What can really produce and increase relationships with books is changing the way of conceiving the act of reading. It is for this reason that below we share with you the best books that can change your life, and your relationship with reading:
- Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Emil Frankl. This basic book in psychology collects the shocking story of the writer’s own experience in the concentration camps. The man in search of meaning goes beyond a testimony of the psychiatrist and writer about the events experienced, it is an existential lesson. The beginning of logotherapy.
- Sigmund Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life. No theory related to the functioning and structure of the mind has managed to exert as much influence or acquire such widespread respect as psychoanalysis. This book describes all the analysis worked on what is known as a failed act.
- Psychoanalysis and existentialism by Viktor Emil Frankl. This is the work on which Frankl was working when he was taken to the concentration camp where the manuscript, almost ready for publication, was taken from him. The original German title translates as Medical Cure of Souls.
- many lives many teachers by the American doctor and psychiatrist Brian Weiss. Book published in 1988 based on a true story by the same writer, which tells the case of his young patient and the beginning of regression therapy to past lives in order to heal the pain of his current life.
- The art of Loving by Erich Fromm. The author shares with us that love is not only a personal relationship, but above all, it is a trait of maturity that manifests itself in various forms: erotic love, brotherly love, filial love, love of oneself. Here you will find a summary of .
- The process of becoming a person of . The author exposes the importance of client-centered therapy, of treating people (even outside the clinic) not as objects, but as subjects.
- We are our brain, how we think, suffer and love by Dick Swaab. The book studies the human being, especially his brain, from his conception to his death.
- The man who mistook his wife for his hat by Oliver Sacks. In this book the author explains in novel form different pathologies that exist.
- The self-realized man by Abraham Maslow. The author shares his pyramid of human needs and how we reach the highest part of it, self-realization. Here you will find more information about the .
- The brain tricks us by Francisco J. Rubia. This book is a manual that explains how the mind, the brain, and thought act to make us live reality in one way or another. Based on advances in neurobiology, anthropology and philosophy, J. Rubia explains in depth how the illusions that our brain creates are what help us survive.
Psychology has different branches and there are books for all tastes. The essential degrees in social psychology are the following:
- Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo. Published for the first time in 2007. It narrates all that unconscious, instinctive, camouflaged and Dionysian part that each of us possesses.
- The malaise of culture by Sigmund Freud. The father of psychoanalysis exposes the antagonism between the instinctual needs of human beings and the restrictions that culture imposes on them.
- Sapiens from animals to gods by Yuval Noah Harari. A brief history of humanity is told, from the first humans to the radical and sometimes devastating advances of the three great revolutions that our species has undergone.
- Influence by Robert Cialdini. The author exposes his studies on human behavior and the factors that influence human beings in decision-making, that is, in the psychology of persuasion.
- Psychology of the masses and analysis of the self by Sigmund Freud. Explains the opposition between individual psychology and social or collective psychology. Freud explains in this book the relationship of the individual with his parents and siblings, with the person who is the object of his love and all those who were the object of his psychoanalytic research.
- social animal by Elliot Aronson. Book that describes the different advances and discoveries through science. A book that every psychology professional should read.
- Thought and language by Lev Vygotsky. It is a theory that was initially developed by philosopher Jerry Fodor, who proposes a type of specific language used in mental processes, which allows the development of complex thoughts from simpler concepts. In the following article you will find the.
- The mediocre man by the doctor, psychiatrist, criminologist, philosopher, sociologist and psychologist José Ingenieros published for the first time in 1903. It addresses the issue of the nature of man, confronting two types of personalities: that of the mediocre man and that of the idealist, analyzing moral characteristics of each one and the structures and functions that these types of personalities have adopted in history, culture and society. The book that he would recommend reading as the most effective to make us reevaluate changing our mental schemas, without a doubt, would be that of José Ingenieros. According to Ingenieros, the mediocre man is that being without personality who allows himself to be molded by his environment or social environment in which he lives.
- mirror neurons by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia. The authors propose that the ability to feel in another’s skin is possible thanks to the existence of these neurons. Certain neurons near Broca’s area, in the inferior parietal lobe, become excited when the person under investigation observes an action by another individual, in a similar way as if they were acting themselves. Here you can read more about.
