The Best Psychology & Social Science Books 2025

1. Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types, (Paperback)

Understanding the Enneagram is the practical guide to applying the principles in day-to-day activities, from the world's foremost Enneagram experts. Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson's Personality Types has become the leading guide to the Enneagram, as well as a cherished classic in the literature of personal growth around the world. This is the groundbreaking book that set the standard for insight and accuracy about this ancient symbol of human personality. Now, Understanding the Enneagram is another indispensable reseource, teaching readers not only how to understand this psychological framework in daily life but how to use it in many different settings. Riso and Hudson have now fully revised and updated this authoritative guide to the Enneagram, based on their continuing work in the field, which is attracting ever-increasing attention. Discover how to use the Enneagram to find fulfillment in your personal development and in all of your relationships.

Understanding the Enneagram: The Practical Guide to Personality Types, (Paperback) Author: HarperOne ISBN: 9780618004157 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2000-01-18 Page Count: 416

2. Multiplicity : The New Science of Personality, Identity, and the Self (Hardcover)

Multiplicity presents an entirely new view of our selves. Instead of seeing each person as a single personality, Carter argues that we all consist of multiple characters, each one with its own viewpoint, emotions and ambitions. The mother who feeds breakfast to her children, for example, has quite different concerns and opinions from the woman taking part in a boardroom discussion two hours later, and from the woman she will be with her husband that night. Yet all three may share the same body, and none is any more "authentic" than another. Personality changes in a person are conventionally frowned upon, but Carter shows that in today's world our ability to switch from one personality to another according to what is demanded of us is a huge strength, providing one's personalities work together as a team rather than against each other. In addition to its groundbreaking scientific thesis, Multiplicity contains extensive exercises designed to help readers achieve this harmony.

Multiplicity presents an entirely new view of our selves. Instead of seeing each person as a single personality, Carter argues that we all consist of multiple characters, each one with its own viewpoint, emotions and ambitions. The mother who feeds breakfast to her children, for example, has quite different concerns and opinions from the woman taking part in a boardroom discussion two hours later, and from the woman she will be with her husband that night. Yet all three may share the same body, and none is any more "authentic" than another. Personality changes in a person are conventionally frowned upon, but Carter shows that in today's world our ability to switch from one personality to another according to what is demanded of us is a huge strength, providing one's personalities work together as a team rather than against each other. In addition to its groundbreaking scientific thesis, Multiplicity contains extensive exercises designed to help readers achieve this harmony.

3. My Soul Said to Me

9780757300646

My Soul Said to Me

4. Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People (Paperback)

Sparks of Genius is "a fascinating study of creativie thinking--mankind's greatest attribute" (Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape). Creativity isn't born, it's cultivated--and this innovative guide distills the work of extraordinary artists and thinkers to show you how. All the imagination needs to be fruitful is exercise. Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein identify the thinking tools employed by history's greatest creative minds--from Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall to Amadeus Mozart and Virginia Woolf--so that anyone with the right mix of inspiration and drive can set their own genius in motion. With engaging narratives and ample illustrations, Robert and Michèle investigate cognitive tools as diverse as observing, imaging, recognizing patterns, modeling, playing, and more to provide "a clever, detailed and demanding fitness program for the creative mind" (Kirkus Reviews).

Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People (Paperback)

5. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, (Paperback)

In his most ambitious and accomplished work to date, Michael Taussig undertakes a history of mimesis, the practice of imitation, and its relation to alterity, the opposition of Self and Other. Drawing upon such diverse sources as theories of Benjamin, Adorno and Horckheimer, research on the Cuna Indians, and theories of colonialism and postcolonialism, Taussig shows that the history of mimesis is deeply tied to colonialism, and more specifically, to the colonial trade's construction of "savages." With analysis that is vigorous, unorthodox, and often breathtaking, Taussig's cross-cultural discussion of mimesis deepens our understanding of the relationship between ethnography, racism and society.

Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, (Paperback) Author: Routledge ISBN: 9780415906876 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1992-12-21 Page Count: 320

6. Same Sex, Different Cultures: Exploring Gay and Lesbian Lives, (Paperback)

Because homoerotic relations can be found in so many cultures, Gilbert Herdt argues that we should think of these relations as part of the human condition. This new cross-cultural study of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals around the world, Same Sex, Different Cultures provides a unique perspective on maturing and living within societies, both historical and contemporary, that not only acknowledge but also incorporate same-gender desires and relations.Examining what it means to organize ?sex? in a society that lacks a category for ?sex, ? or to love someone of the same gender when society does not have a ?homosexual? or ?gay/lesbian? role, Herdt provides provocative new insights in our understanding of gay and lesbians lives. Accurate in both its scientific conceptions and wealth of cultural and historical material, examples range from the ancient Greeks and feudal China and Japan to the developing countries of Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, and Thailand, from a New Guinea society to contemporary U.S. culture, including Native Americans. For all of these peoples, homoerotic relations emerge as part of culture?and not separate from history or society.In many of these groups, loving or engaging in sexual relations is found to be the very basis of the local cultural theory of ?human nature? and the mythological basis for the cosmos and the creation of society. The mistake of modern Western culture, Gilbert contends, is to continue the legalization of prejudice against lesbians and gays.In this light, the book addresses the issue of ?universal? versus particular practices and reveals positive role models that embrace all aspects of human sexuality. Finally, it offers knowledge of the existence of persons who have loved and have been intimate sexually and romantically with the same gender in other lands through divergent cultural practices and social roles.The most important lesson to learn from this cross-cultural and historical study of homosexuality is that there is room for many at the table of humankind.

Same Sex, Different Cultures: Exploring Gay and Lesbian Lives, (Paperback) Author: Routledge ISBN: 9780813331645 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 1998-04-24 Page Count: 228

7. Just Sex?

9780415310727

Just Sex?