[Opinion] What has been the most insightful psychology book you’ve read?

[koskos]

Title says book but it can really be any type of text/video.

Im curious on hearing your personal experiences.

 

[Aeternus]

Title says book but it can really be any type of text/video.

Im curious on hearing your personal experiences.

I read a lot of psychology books. If I have to mention some of them that were really profound, I can say: Overcoming Depression: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques by Paul Gilbert, You Can Change your Life by Tim Laurence, The Art of Reading Minds: How to Understand and Influence Others Without Them Noticing by Henrik Fexeus.

The Hoffman process described by Tim Laurence had a lot of occult things related to it in my opinion, and it really helped me overcome mental blockages and find the necessary peace I needed within myself. The book is really insightful.

Paul Gilbert's book about overcoming depression is a great one as well. The techniques described are really cool and they helped me overcome some of the most depressive blockages I had in the past.

For the third one by Henrik Fexeus, I can say that it is good and it can give insights into how the human mind works.

 

[ܡܪܓܢܝܬ݂ܐ]

I reckon that there is an important dichotomy to be established between the archaic understanding of psychology (i.e. the science of the soul and the relations it possesses) in opposition to its usage in vernacular

With that aside Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth by Henry Corbin.

 

[nunaphael]

Capitalism & Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and The Thousand Plateaus, by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, was a pretty inspirational book to me. I'd say that, and Jung's Red Book, are the first big influencers that come to my mind in the realm of psychology. After that, I found a lot of deep insights studying the work of John Bowlby, who came up with Attachment Theory, as well as Jacque Lacan's "Seminars" on his own form of psychoanalysis that builds on Freud's school of thought and takes it into some very interesting places.

 

[speculumphilosophi]

I have found English language to be pretty limited for clinical psychology. As an example, I have a condition called "facial agnosia" or "prosopagnosia" which created significant problems, especially in employment. This is basically a difficulty recognising faces. I can joke about it now but there was a time it used to lead to awkward and difficult situations. When I delved into clinical psychology sources in Russian language, I found plenty of well-researched psychology sources, much of it translated from East Germany. So, conditions such as facial agnosia, dyspraxia, disassociative personality were openly discussed in essays I found in Russian language. Whereas in English lots of really good research hasn't been made freely available. I think psychology lags in the English speaking countries such as USA. the U.K. and Australia. This is why all my psychology essays got translated into Russian, even though some had originally been in Dutch or German.

 

[Tryp]

The latest that comes to mind is Lauren Slater's "Opening the Skinner Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century". But maybe the first that I found deeply insightful, and that I read when I was very young, was Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning".

 

[Kepler]

There are a few, but one that most helped to begin bridging psychology and self-observation was The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution by PD Ouspensky.

 

[KjEno186]

Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being. This book was recommended reading material in Colin Wilson's book, Beyond the Occult: Twenty Years' Research into the Paranormal. Wilson also collaborated with Maslow in New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution.

 

[Frater M.M.]

On a practical level, The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris for me.

 

[FraterFraxinus]

Erich Fromm - "Escape from Freedom" (I dont like that translation, the german version is called "the fear of freedom" as in having fear of freedom itself) I liked it the most for the implications for interpersonal relationship and personal responsibility.
"To have or to be?" was also a nice read - an anticapitalist classic.
"The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" despite the name it has deep positive implications.

The Collected Works of C. G. Jung are kind of a must read in my opinion. I was also deeply amused that Jungs writing sometimes sounds an awlut lot like Crowleys - Im not sure if its only due to the linguistic style of the time and I interpreted the rest into it or if its really there. Maybe someone here can illuminate me. He sometimes has this kind of scathing mockery or mordant sarcasm (the idea would be so much easier to convey in german, haha, we have nice words) that Crowley also often has, too.

