100 books like The Betrayal of the Self

By Arno Gruen,

Here are 100 books that The Betrayal of the Self fans have personally recommended if you like The Betrayal of the Self. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Joseph and His Brothers

Barbara Artson Author Of Odessa, Odessa: A Novel

From my list on why immigrants leave their country of origin.

Why am I passionate about this?

I barely knew my grandparents who came to this country in 1905 and spoke only Yiddish. Because my mother refused to speak of her life in Odessa I was totally unaware of the persecution she and her family witnessed and experienced. As a psychoanalyst who helps people understand their own family’s history to better understand themselves, my historical novel, Odessa, Odessa helped me piece together what little I knew of my family’s history, and what I gleaned from my research and reading of novels, to render this portrait. Thomas Mann describes, in writing Joseph and His Brothers, putting clothing on the myth. I put the clothing on the history of my mother’s life story. So relevant today!

Barbara's book list on why immigrants leave their country of origin

Barbara Artson Why did Barbara love this book?

Thomas Mann, “puts clothing on the myth” of the biblical story of Joseph in this deeply profound and moving novel that reveals aspects of the human condition: love, greed, ruthlessness, forgiveness, jealousy, and ambition. Joseph and His Brothers remains relevant to the 21st-century reader. If I had to choose one novel to take with me to read on an isolated island, this would be the one I chose.

By Thomas Mann,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Joseph and His Brothers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE BOOK- As Germany dissolved into the nightmare of Nazism, Thomas Mann was at work on this epic recasting of the the great Bible story. Joseph, his brothers and his father Jacob, are at the prototypes of all humanity and their story is the story of life itself. Mann has taken one of the great simple chronicles of literature and filled it with psychological scope and range- its men and women are not remote figures in the Book of Genesis, but founders of states in a fresh, realisic world akin to our own .


Book cover of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Naomi Roht-Arriaza Author Of The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights

From my list on bringing dictators and evil men to justice.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in part in Chile, and when the Pinochet dictatorship started killing and torturing people, I wanted to do something about it. Years later, as a professor of international law, I helped countries figure out what to do after mass atrocities. Seeing how trials in other countries – or in international criminal courts – could break through barriers and make it possible to bring those who killed, tortured, or disappeared thousands of people to justice gave me hope. I wanted to tell the stories of the brave people who overcame the odds to do justice, in a readable and exciting way that also explained the legal and political issues involved. 

Naomi's book list on bringing dictators and evil men to justice

Naomi Roht-Arriaza Why did Naomi love this book?

The grandmama of human rights-related trial accounts, and for good reason. Arendt covered the trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in the 1960s. Eichmann had been living in Argentina, and was kidnapped and taken to Israel, where he was tried and condemned for his role in the Holocaust. Arendt raises profound questions about the value of trials in the face of overwhelming evil, about how trials structure narratives, and about memory. Still issues we grapple with today.

By Hannah Arendt,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Eichmann in Jerusalem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A profound and documented analysis ... Bound to stir our minds and trouble our consciences' Chicago Tribune

Hannah Arendt's authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi SS leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript commenting on the controversy that arose over her book. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative - a meticulous and unflinching look at one…


Book cover of Modernity and the Holocaust

Jane Stork Author Of Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom

From my list on understanding the human condition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born and raised in rural Western Australia, married young, traveled with my geologist husband in the Outback until our children were born, and was settling down to becoming a housewife and mother in a Perth suburb when an Indian guru crossed my path. In no time at all, I packed up my family and we moved to India. Four years later I followed my guru when he went to America, and four years after that, I found myself behind bars. Understanding what led me there, and facing the consequences, was to occupy me for many years to come. I continue to have a deep and abiding interest in what makes us tick and why we do the things we do.

Jane's book list on understanding the human condition

Jane Stork Why did Jane love this book?