- suicide by Emilie Durkheim. In this book the author makes an in-depth analysis of the annual suicide rates and answers certain doubts about the maintenance of the percentage or high rates in some regions of the world and their causes. He further distinguishes four types of suicide: altruistic, selfish, anomic and fatalistic suicide.
The best psychology books to reflect, learn and change are the following:
- Industrial society and its future / Unabomber Manifesto of the American mathematician, philosopher, neo-Luddite Theodore Kaczynski. The consequences and disaster for the human race of the industrial revolution are manifested.
- The knight in the rusty armor by American writers Robert Fisher and Bobby Fischer originally published in 1987. The book tells the story of a knight who becomes enclosed in his armor that metaphorically represents his own thoughts, his own world. Seeing himself desperate for not being able to take off his armor, which makes it impossible for him to feed himself and interact with his family, he goes in search of help to the forests of Merlin, who helps him by advising him to follow the path to the solution.
- The Bonobo and the Ten Commandments by Frans de Waal. In this book we discover with astonishment that many behaviors that we thought were exclusively human are practiced by bonobos and even by other animals less close to our species.
- To love or depend? Of . The author shares important features about the differences between love and dependence; as there are unhealthy meanings of love caused by unconscious needs.
- The interpretation of dreams by Sigmund Freud. With this book the bases of knowledge of the unconscious within the soul life are opened. If it is a topic of interest to you, you can find it here.
One of the issues that has been the most difficult for me to analyze is the success of self-help books with respect to social relations. Previously, advice came from close circles (parents, friends, the sociability we had when there were not so many screens and the Internet). Generally this advice was given to someone close to us or someone like us, we asked for advice and trusted. But at the moment when as individuals we are gaining ground in this society and social relationships are becoming virtual, a problem arises when you need a shoulder to cry on, someone to lean on, someone to ask for advice, it is That is, someone to shelter doubts and fears. This situation is found to be very complicated because the concept of friendship has not been planted.
Finding yourself in this situation, you turn to external help (for example, and in the best of cases, health professionals, but in the most common cases, self-help books). This is where the problem detected in self-help books arises, and that is that they are focused on you, as their name indicates (car), that is, you help yourself. Self-help books do not use one axis of reference on the other.
So trying to work on improving yourself “taking the other into account” does not seem to be the common theme of self-help books. So in the end you try to search a manual that does not know us You’re welcome, who knows absolutely nothing about us and gives us a generic prescription that we have to apply ourselves and that if they don’t help us we will have to turn to a second self-help book, becoming a kind of chain that has no end.
There are books that tell you: “You can achieve success if you follow 21 days, if you follow 21 steps.” But when you don’t achieve it, there are a few second self-help books that tell you: “How to get out of the hopelessness, the discouragement that has invaded you by not achieving it.” To all this occurs a kind of internal recycling of self-help consumption that leaves the sociability of the individual helpless where there is personalized contact.
I think we should try recover that value of friendship So wonderful to say to young people – You have to keep working on friendships. Friendships are worked on, that is, they require an investment of time and an investment of attention – We forget all this, and when we really need a shoulder to cry on, we don’t have one. We have lost that investment and we turn to the simplest things that are those self-help manuals, which are often best-seller at the global level.
What most self-help books suggest is to raise self-esteem under a narcissistic methodology, that is, – tell the mirror that you are wonderful, tell your friends to speak well of you -. They seek to raise self-esteem, depositing resources in narcissism. So I would not recommend self-help or positive psychology books as first-hand reading.
The self-help books that have had the most success in sales are shared below:
- Your incorrect zones by Wayne Dyer.
- toxic people by Bernardo Stamateas.
- One always changes the love of one’s life for another love or another life. by Amalia Andrade.
- 21 irrefutable laws of leadership by John C. Maxwell.
- The art of not embittering life by Rafael Santandreu.
- The 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey.
- Everything you can imagine by Wayne Dyer.
- you are a crack by Jen Sincero.
- Believe in yourself: Discover the power to transform your life by Rut Nieves Miguel.
- 7 hours to change life from Jota Norte.