinth of his mind.
This is the story of how mental illness unspools an entire family. As Miriam fights to reclaim her son from the ruthless, invisible enemy, we are given an unflinching view into a world few could imagine. It exposes the shocking shortfalls of our mental-health system, the destructive impact of stigma, shame, and isolation, and, finally, the falsity of the notion of a perfect family. Throughout the book, it is the family’s ability to find humor in the absurdities of this life that saves them.
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I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder
- By: Sarah Kurchak
- Narrator: Zura Johnson
- Length: 8 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: February 15, 2021
- Language: English
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4.3(504 ratings)
4.3(504 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDSarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn’t let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly, and of cleaning her bathroomSarah Kurchak is autistic. She hasn’t let that get in the way of pursuing her dream to become a writer, or to find love, but she has let it get in the way of being in the same room with someone chewing food loudly, and of cleaning her bathroom sink. In I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, Kurchak examines the Byzantine steps she took to become “an autistic success story,” how the process almost ruined her life and how she is now trying to recover. Growing up undiagnosed in small-town Ontario in the eighties and nineties, Kurchak realized early that she was somehow different from her peers. She discovered an effective strategy to fend off bullying: she consciously altered nearly everything about herself-from her personality to her body language. She forced herself to wear the denim jeans that felt like being enclosed in a sandpaper iron maiden. Every day, she dragged herself through the door with an elevated pulse and a churning stomach, nearly crumbling under the effort of the performance. By the time she was finally diagnosed with autism at twenty-seven, she struggled with depression and anxiety largely caused by the same strategy she had mastered precisely. She came to wonder, were all those years of intensely pretending to be someone else really worth it? Tackling everything from autism parenting culture to love, sex, alcohol, obsessions, and professional pillow fighting, Kurchak’s enlightening memoir challenges stereotypes and preconceptions about autism and considers what might really make the lives of autistic people healthier, happier, and more fulfilling.
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The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrator: Elyn R. Saks
- Length: 12 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: October 15, 2007
- Language: English
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4.28(13808 ratings)
4.28(13808 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDProfessor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health care system,Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success. “In this engrossing memoir, Saks … demonstrates a novelist’s skill of creating character, dialogue and suspense.”-Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Everything Is Fine
- By: Vince Granata
- Narrator: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.2(2134 ratings)
4.2(2134 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDGrief, mental illness, and the bonds of family are movingly explored in this extraordinary memoir “suffused with emotional depth and intellectual inquiry” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises) as a writer delves into theGrief, mental illness, and the bonds of family are movingly explored in this extraordinary memoir “suffused with emotional depth and intellectual inquiry” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises) as a writer delves into the tragedy of his mother’s violent death at the hands of his brother who struggled with schizophrenia. Perfect for fans of An Unquiet Mind and The Bright Hour.
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Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in red chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth.
Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life–Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home. Devastated by the grief of losing his mother, Vince is also consumed by an act so incomprehensible that it overshadows every happy memory of life growing up in his seemingly idyllic middle-class family.
“In candid, smoothly unspooling prose, Granata reconstructs life and memory from grief, writing a moving testament to the therapy of art, the power of record, and his immutable love for his family” (Booklist). -
Girl Walks Out of a Bar
- By: Lisa F. Smith
- Narrator: Hillary Huber
- Length: 8 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.15(3374 ratings)
4.15(3374 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDLisa Smith was a bright young lawyer at a prestigious law firm in New York City when alcoholism and drug addiction took over her life. What was once a way she escaped her insecurity and negativity as a teenager became a means of coping with theLisa Smith was a bright young lawyer at a prestigious law firm in New York City when alcoholism and drug addiction took over her life. What was once a way she escaped her insecurity and negativity as a teenager became a means of coping with the anxiety and stress of an impossible workload.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar explores Smith’s formative years, her decade of alcohol and drug abuse, divorce, and her road to recovery. In this darkly comic and wrenchingly honest story, Smith describes how her circumstances conspired with her predisposition to depression and self-medication in an environment ripe for addiction to flourish. When her close-knit group of high-achieving friends celebrate the end of their grueling workdays with alcohol-fueled nights at the city’s clubs and summer weekends partying at the beach, the feel-good times can spiral wildly out of control.