This is a profound and disturbing work written after reading his wife’s account of how she, her mother and sister, all of Jewish origin, survived the Nazi/war years in Warsaw (Winter in the Morning by Janina Bauman (1986)). Bauman exposes the popular fallacy that the Holocaust was a singular event, an unfortunate tear in the fabric of civilization, demonstrating with devastating clarity that it was, in fact, a (logical) product of modernism: “Without modern civilization and its most central essential achievements, there would be no Holocaust”.

By Zygmunt Bauman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Modernity and the Holocaust as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A new afterword to this edition, "The Duty to Remember-But What?" tackles difficult issues of guilt and innocence on the individual and societal levels. Zygmunt Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the name of safety; the insidious effects of tragic memory; and efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of the Holocaust perpetrators has…


Book cover of Bauman: A Biography

Jane Stork Author Of Breaking the Spell: My Life as a Rajneeshee and the Long Journey Back to Freedom

From my list on understanding the human condition.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was born and raised in rural Western Australia, married young, traveled with my geologist husband in the Outback until our children were born, and was settling down to becoming a housewife and mother in a Perth suburb when an Indian guru crossed my path. In no time at all, I packed up my family and we moved to India. Four years later I followed my guru when he went to America, and four years after that, I found myself behind bars. Understanding what led me there, and facing the consequences, was to occupy me for many years to come. I continue to have a deep and abiding interest in what makes us tick and why we do the things we do.

Jane's book list on understanding the human condition

Jane Stork Why did Jane love this book?

I had never heard of Zygmunt Bauman when I picked up this book, but then I couldn’t put it down. By the time I had finished reading it, I was filled with the deepest appreciation and respect for both the man, and his biographer. Bauman’s life spanned almost a hundred years and his story is also the story of Europe, from 1925-2017.

Izabela Wagner has done monumental work to produce a biography worthy of its subject. Her loving respect for Bauman is tangible and adds greatly to the pleasure of reading the story of this extraordinary man’s life: Polish Jew, refugee, soldier, sociologist; an intellectual who spent his life reflecting on what he saw, and speaking and writing about it with pristine clarity.

By Izabela Wagner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bauman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Global thinker, public intellectual and world-famous theorist of 'liquid modernity', Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017) was a scholar who, despite forced migration, built a very successful academic career and, after retirement, became a prolific and popular writer and an intellectual talisman for young people everywhere. He was one of those rare scholars who, grey-haired and in his eighties, had his finger on the pulse of the youth.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Bauman's life and work. Izabela Wagner returns to Bauman's native Poland and recounts his childhood in an assimilated Polish Jewish family and the school experiences shaped by anti-Semitism.…


Book cover of Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past

Samuel Fleischacker Author Of Being Me Being You: Adam Smith and Empathy

From my list on the importance of empathy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a philosopher who has spent much of the past 30 years writing about Adam Smith—widely considered one of the first theorists of empathy. One consequence of spending all that time on Smith is that I came to see how much empathy infused even his work on economics (he is for one thing the first theorist ever to write empathetically about the lives of the poor). I’ve become as a result something of a crusader on behalf of the importance of bringing empathy into social science and policy-making today. Understanding people’s perspectives from within is essential to figuring out who they are and what they need.

Samuel's book list on the importance of empathy

Samuel Fleischacker Why did Samuel love this book?

Yes, I know, this book has a long, very academic title. But it’s actually very short and clearly-written, explaining both to professionals and to laypeople why empathy is essential to writing good history. Kohut is a distinguished historian of modern Germany, who also has psychoanalytic training, and he makes a convincing case that we can properly understand even such horrific events as the Wannsee conference (which instituted the Nazis’ “final solution” to the problem of the Jews) only if we enter into the perspective of the people who attended it. This is an eye-opening book on an extremely important topic.

By Thomas A. Kohut,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Empathy and the Historical Understanding of the Human Past is a comprehensive consideration of the role of empathy in historical knowledge, informed by the literature on empathy in fields including history, psychoanalysis, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and sociology.

