Here are 100 books that It's All in Your Head fans have personally recommended if you like
It's All in Your Head.
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This list opens the door to the inner life of physicians: our hopes, fears, insecurities, and all of the internal and external pressures we face in our training and practice. As a doctor, I see myself in these books—not a superhero with “all of the answers,” but a human being in a profession suffering one of the largest crises of workforce burnout and moral injury. Seeing our physicians as real people will help us feel more empowered to bring our own true selves to the relationship. And really good healthcare is more likely to happen when souls connect.
Shem provides a satirical look at the often sadistic training of physicians.
This was a classic when I was coming up in my training. Trigger warning: While this book importantly highlights the hidden underbelly of medical training and culture, some of the stories are so egregious that they should be used in educational settings to discuss what NOT to do. But under every satire lies some truth and something to be learned.
By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about what it really takes to become a doctor.
"The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly compelling...brutally honest."-The New York Times
Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings.
A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified,…
I am a primary care doctor who is fascinated by my patient’s stories and what they reveal about their lives, their illnesses, and their pathways to recovery. I have always been a lover of literature related to the human condition and “the big questions,” having majored in Russian Language and Literature as an undergraduate. All the books I have chosen were written by physicians who were accomplished not only in the sciences but in the arts. I hope you enjoy this hybridization of disciplines as much as I have!
How could I not love a book about an Indian surgeon who finds himself living and working in Ethiopia, especially when the book has a plot that simply refused to allow me to put the book down?
I was deeply touched by the struggles of a surgeon trying to apply his craft in circumstances that seemed nearly impossible. I was equally affected by the fulfillment he experienced by being welcomed and so deeply appreciated by a community. I was hooked when his trust and resilience were put to the ultimate test.
My brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths in the thick air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. Bound by birth, we were driven apart by bitter betrayal. No surgeon can heal the would that divides two brothers. Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning...
I never really thought much about how limited and exclusionary our society’s ideas about intelligence are until my daughter, who has Down syndrome, was required to take her first IQ test before she started kindergarten. That experience led me to research the history of the IQ test and how it has shaped our culture’s ideas about intelligence in pernicious ways. I am a college professor who is working to change the educational and employment opportunities available to people with intellectual disabilities. I hope you enjoy the books on this list. May they lead you to reconsider what you think it means to be smart.
I love Sack’s empathy toward his patients and his commitment to telling a different and highly unique narrative about the human experience. His classic collection of essays is not about intelligence, but each patient he writes about knows and understands the world differently than what is considered normal.
Sacks makes room for the challenges and brilliance of all ways of being in the world.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with…
Katya Cengel became a patient at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was 10 years old. Thirty years later Katya, now a journalist, discovers her young age was not the only thing that made her hospital stay unusual. The idea of psychosomatic units themselves,…
I am a University Distinguished Professor at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, and a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I have devoted my career to studying service quality and ways to improve it, first in the commercial sector and, since 2001, in healthcare. I started my healthcare journey studying at the Mayo Clinic, and I have since done in-residence research at other health systems, most recently, Henry Ford Health in Detroit. My work includes research on improving the patient and family experience in cancer care. Kindness and dignity are vitally important in healthcare – and too often missing. I am on a personal mission to enhance healing in all its forms.
I loved this book because it builds from the sadness of a life taken far too young to the beauty of deep reflections on the meaning of life, love, and loss. Paul Kalanithi was a brilliant neurosurgeon just completing his years of training when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.
Kalanithi, a new father, wrote much of this book while he was dying. As a writer myself, this book caused me to wonder if I could be so open about my reality, in a book or any other form, while dying. I do not know the answer, but I treasure the experience of having read a book that raised such a powerful stirring in myself. Like the other books I recommend, Kalanithi’s memoir is a gift from the book Gods.
'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal
What makes life worth living in the face of death?
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live.