Girl Walks Out of a Bar is a candid portrait of alcoholism through the lens of gritty New York realism. Beneath the facade of success lies the reality of addiction.
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Beautiful Boy
- By: David Sheff
- Narrator: Anthony Heald
- Length: 11 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2008
- Language: English
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4.13(29059 ratings)
4.13(29059 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0020.95 USDThe #1 New York Times best-selling story of addiction and a father’s love: “A brilliant, harrowing, heartbreaking, fascinating story, full of beautiful moments and hard-won wisdom. This book will save a lot of lives and heal a lot ofThe #1 New York Times best-selling story of addiction and a father’s love: “A brilliant, harrowing, heartbreaking, fascinating story, full of beautiful moments and hard-won wisdom. This book will save a lot of lives and heal a lot of hearts.”–Anne Lamott
Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet.
What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son’s drug addiction. David’s story is a first: a teenager’s addiction from the parent’s point of view–a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope.
Before meth, Sheff’s son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole money from his eight-year-old brother, and lived on the streets. With poignant candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs–denial, 3 a.m. phone calls–the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict’s fate, the rest of the family must care for one another too, lest they become addicted to addiction.
Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.
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All the Things We Never Knew
- By: Sheila Hamilton
- Narrator: Sheila Hamilton
- Length: 8 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2015
- Language: English
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4.06(1383 ratings)
4.06(1383 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDEven as a reporter, Sheila Hamilton missed the signs as her husband David’s mental illness unfolded before her. By the time she had pieced together the puzzle, it was too late. Her once brilliant, intense, and hilarious partner was dead withinEven as a reporter, Sheila Hamilton missed the signs as her husband David’s mental illness unfolded before her. By the time she had pieced together the puzzle, it was too late. Her once brilliant, intense, and hilarious partner was dead within six weeks of a formal diagnosis of bipolar disorder, leaving his nine-year-old daughter and wife without so much as a note to explain his actions, a plan to help them recover from their profound grief, or a solution for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they would inherit from him.
All the Things We Never Knew takes listeners from David and Sheila’s romance through the last three months of their life together and into the year after his death. It details their unsettling descent from ordinary life into the world of mental illness and examines the fragile line between reality and madness. Now, a decade after David’s death, Sheila and her daughter, Sophie, have learned the power of choosing life over retreat, let themselves love and trust again, and understand the importance of forgiveness. Their story will resonate with all those who have loved someone suffering from bipolar disease and mental illness.
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How to Be Sad
- By: Helen Russell
- Narrator: Helen Russell
- Length: 10 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: October 05, 2021
- Language: English
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4.04(304 ratings)
4.04(304 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USD“In any human life there are going to be periods of unhappiness. That is part of the human experience. Learning how to be sad is a natural first step in how to be happier.”–Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research“In any human life there are going to be periods of unhappiness. That is part of the human experience. Learning how to be sad is a natural first step in how to be happier.”–Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute
“How to Be Sad is a poignant, funny, and deeply practical guide to better navigating one of our most misunderstood human emotions. It’s a must-read for anyone looking to improve their happiness by befriending the full range of their own feelings.” – Laurie Santos, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast
An expert on the pursuit of happiness combines her powerful personal story with surprising research and expert advice to reveal the secret of finding joy: allowing sadness to enrich your life and relationships.
Helen Russell has researched sadness from the inside out for her entire life. Her earliest memory is of the day her sister died. Her parents divorced soon after, and her mother didn’t receive the help she needed to grieve. Coping with her own emotional turmoil–including struggles with body image and infertility–she’s endured professional and personal setbacks as well as relationships that have imploded in truly spectacular ways. Even the things that brought her the greatest joy–like eventually becoming a parent–are fraught with challenges.
