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PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL NON-FICTION

The following is a partial list of some of my favourite works of psychological and philosophical non-fiction. Each of these books has influenced my mode of understanding the world in their respective way, and has no doubt impacted how I practice counselling therapy.

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

  • Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv

  • How the World Thinks: A Global History of Philosophy by Julian Baggini

  • Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly

  • Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation by Joseph Campbell

  • Essential Research Findings in Counselling and Psychotherapy: The Facts Are Friendly by Mick Cooper

  • Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious by Antonio R. Damasio

  • Overcoming Anger and Irritability by William H. Davies

  • Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein

  • Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher

  • Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life by Marjorie Garber

  • Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self by Jay L. Garfield

  • The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald D. Hoffman

  • I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas R. Hofstadter

  • What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life by James Hollis

  • The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

  • The Inner World of Trauma by Donald Kalsched

  • The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by R.D. Laing

  • The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise by R.D. Laing

  • In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction Gabor Maté

  • Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder by Gabor Maté

  • The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté

  • Wintering by Katherine May

  • The Discovery of Being by Rollo May


  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist


  • The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist

  • The Drama of Being a Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller

  • Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry by Randolph M. Nesse

  • Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

  • No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism by Chris Niebauer

  • The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions by Jaak Panksepp

  • Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life by Adam Phillips

  • Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by V.S. Ramachandran

  • Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre

  • Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy by Katsuki Sekida

  • Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw

  • The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness by Mark Solms

  • The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

  • Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone

  • Solitude: A Return to Self by Anthony Storr

  • Work: A Deep History from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots by James Suzman

  • Zen Mind, Beginners Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice by Shunryu Suzuki

  • Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson

  • A Confession by Leo Tolstoy

  • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

  • Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

  • The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard G. Wilkinson

  • The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients by Irvin D. Yalom


FICTION

The following is a list of some of my absolute favourite pieces of fiction. In practice, I draw as much inspiration from fiction as I do from pieces of academic works - which is why I include these books here.

  • Alamut by Vladimir Bartol

  • The Wound Is a Word by Billy-Ray Belcourt

  • The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

  • Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

  • House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

  • The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Éxupery

  • In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

  • The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

  • Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

  • Demian by Herman Hesse

  • When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut

  • No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

  • Embassytown by China Miéville

  • Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

  • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

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