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and…
I am a psychologist, yet I am also a human being with real, complex, and, at times, disturbing thoughts and feelings. I would say I’ve learnt more from my own experiences and those shared by others than any training or qualifications. I never tire of listening to these real-life narratives, which are full of more color and depth than our rudimentary single-word emotion labels describe. I gather these stories up to feed my emotobiome (our microscopic inner world of feelings) along with the books and learnings from my list. I hope you’ll join me on this rollercoaster ride through human feelings–I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
I loved this scientific yet readable book because it gave me the physiological answers to why we feel the way we feel!
As a psychologist, I’m used to helping people unpick their trauma and past experiences to give insight to their present emotions, but reading this book gave me further understanding on a molecular level.
As a practitioner, I often bang on about the mind-body connection and how we can use the mind to help heal the body and vice versa, and this book gave me robust explanations regarding the role of neurochemicals to help explain this interaction to my clients.
Why do we feel the way we feel? How do our thoughts and emotions affect our health? Are our bodies and minds distinct from each other or do they function together as part of an interconnected system? In MOLECULES OF EMOTION, neuroscientist Candace Pert provides startling and decisive answers to these long-debated questions, establishing the biomolecular basis for our emotions and explaining these new scientific developments in a clear and accessible way. Her pioneering research on how the chemicals inside us form a dynamic information network, linking mind and body, is not only provocative, it is revolutionary. In her groundbreaking…
I always sensed I was from another planet, here to help create a new world by nature of my heightened sensitivity and ability to perceive beneath the surface of our supposed reality. After decades of struggling and nearly dying through addiction to mute my sensitivity, my healing path led me to see how being an empath is the greatest gift, once we learn to take care of ourselves and refine our abilities. My book The Empath Experience is the guide I wish I had when I was born, that tells my story and guides life-changing practices to master your energy and harness your empathic gifts as the superpowers they are.
This book is so genius in its ability to straddle so many different dimensions of experience – from science to medicine to intuition to energy healing and everything in between. I love Carolyn Myss as a great example of what’s possible in bridging worlds – her story of bringing medical intuition into more mass consciousness is brilliant and endlessly inspiring. This book helped me to affirm what I was already sensing as an energy healer – that all dis-ease and pain is rooted in an underlying spiritual or energetic issue. This book provides great precedents for how we can truly heal and recover from seemingly hopeless ailments by actually getting to the root of our supposed problems and meeting them with love, grace, and acceptance.
Encoded within your body, teaches Caroline Myss, is an energy system linking you directly to the world's great spiritual traditions. Through it, you have direct access to the divine energy that seamlessly connects all life. On Anatomy of the Spirit, Myss offers a stunning picture of the human body's hidden energetic structures, while revealing its precise spiritual code and relationship to the sacred energy of creation.
Our most revered wisdom traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Hinduism, hold in common essential teachings about seven specific levels of spiritual development, the stages of power in life. These seven great truths also grace…
When I was a young adult, I lost someone whom I’d loved intensely. In the aftermath, I experienced a grief that would not subside for more than a year and interfered with my ability to function. This is known as complicated grief. As a result, I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject, looking for books that present complicated grief in a humane and understandable manner. While there is a place for self-help books, I’ve found creative literature to be more helpful, especially books written in the first person that offers a metaphorical hand to the reader. I published a detailed essay in Shenandoah on this topic.
This is another unconventional recommendation because it’s not only about grief. Maté is a medical doctor whose work focuses on the damage that unprocessed emotional trauma—including grief—does to the body and how to process emotions in a way that is less likely to lead to physical disease.
I think this book is a necessary complement to books about complicated grief because it provides an understanding of what happens when we do not allow ourselves to fully experience grief in a safe and supported manner, and provides insights into how to do so.
Can a person literally die of loneliness? Is there a connection between the ability to express emotions and Alzheimer's disease? Is there such a thing as a 'cancer personality'?
Drawing on deep scientific research and Dr Gabor Mate's acclaimed clinical work, When the Body Says No provides the answers to critical questions about the mind-body link - and the role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.
