Reading Minds

Michael Moskowitz PhD is a psychoanalyst and organizational consultant in New York City, an adjunct associate professor in the New York University School of Social Work, and Associate Director of the IPTAR Organizational Consultation and Executive Coaching Program. His past positions include CEO and Publisher, Other Press; Publisher, Jason Aronson; Director of the City University of New York Graduate School and Medical School Counseling Offices; and Team Leader, Operation Outreach Vietnam Veterans Center, New Haven. He is author of articles and chapters on psychoanalytic theory, organizational dynamics, morality, and race and ethnicity; a co-editor of three text books including 'Reaching Across Boundaries of Culture and Class: Widening the Scope of Psychotherapy'; and the co-editor of the journal 'Organisational and Social Dynamics'.

• Introduction , Reading minds , Rock, paper, scissors: it pays to have a theory , What the brain tells us about the mind , Trauma: how events shape the brain and the mind , Ways of understanding , Bad feelings , Look me in the eye , Intimate relationships: reading your family, friends, and lovers , Why we don't know what we know

'Michael Moskowitz's mind works by visiting every known knowledge depository on a topic he is interested in, acquiring what is most interesting and suggestive, taking all the bits home, assembling them into a coherent story of development by discovering their hidden connections, and then figuring out what is new and what is truly significant in the story. The method works well when he is being a clinician; and it works well when he is being an intellectual historian. In Reading Minds, it works really, really well as Moskowitz explains why modern cognitive neuroscience is revolutionary in its take on how minds work. He tells the theory, and he shows it as a theory builder.'- Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, PhD, Author of numerous books, including prize-winning biographies of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud'Through his engaging, casual and accessible style, with stories from daily life, the clinical arena and the laboratory, Moskowitz will succeed at informing, provoking and entertaining the lay reader, although his scholarly rigour will also make this book appealing to clinicians and academics. He effectively brings together the theory and practice of a range of disciplines in a refreshing way, making them comprehensible even to the untrained reader, a skill seldom displayed in this field... this is an exciting book, written with boundless enthusiasm - a joy to read.' - The British Journal of Psychiatry'This very engaging and scholarly volume serves as an excellent introduction to this increasingly relevant subject and is to be enjoyed not only by the general public, but by those of us in the field as well.'- Brian Koehler PhD, President, the International Society for the Psychological Treatments of the Schizophrenias and Other Psychoses'An analyst, an academic and an editor, Moskowitz is a psychoanalytic entrepreneur with a mission. He wants to rescue psychoanalysis from the academic isolation and bitter scholarly skirmishes that have dogged it for the last twenty years by bridging the divide between clinicians and theorists who work in various disciplines'- The New York Times'It's about brain research and depression, romance and developmental psychology, primate research and borderline pathologies - sometimes all at the same time. We are carried along and rewarded with a fascinating read: Moskowitz has profound psychological knowledge - he explains studies and takes us into research laboratories; he shows us his warm-hearted and humorous way of talking to his patients about their needs and desires in their lives with others.'- On Culture, German National Radio'Moskowitz, a psychoanalyst and organisational consultant, promises a great deal having captured our attention with his title, and he manages to deliver. Through his engaging, casual and accessible style, with stories from daily life, the clinical arena and the laboratory, Moskowitz will succeed at informing, provoking and entertaining the lay reader, although his scholarly rigour will also make this book appealing to clinicians and academics. He effectively brings together the theory and practice of a range of disciplines in a refreshing way, making them comprehensible even to the untrained reader, a skill seldom displayed in this field. His experience working in a variety of settings, clinical, organisational and academic, is evident in his work as he seamlessly blends concepts from different schools of thought.'- British Journal of Psychiatry