While devoting a career to writing books on happiness, Helen discovered just how many people are terrified of sadness. But the key to happiness is unhappiness–by allowing ourselves to experience pain, we learn to truly appreciate and embrace joy. How to Be Sad is a memoir about living with sadness, as well as an upbeat manifesto for change that encourages us to accept and express our emotions, both good and bad. Interweaving Helen’s personal testimony with the latest research on sadness–from psychologists, geneticists, neuroscientists and historians–as well as the experiences of writers, comics, athletes and change-makers from around the world, this vital and inspiring guide explores why we get sad, what makes us feel this way, and how it can be a force for good.
Timely and essential, How to Be Sad is about how we can better look after ourselves and each other, simply by getting smarter about sadness.
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Madness
- By: Marya Hornbacher
- Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 03, 2019
- Language: English
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4.02(12223 ratings)
4.02(12223 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0027.99 USDAward-winning author of Wasted, Marya Hornbacher’s astonishing New York Times best-selling memoir from the belly of bipolar disorder. Marya Hornbacher tells the story that until recently she had no idea was hers to tell: that of her life withAward-winning author of Wasted, Marya Hornbacher’s astonishing New York Times best-selling memoir from the belly of bipolar disorder.
Marya Hornbacher tells the story that until recently she had no idea was hers to tell: that of her life with Type I ultra-rapid-cycle bipolar disorder, the most severe form of bipolar disease.
In Madness, Hornbacher relates that bipolar can spawn eating disorders, substance abuse, promiscuity, and self-mutilation, and that for too long these symptoms have masked, for many of the three million people in America with bipolar, their underlying illness. Hornbacher’s fiercely self-aware portrait of bipolar, starting as early as age four, will surely powerfully change the current debate over whether bipolar can begin in childhood.
Through scenes of astonishing visceral and emotional power, she takes us inside her own desperate attempts to counteract violently careening mood swings. How Hornbacher fights her way up from a madness that all but destroys her, and what it is like to live in a difficult and sometimes beautiful life and marriage—where bipolar always beckons—is at the center of this brave and heart-stopping memoir.
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Fallible
- By: Kyle Bradford Jones
- Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.97(58 ratings)
3.97(58 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDNearly one in every five Americans deals with mental illness in a given year, and the rates are climbing. Among physicians, the rate is even higher as the time spent in medical training significantly increases the risk of poor mental health. None ofNearly one in every five Americans deals with mental illness in a given year, and the rates are climbing. Among physicians, the rate is even higher as the time spent in medical training significantly increases the risk of poor mental health.
None of us is fully immune from the ravages of mental health problems. This book is about the fallibility of us all, including the doctors who are supposed to care for us. It is about the fine line of illness and normal emotion and about how to change the norms of medical practice in light of human weakness.
It’s for individuals who suffer from mental illness. It’s for their loved ones. It’s for anyone who interacts with someone with a mental illness. In short, it’s for all of us.
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How to Be Human
- By: Jory Fleming
- Narrator: Jory Fleming
- Length: 5 hours 37 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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3.93(696 ratings)
3.93(696 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDA “beautiful and astonishing” (Walter Isaacson, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker) narrative that examines the many ways to be fully human, told by the first young adult with autism to attend Oxford University asA “beautiful and astonishing” (Walter Isaacson, # 1 New York Times bestselling author of The Code Breaker) narrative that examines the many ways to be fully human, told by the first young adult with autism to attend Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
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As a child, Jory Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn’t manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected to attend one of the world’s premier universities.