The book seeks to raise the consciousness of historians about empathy, by introducing them to the history of the concept and to its status in fields outside of history. It also seeks to raise the self-consciousness of historians about their use of empathy to know and understand past people. Defining empathy as thinking and feeling, as imagining, one's way inside the experience of…


Book cover of Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, and Psychoanalysis

Friedel Weinert Author Of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud: Revolutions in the History and Philosophy of Science

From my list on scientific revolutions and their impact on the history of science.

Why am I passionate about this?

In an ideal world, I would have liked to be a cosmologist and a philosopher. But I became a philosopher with a passion for the history and philosophy of science. This has enabled me to kill two birds with one stone: I learn about the sciences that interest me (physics, evolutionary biology, political philosophy, and sociology), and I explore their philosophical consequences. My podcast, In the Beginning, there was…Philosophy is devoted to such topics.

Friedel's book list on scientific revolutions and their impact on the history of science

Friedel Weinert Why did Friedel love this book?

Webster’s book is one of the best assessments of psychoanalysis.

Freud persistently claimed that psychoanalysis was a serious science. It met with hostility because it had insulted the world: by emphasizing the influence of the Unconscious on our behaviour and the role of sexuality in human life. Naturally, Freud’s claims came under scrutiny.

Webster criticizes psychoanalysis as "one of the most subtle attempts to use reason in a magical manner." Psychoanalysis is not explanatory and protects itself against refutations. Webster traces the history of the psychoanalytic movement.

The book is excellent because of Webster’s grasp of primary and secondary literature, his lucid prose, and his understanding of Freud’s influence. My book also comes to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is not some kind of physics of the psyche.    

By Richard Webster,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Why Freud Was Wrong as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this engrossing new study of Sigmund Freuds life and work, Richard Webster has set out to provide a clear answer to the controversies that have raged for a century around one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. Tracing Freuds essentially religious personality to his childhood, Webster shows how the founder of psychoanalysis allowed his messianic dreams to shape the science he created and to lead him ever deeper into a labyrinth of medical error. Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Why Freud Was Wrong is destined to become a classic work.


Book cover of Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History

Eugene W. Holland Author Of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis

From my list on psychoanalysis therapy shifts social critique.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started out as an economics major in college but soon realized that the discipline was based on totally unrealistic assumptions, so I switched to philosophy and literature. I started reading Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche with some of my roommates and then chose UC San Diego for graduate work because of its focus on what became known as “theory”—which was taught there by luminaries including Jameson, Lyotard, and Marin.

I have been researching the psycho-dynamics of markets and capitalism ever since, and have become convinced that rescuing markets from capital is the only way to save the planet from environmental catastrophe.

Eugene's book list on psychoanalysis therapy shifts social critique

Eugene W. Holland Why did Eugene love this book?

Long before running into Norman O. Brown while on sabbatical leave at UC Santa Cruz, I was fascinated by this book’s attempt to re-assert the priority of psychology over the political economy and history by claiming that infants’ refusal to accept the limits of parental care creates separation-anxiety that causes the historical dynamic known as “progress.”

But it wasn’t until much later that Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that capitalism represses the death instinct provided an alternative explanation that rescued Brown’s insights for me by putting the explanation back in the realm of political economy and history–because dependence on the market produces separation anxiety, too.

By Norman O. Brown,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Life Against Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A shocking and extreme interpretation of the father of psychoanalysis.


Book cover of Generation of Narcissus

Eugene W. Holland Author Of Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus: Introduction to Schizoanalysis

From my list on psychoanalysis therapy shifts social critique.

Why am I passionate about this?

I started out as an economics major in college but soon realized that the discipline was based on totally unrealistic assumptions, so I switched to philosophy and literature. I started reading Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche with some of my roommates and then chose UC San Diego for graduate work because of its focus on what became known as “theory”—which was taught there by luminaries including Jameson, Lyotard, and Marin.

I have been researching the psycho-dynamics of markets and capitalism ever since, and have become convinced that rescuing markets from capital is the only way to save the planet from environmental catastrophe.