When the Body Says No:
- Explores the role of the mind-body link in conditions and diseases such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome…
I’m a Ph.D. clinical psychologist and tenured associate professor at The City College of New York, where I teach couple and family therapy, multicultural issues in psychotherapy, and research methods. I've conducted research on a couple's distress prevention program. I’ve been a licensed therapist for 30+ years working primarily with “last chance couples” – those on the brink of dissolving their relationship. I attended the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, where I received my B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy, and obtained my doctorate at Duke University. I have also been on the faculty of Bellevue Hospital/NYU Medical Center, and the Ackerman Institute for the Family. I lecture internationally.
Dr. Fishbane is a clinical psychologist and couple therapist, and one of the most important clinical theorists in our field.
She spent years amassing the emerging research on the social determinants of brain development and developed a practical approach to what she calls “neuroeducation” for couples – helping partners understand the neurophysiological underpinnings and effects of marital conflict, how partners regulate each other’s emotions, and how to manage one’s negative arousal to engage in loving, compassionate relationships.
Although written for therapists, it is highly engaging and accessible for the general reader who seeks to understand why they become so distressed during conflict with their partners and how to manage their arousal for better communication.
Human brains and behavior are shaped by genetic predispositions and early experience. But we are not doomed by our genes or our past. Neuroscientific discoveries of the last decade have provided an optimistic and revolutionary view of adult brain function: People can change. This revelation about neuroplasticity offers hope to therapists and to couples seeking to improve their relationship. Loving With the Brain in Mind explores ways to help couples become proactive in revitalizing their relationship. It offers an in-depth understanding of the heartbreaking dynamics in unhappy couples and the healthy dynamics of couples who are flourishing.
I’ve been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV and the next Stephen Hawking by Gear Magazine. My passion is flying over all the sciences, all of history, and a chunk of the arts and pulling it all together in a new big picture. I’ve called this approach Omnology, the aspiration to omniscience. Sounds crazy, right? But I’ve published scientific papers or lectured at scholarly conferences in twelve different scientific disciplines, from quantum physics and cosmology to evolutionary biology, psychology, information science, and astronautics. And I’ve been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal,Wired, and many more.
Melvin Konner is an anthropologist who joined the sociobiology revolution of the 1970s. Like Barash, his style is sheer pleasure. He ranges from biology and psychology to research on hormones. And his tales, his evidence, are fascinating beyond belief. They are derived from research on primitive tribes like the !Kung San In southern Africa, whose way of life sheds new light on the things you and I do every day.
First published 20 years ago to great acclaim, "The Tangled Wing" soon became useful for anyone interested in the biological roots of human behaviour and emotions. Since then however, revolutions have taken place in the biological sciences not only in genetics but molecular biology and neuroscience as well. All of these innovations have been taken into account in this vastly expanded edition. In this synthesis of biology, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, Konner explores the seat of human emotions. He shows what is "natural" and what is merely construct. His discussion and analysis are both sensitive and straightforward, ranging from such…
Since I was young, I was fascinated with how the mind works; how all of our thoughts, feelings, memories, decisions, and actions come out of this lump of flesh in our heads. I studied consciousness, psychology, and neuroscience both at university, and on my own for decades. Once I started working in marketing, for many of the biggest and best brands in the world, I realized that marketers tend to have deep misconceptions and misunderstandings for how the mind actually works. My goal is to bridge the gap between all of the knowledge we have about the brain, and how that could be helpful to brands and marketers.
The work of Dr. Damasio was foundational in building my understanding of how human emotions work, and their role in human actions and decision making. This book explores Damasio’s work in detail, giving a rich understanding of human emotions – and how they are not frivolous things but actually core to how humans act and behave.
In the centuries since Descartes famously proclaimed, 'I think, therefore I am,' science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person's true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended until recently to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes' Error. Antonio Damasio challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wonderfully engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury,…