 

[Zelator2148]

I don't read much in the way of clinical or analytical psychology, but two recent books I liked were parapsychological works by Dr. Dean Radin: Real Magic and Supernormal. They were exhaustively methodical as might be expected when trying to prove something that is almost impossible to measure, but well-written and thorough.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I suppose the closest to a psychology book that I would recommend is "Being You" by Anil Seth. In fact I really ought to read it again.

 

[speculumphilosophi]

I don't read much in the way of clinical or analytical psychology, but two recent books I liked were parapsychological works by Dr. Dean Radin: Real Magic and Supernormal. They were exhaustively methodical as might be expected when trying to prove something that is almost impossible to measure, but well-written and thorough.

"Physiognomy, [a] or face reading … is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face."

Though I read lots of research, physiognomy I just picked up by observation. I can tell a whole lot by facial expression. Women show more emotional expression, I think. Movie directors very often have a distant, monotonous expression, as if they are communicating into thin air. Possibly it's intellectuality. Really it's not a difficult skill to pick up once you start to notice differences in facial mimicry.

Post automatically merged: Sep 11, 2026

"Physiognomy, [a] or face reading … is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face."

Though I read lots of research, physiognomy I just picked up by observation. I can tell a whole lot by facial expression. Women show more emotional expression, I think. Movie directors very often have a distant, monotonous expression, as if they are communicating into thin air. Possibly it's intellectuality. Really it's not a difficult skill to pick up once you start to notice differences in facial mimicry.

Oddly I suffer from facial agnosia so maybe my acute awareness of mimicry is a compensation factor. Most people don't notice mimicry because expression is taken for granted. In some clinical cases we get paramimicry where facial.expression is opposite to the actual mood of the moment.

 

[CD-Romulus]

I'm a huge fan of the book "Yoga and Western Psychology: A Comparison" by Geraldine Coster.

 

[Morphinek]

For me that would be Psychoanalytic Diagnosis by Nancy McWilliams. Red it early during University times, when I was specializing in clinical psychology

 

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[aelyn]

Capitalism & Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and The Thousand Plateaus, by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, was a pretty inspirational book to me. I'd say that, and Jung's Red Book, are the first big influencers that come to my mind in the realm of psychology. After that, I found a lot of deep insights studying the work of John Bowlby, who came up with Attachment Theory, as well as Jacque Lacan's "Seminars" on his own form of psychoanalysis that builds on Freud's school of thought and takes it into some very interesting places.

Awesome. I was going to say the same thing! Including Liber Novus as another fave! (My path--at least now--is D&G, earlt Land, and Jungian). Capitalism & Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus are not only some of the best psych, but also have a big influence on how I think of magick.

I would also add that RD Laing's 'The Divided Self' is amazing and heartbreaking.

 

[nunaphael]

Awesome. I was going to say the same thing! Including Liber Novus as another fave! (My path--at least now--is D&G, earlt Land, and Jungian). Capitalism & Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus are not only some of the best psych, but also have a big influence on how I think of magick.

I would also add that RD Laing's 'The Divided Self' is amazing and heartbreaking.

That's really great to hear. Yeah, Deleuze has been a huge influence on me. I also have a physical copy of Jung's Red Book, cost me over a hundred on amazon for the big hardcover translation by Sonu.

This was a major influencer in my life. It actually led me down the path of investigating what's known as the "yoneda lemma" and become self-educated in the subject of "category theory". You may want to look for a book called An Invitation to Applied Category Theory by David Spivak and Brendan Fong. While it's not a psychology book, it definitely had a direct influence on my psychology, almost as much as the books that I listed.

 

[Feywer]

I very much enjoyed "Man And His Symbols" by Jung. I have three copies of it and have found myself returning to it often. It's useful, and I read it during my formative years so it definitely made a tremendous impact on my perception of the world and the "inner workings of the mind" - at least in a psychological sense. I thought it was well-written and insightful. Also, pictures! and a lot of them. Nothing awful like dry reading, akin to stereo instructions. The illustrations helped bring further insight and clarity to the whole texts.