Eugene's book list on psychoanalysis therapy shifts social critique

Eugene W. Holland Why did Eugene love this book?

Malcolm’s book is as one-sided as Lasch’s, but for me, it was a breath of fresh air because it considers narcissism to be a positive rather than a negative cultural development.

It, too, couches its explanation of widespread narcissism in psychoanalytic terms, which I consider a plus. However, in addition to being one-sided, the way it considers an entire generation to be narcissistic bothered me as an overgeneralization.

By Henry Malcolm,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Generation of Narcissus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Freud's Patients: A Book of Lives

Todd Dufresne Author Of The Late Sigmund Freud: Or, The Last Word on Psychoanalysis, Society, and All the Riddles of Life

From my list on Freud and his legacy.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of philosophy and editor or author of 12 books. I started out in ‘Freud Studies’ in the 1990s with no agenda, just a deep interest in Freud’s ideas. Since then I’ve written quite a lot on it. Unfortunately, the field is so contentious, so overrun with books by former patients and analysts, that casual readers couldn’t possibly make heads or tails of it. Readers are best served by reading complete works of Freud and making their own assessments. After that, they can look at Freud’s voluminous and eye-opening correspondence with colleagues. Then they can consult good books, and lists of recommended works, that put them in the right direction.

Todd's book list on Freud and his legacy

Todd Dufresne Why did Todd love this book?

In principle, psychoanalytic theory and practice rely on evidence adduced from the clinical case studies of patients. Freud, however, presented very few such cases. With this in mind, Borch-Jacobsen has done something of permanent importance to the field: he researched and wrote 38 ‘lost’ and unofficial case studies of Freud’s patients and gathered them all into one volume. The book as such functions as a shocking disconfirmation of everything we thought we knew about Freud the man, the theorist, and the therapist. And, best of all, it does so in plain, highly accessible language.  

By Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freud's Patients as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Everyone knows the characters described by Freud in his case histories: 'Dora', the 'Rat Man', the 'Wolf Man'. But what do we know of the people, the lives behind these famous pseudonyms: Ida Bauer, Ernst Lanzer, Sergius Pankejeff? Do we know the circumstances that led them to Freud's consulting-room, or how they fared - how they really fared - following their treatments?
And what of those patients about whom Freud wrote nothing, or very little: Pauline Silberstein, who threw herself from the fourth floor of her analyst's building; Elfriede Hirschfeld, Freud's 'grand-patient' and 'chief tormentor'; the fashionable architect Karl Mayreder;…


Book cover of Nausea

K.K. Edin Author Of The Measurements of Decay

From my list on exploring philosophy through fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a lawyer and novelist with a Master’s degree in philosophy. I read philosophy and its history to seek wisdom, knowledge, morality, meaning, and the means by which to think well. That is also why I read fiction. And a great philosophical novel can do what a treatise cannot: it can enlighten by style, perspective, the elicitation of empathy, by poignancy and aesthetic awe, and other qualities unique to good fiction. Although I could not possibly represent all the great philosophical novels in this short list, I’ve tried to present a meaningful cross-section. I hope you find these novels as enjoyable and meaningful as I have.

K.K.'s book list on exploring philosophy through fiction

K.K. Edin Why did K.K. love this book?

Nausea does not rely on the extreme or outlandish scenarios of science fiction to explore philosophical themes. Rather, this novel is about a person’s growing malaise over his conscious relationship to objects, people, and ultimately himself. It reaches into some very fundamental aspects of our relationship to the world, and asks you to look at the mere structure of existence after all particularities (names, shapes, colors, history, etc.) are wiped away, and then asks you how you feel about it. Through an existentialist lens, it also explores certain political questions. And for those more technically interested in philosophy, the novel does a better job of showing existentialism’s relationship to phenomenology than many academic papers. 

By Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Howard (translator),

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Nausea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time - the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain."

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre - philosopher, critic, novelist, and…


Book cover of Joseph and His Brothers
Book cover of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
Book cover of Modernity and the Holocaust

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