How to Be Human is a “profound, thought-provoking” (Barry M. Pizant, PhD, author of Uniquely Human) exploration of life amid a world constructed for neurotypical brains when yours is not. But the miracle of this book is that instead of dwelling on Jory’s limitations, those who inhabit the neurotypical world will begin to better understand their own: they will contemplate what language cannot say, how linear thinking leads to dead ends, and how nefarious emotions can be, particularly when, in Jory’s words, they are “weaponized.” Through a series of deep, personal conversations with writer Lyric Winik, Jory makes a compelling case for logical empathy based on rational thought, asks why we tolerate friends who see us as a means to an end, and explains why he believes personality is a choice. Most movingly, he discusses how, after many hardships, he maintains a deep, abiding faith: “With people, I don’t understand what goes in and what comes out, and how to relate,” he says. “But I can always reconnect with my relationship with my Creator.”
Join Jory and Lyric as they examine what it means to be human and ultimately how each of us might become a better one. Jory asks us to consider: Who has value? What is a disability? And how do we correct the imbalances we see in the world? How to Be Human shows us the ways a beautifully different mind can express the very best of our shared humanity. -
Every Moment of a Fall
- By: Carol E. Miller
- Narrator: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 6 hours 43 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.92(125 ratings)
3.92(125 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDCarol E. Miller was sixteen when the private plane piloted by her father crashed, pinning her in the wreckage, critically injuring her parents, and killing her twelve-year-old sister. Compounding this traumatic event, her father told her he wishedCarol E. Miller was sixteen when the private plane piloted by her father crashed, pinning her in the wreckage, critically injuring her parents, and killing her twelve-year-old sister. Compounding this traumatic event, her father told her he wished she had died instead of her sister. For the next twenty years, she labored under feelings of guilt and lack of self-worth. When another in a long line of personal crises landed her in therapy with an EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) practitioner, she began at last to investigate the crippling effects of the plane crash. Using bilateral stimulation to access her fiercely guarded memories, she learned to challenge the belief that the crash was all her fault and that she didn’t deserve to be alive.
This is a brave and revealing memoir of recovery from tragedy, and a fascinating, vividly narrated exploration of the increasingly popular eye-movement therapy developed to heal the wounds trauma leaves in its wake.
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The Eden Express
- By: Mark Vonnegut
- Narrator: Pete Cross
- Length: 9 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Dreamscape Media
- Publish date: December 19, 2017
- Language: English
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3.87(3044 ratings)
3.87(3044 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDMark 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 **** going down made him crazy in a culture that told him mental illness is a myth and schizophrenia is aMark 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 **** 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-with a famous, doting father, a cherished dog, and a prized jalopy-to having nervous breakdowns and then, eventually, emerging from them to write this book and to find the meaningful life that had-for a while-seemed out of reach. But the real story here is that, throughout his harrowing experience, Mark’s sense of humor let him see the humanity in what he was going through and that his gift for language let him describe it in such a way that others could begin to imagine its utter ordinariness as well as the madness that we all share.
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Group
- By: Christie Tate
- Narrator: Christie Tate
- Length: 20 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.81(35579 ratings)
3.81(35579 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDA REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The refreshingly original and “startlingly hopeful” (Lisa Taddeo) debut memoir of an over-achieving young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to group therapy and gets psychologicallyA REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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The refreshingly original and “startlingly hopeful” (Lisa Taddeo) debut memoir of an over-achieving young lawyer who reluctantly agrees to group therapy and gets psychologically and emotionally naked in a room of six complete strangers–and finds human connection, and herself.
Christie Tate had just been named the top student in her law school class and finally had her eating disorder under control. Why then was she driving through Chicago fantasizing about her own death? Why was she envisioning putting an end to the isolation and sadness that still plagued her despite her achievements?
Enter Dr. Rosen, a therapist who calmly assures her that if she joins one of his psychotherapy groups, he can transform her life. All she has to do is show up and be honest. About everything–her eating habits, childhood, sexual history, etc. Christie is skeptical, insisting that that she is defective, beyond cure. But Dr. Rosen issues a nine-word prescription that will change everything: “You don’t need a cure. You need a witness.”
So begins her entry into the strange, terrifying, and ultimately life-changing world of group therapy. Christie is initially put off by Dr. Rosen’s outlandish directives, but as her defenses break down and she comes to trust Dr. Rosen and to depend on the sessions and the prescribed nightly phone calls with various group members, she begins to understand what it means to connect.
