On mind and matters

The best books on psychology are listed this week. Sara Saleh chooses the one she has enjoyed reading.

Who's the professor?
- Dr Kharkuhin, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the American University of Sharjah

Dr Kharkuhin has an MA from the University of Amsterdam and a PhD from City University of New York. His research focus has been mainly on bilingualism and cognition. He is currently working on a chapter for the book Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism and developing a journal article as well.

Dr Kharkuhin is a published poet. Before coming to AUS, he worked in the Psychology Department at Brooklyn College of the City University, New York. His favourite books on psychology are:

Memories, Dreams, Reflections
By Carl Gustav Jung
The book is an autobiography put together from conversations, writings and lectures with Jung's cooperation, at the end of his life. It is a reflection of the famous psychoanalyst on his personal spiritual experience that resulted in developing the most influential theories of conscious and unconscious aspects of the human personality.

Psychology Art
By Lev Semenovich Vygotsky
The most famous Russian developmental psychologist elaborates on the nature of aesthetical reaction to artwork. This book is the result of a series of studies in art and psychology, in which Aristotle's concept of catharsis is discussed from the psychological perspective.

How the Mind Works
By Steven Pinker
Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) psychologist Steven Pinker answers all questions about the mystery of the human mind in his marvelously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science.

Editor's pick

How the Mind Works
By Steven Pinker
In this witty novel, award-winning author and psychologist Steven Pinker boldly sets out to explain how the mind works by “reverse-engineering'' it.

The book invokes fascinating questions like 'why does a face look more attractive with makeup?' 'Why do we feel that a run of heads makes the coin more likely to land tails?' 'Why are children bratty?' 'Why do fools fall in love?' 'Why are we soothed by paintings and music?'

Using insight from disciplines ranging from neuroscience to economics, Pinker revitalises age-old ideas and sayings such as the mind is a computer and dismisses popular scientific fads and ideologies that have been in vogue for the past few years.

Provocative and expertly written.

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK

Steven Pinker
Born: September 18, 1954

Pinker is a prominent Canadian-born American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, and popular science writer known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Pinker has written books suitable for general audiences, The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules and The Blank Slate, all of which have brought him numerous awards.

After receiving a first class bachelor's degree in experimental psychology from McGill University in 1976, Pinker went on to earn his doctorate in the same discipline at Harvard in 1979.

Pinker is currently the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard having previously been director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2004 and one of Prospect and Foreign Policy's top 100 public intellectuals in 2005.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

- The writer is an International Student Correspondent for NOTES, studying at the University of Sydney, Australia