Human Animal Psychology

The global financial crisis has made it painfully clear that powerful psychological forces are imperiling the wealth of nations today. From blind faith in ever-rising housing prices to plummeting confidence in capital markets, "animal spirits" are driving financial events worldwide.

Alfred Adler was an Austrian physician, psychotherapist, and one of the founding fathers of modern psychology. In Understanding Human Nature, (1928), Adler sets out to acquaint the general public with the basics of Individual Psychology, which holds that the driving force of human behavior is the individual’s striving for power, partly to compensate for feelings of inferiority. The purpose of the book is to identify mistaken behaviors and show how they undermine healthy relationships, in order to gently guide the individual towards adjustment.

A compelling and accessible new perspective on the modern science of psychology, based on one of Yale’s most popular courses of all time How does the brain—a three-pound wrinkly mass—give rise to intelligence and conscious experience? Was Freud right that we are all plagued by forbidden...

This revised edition of Human Nature begins a new phase in the most important intellectual controversy of this generation: Is human behavior controlled by the species' biological heritage? Does this heritage limit human destiny?

With characteristic pungency and simplicity of style, the author of Sociobiology challenges old prejudices and current misconceptions about the nature-nurture debate.

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us...

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the...

Man is not ape. Dog is not wolf. From startling facts about its origins, to the fundamental reasons behind dog and man’s unbreakable attachment, Clever Dog: The Secrets Your Dog Wants You to Know explores the myths that so many pet owners have been led to believe – and forms conclusions as...

How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts.

Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of birds and frogs. He argued that animals have "a taste for the beautiful" that drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexually attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained why sexual beauty evolved in animals, he struggled to understand how.

Our ability to make meaningful connections with other animal species and their ability to return the favour is, perhaps, never more beautiful than the bond we have with dogs. This book explores what every dog owner knows – that a dog is never just a dog. They are our companions, best friends...