“Often hilarious, and ultimately very touching” (People), Group is “a wild ride” (The Boston Globe), and with Christie as our guide, we are given a front row seat to the daring, exhilarating, painful, and hilarious journey that is group therapy–an under-explored process that breaks you down, and then reassembles you so that all the pieces finally fit. -
Labyrinths
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrator: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hours 12 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: November 08, 2016
- Language: English
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3.78(153 ratings)
3.78(153 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.007.99 USDA sensational, eye-opening account of Emma Jung’s complex marriage to Carl Gustav Jung and the hitherto unknown role she played in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement. Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the naturalA sensational, eye-opening account of Emma Jung’s complex marriage to Carl Gustav Jung and the hitherto unknown role she played in the early years of the psychoanalytic movement.
Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the twentieth century dictated that a woman of Emma’s stature–one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland–travel to Paris to “finish” her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man.
Engaged to the son of one of her father’s wealthy business colleagues, Emma’s conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung. The son of a penniless pastor working as an assistant physician in an insane asylum, Jung dazzled Emma with his intelligence, confidence, and good looks. More important, he offered her freedom from the confines of a traditional haute-bourgeois life. But Emma did not know that Jung’s charisma masked a dark interior–fostered by a strange, isolated childhood and the sexual abuse he’d suffered as a boy–as well as a compulsive philandering that would threaten their marriage.
Using letters, family interviews, and rich, never-before-published archival material, Catrine Clay illuminates the Jungs’ unorthodox marriage and explores how it shaped–and was shaped by–the scandalous new movement of psychoanalysis. Most important, Clay reveals how Carl Jung could never have achieved what he did without Emma supporting him through his private torments. The Emma that emerges in the pages of Labyrinths is a strong, brilliant woman, who, with her husband’s encouragement, becomes a successful analyst in her own right.
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Filthy Beasts
- By: Kirkland Hamill
- Narrator: Kirkland Hamill
- Length: 7 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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3.76(596 ratings)
3.76(596 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDRunning with Scissors meets Grey Gardens in this “vivid tragicomedy” (People), a riveting riches-to-rags tale of a wealthy family who lost it all and the unforgettable journey of a man coming to terms with his family’s deep flawsRunning with Scissors meets Grey Gardens in this “vivid tragicomedy” (People), a riveting riches-to-rags tale of a wealthy family who lost it all and the unforgettable journey of a man coming to terms with his family’s deep flaws and his own hidden secrets.
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“Wake up, you filthy beasts!” Wendy Hamill would shout to her children in the mornings before school. Startled from their dreams, Kirk and his two brothers couldn’t help but wonder–would they find enough food in the house for breakfast?
Following a hostile exit from New York’s upper-class society, newly divorced Wendy and her three sons are exiled from the East Coast elite circle. Wendy’s middle son, Kirk, is eight when she moves the family to her native Bermuda, leaving the three young boys to fend for themselves as she chases after the highs of her old life: alcohol, a wealthy new suitor, and other indulgences.
After eventually leaving his mother’s dysfunctional orbit for college in New Orleans, Kirk begins to realize how different his family and upbringing is from that of his friends and peers. Split between rich privilege–early years living in luxury on his family’s private compound–and bare survival–rationing food and water during the height of his mother’s alcoholism–Kirk is used to keeping up appearances and burying his inconvenient truths from the world, until he’s eighteen and falls in love for the first time.
A keenly observed, fascinating window into the life of extreme privilege and a powerful story of self-acceptance, Filthy Beasts is “a stunning, deeply satisfying story about how we outlive our upbringings” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). -
How to Fall in Love with Anyone
- By: Mandy Len Catron
- Narrator: Mandy Len Catron
- Length: 7 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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3.71(2304 ratings)
3.71(2304 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USD“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy.
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What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer.
In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about–where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions–and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship.
“Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with–or curious about–the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star). -
Loose Girl
- By: Kerry Cohen
- Narrator: Anna Caputo
- Length: 7 hours 52 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: September 21, 2021
- Language: English
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3.66(9358 ratings)
3.66(9358 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.99 USDThis captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together. Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body inThis captivating and deeply emotional memoir pulls back the curtain on the complex relationship women have between their bodies, love, and the way the two work together.
Kerry Cohen is eleven years old when she recognizes the power of her body in the leer of a grown man. Her parents are recently divorced and it doesn’t take long before their lassitude and Kerry’s desire to stand out–to be memorable in some way–combine to lead her down a path she knows she shouldn’t take. Kerry wanted attention. She wanted love. But not really understanding what love was, not really knowing how to get it, she reached for sex instead.
Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen’s captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction–not just to sex, but to male attention–Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn’t matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.
From the early rush of exploration to the day she learned to quiet the desperation and allow herself to love and be loved, Kerry’s story is never less than riveting. In rich and immediate detail, Loose Girl re-creates what it feels like to be in that desperate moment, when a girl tries to control a boy by handing over her body, when the touch of that boy seems to offer proof of something, but ultimately delivers little more than emptiness.
Kerry Cohen’s journey from that hopeless place to her current confident and fulfilled existence is a cautionary tale and a revelation for girls young and old. The unforgettable memoir of one young woman who desperately wanted to matter, Loose Girl will speak to countless others with its compassion, understanding, and love. ... Read more -
In the Shadow of Fame
- By: Sue Erikson Bloland
- Narrator: Celeste Lawson
- Length: 6 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
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3.49(56 ratings)
3.49(56 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0013.95 USDWritten by the daughter of world-renowned psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, this is the intimate story of a daughter’s struggle to develop a sense of self in a family—and a world—in which being famous is the very definition of being aWritten by the daughter of world-renowned psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, this is the intimate story of a daughter’s struggle to develop a sense of self in a family—and a world—in which being famous is the very definition of being a worthwhile human being.
Sue Erikson Bloland struggled from an early age to reconcile the public view of her father as a pioneering intellectual and quintessential father figure with the complex and insecure man she knew in private. Overwhelmed and eclipsed by her father’s fame, she spent years searching for meaning and direction in her own life; yet she felt compelled to uphold her father’s public image despite her awareness of his human vulnerabilities.
In a portrait enriched by her own psychoanalytic training, Bloland shares her personal insights into the costs and rewards of celebrity. Her story, though unique in its personal details, describes a struggle faced by all of us in the modern, fame-obsessed world.
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The Maximum Security Book Club
- By: Mikita Brottman
- Narrator: Beverley A. Crick
- Length: 7 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: June 07, 2016
- Language: English
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3.13(857 ratings)
3.13(857 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.99 USDA riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men’s prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them–Orange Is the New Black meets ReadingA riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men’s prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them–Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran.
On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club with a group of convicts from the Jessup Correctional Institution in Maryland. She assigns them ten dark, challenging classics–including Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” and Nabokov’s Lolita–books that don’t flinch from evoking the isolation of the human struggle, the pain of conflict, and the cost of transgression. Although Brottman is already familiar with these works, the convicts open them up in completely new ways. Their discussions may “only” be about literature, but for the prisoners, everything is at stake.
Gradually, the inmates open up about their lives and families, their disastrous choices, their guilt and loss. Brottman also discovers that life in prison, while monotonous, is never without incident. The book club members struggle with their assigned reading through solitary confinement; on lockdown; in between factory shifts; in the hospital; and in the middle of the chaos of blasting televisions, incessant chatter, and the constant banging of metal doors.
Though The Maximum Security Book Club never loses sight of the moral issues raised in the selected reading, it refuses to back away from the unexpected insights offered by the company of these complex, difficult men. It is a compelling, thoughtful analysis of literature–and prison life–like nothing you’ve ever read before.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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