Optimism & Pessimism

Optimism & Pessimism PDF Author: Edward Chin-Ho Chang
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN: 9781557986917
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Through the examination of cultural, biological and psychological factors, this volume illustrates a dynamic interplay between optimism and pessimism and enables readers to recognize the importance of balance in understanding their relative powers.

Optimism & Pessimism

Optimism & Pessimism PDF Author: Edward Chin-Ho Chang
Publisher: Amer Psychological Assn
ISBN: 9781557986917
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Through the examination of cultural, biological and psychological factors, this volume illustrates a dynamic interplay between optimism and pessimism and enables readers to recognize the importance of balance in understanding their relative powers.

Learned Optimism

Learned Optimism PDF Author: Martin E.P. Seligman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307803341
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
National Bestseller The father of the new science of positive psychology and author of Authentic Happiness draws on more than twenty years of clinical research to demonstrate how optimism enchances the quality of life, and how anyone can learn to practice it. Offering many simple techniques, Dr. Seligman explains how to break an “I—give-up” habit, develop a more constructive explanatory style for interpreting your behavior, and experience the benefits of a more positive interior dialogue. These skills can help break up depression, boost your immune system, better develop your potential, and make you happier.. With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behavior at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical–and valuable for every phase of life. "Vaulted me out of my funk.... So, fellow moderate pessimists, go buy this book." —Marian Sandmaier, The New York Times Book Review

Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain

Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain PDF Author: Elaine Fox
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046502923X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Glass half-full or half-empty? Do you look on the bright side or turn towards the dark? These are easy questions for most of us to answer, because our personality types are hard-wired into our brains. As pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox has discovered, our outlook on life reflects our primal inclination to seek pleasure or avoid danger -- inclinations that, in many people, are healthily balanced. But when our "fear brain" or "pleasure brain" is too strong, the results can be disastrous, as those of us suffering from debilitating shyness, addiction, depression, or anxiety know all too well. Luckily, anyone suffering from these afflictions has reason to hope. Stunning breakthroughs in neuroscience show that our brains are more malleable than we ever imagined. In Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain, Fox describes a range of techniques -- from traditional cognitive behavioral therapy to innovative cognitive-retraining exercises -- that can actually alter our brains' circuitry, strengthening specific thought processes by exercising the neural systems that control them. The implications are enormous: lifelong pessimists can train themselves to think positively and find happiness, while pleasure-seekers inclined toward risky or destructive behavior can take control of their lives. Drawing on her own cutting-edge research, Fox shows how we can retrain our brains to brighten our lives and learn to flourish. With keen insights into how genes, life experiences and cognitive processes interleave together to make us who we are, Rainy Brain, SunnyBrain revolutionizes our basic concept of individuality. We learn that we can influence our own personalities, and that our lives are only as "sunny" or as "rainy" as we allow them to be.

Risk Factors in Depression

Risk Factors in Depression PDF Author: Keith S. Dobson
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 9780080560564
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description
Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders, affecting 14% of all people at some point in their lifetime. Women are twice as likely to become depressed as men, but beyond gender there are a variety of risk factors that influence the prevalence and likelihood of experiencing depression. Risk Factors in Depression consolidates research findings on risk factors into one source, for ease of reference for both researchers and clinicians in practice. The book divides risk factors into biological, cognitive, and social risk factors. This provides researchers with the opportunity to examine the interface among different theoretical perspectives and variables, and to look for the opportunity for more complex and explanatory models of depression. Allows reader to compare and contrast the relative states of development of different models and their databases Examines the predictive power of these models related to various phases of clinical depression, including onset, maintenance, and relapse Provides an examination of the therapeutic implications of comprehensive and integrative models of depression

Learned Optimism

Learned Optimism PDF Author: Martin E. P. Seligman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781473684317
Category : Optimism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of Authentic Happiness Known as the father of the science of positive psychology, Martin E.P. Seligman draws on more than twenty years of clinical research to demonstrate how optimism enhances the quality of life, and how anyone can learn to practice it. Offering many simple techniques, Dr. Seligman explains how to break an 'I give up' habit, develop a more constructive explanatory style for interpreting your behaviour, and experience the benefits of a more positive interior dialogue. These skills can help break up depression, boost your immune system, better develop your potential, and make you happier. With generous additional advice on how to encourage optimistic behaviour at school, at work and in children, Learned Optimism is both profound and practical, making it highly valuable for every phase of life.

Pessimism

Pessimism PDF Author: Joshua Foa Dienstag
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827485
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Pessimism claims an impressive following--from Rousseau, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, to Freud, Camus, and Foucault. Yet "pessimist" remains a term of abuse--an accusation of a bad attitude--or the diagnosis of an unhappy psychological state. Pessimism is thought of as an exclusively negative stance that inevitably leads to resignation or despair. Even when pessimism looks like utter truth, we are told that it makes the worst of a bad situation. Bad for the individual, worse for the species--who would actually counsel pessimism? Joshua Foa Dienstag does. In Pessimism, he challenges the received wisdom about pessimism, arguing that there is an unrecognized yet coherent and vibrant pessimistic philosophical tradition. More than that, he argues that pessimistic thought may provide a critically needed alternative to the increasingly untenable progressivist ideas that have dominated thinking about politics throughout the modern period. Laying out powerful grounds for pessimism's claim that progress is not an enduring feature of human history, Dienstag argues that political theory must begin from this predicament. He persuasively shows that pessimism has been--and can again be--an energizing and even liberating philosophy, an ethic of radical possibility and not just a criticism of faith. The goal--of both the pessimistic spirit and of this fascinating account of pessimism--is not to depress us, but to edify us about our condition and to fortify us for life in a disordered and disenchanted universe.

Stress: Concepts, Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior

Stress: Concepts, Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior PDF Author: George Fink
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128011378
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
Stress: Concepts, Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior: Handbook in Stress Series, Volume 1, examines stress and its management in the workplace and is targeted at scientific and clinical researchers in biomedicine, psychology, and some aspects of the social sciences. The audience is appropriate faculty and graduate and undergraduate students interested in stress and its consequences. The format allows access to specific self-contained stress subsections without the need to purchase the whole nine volume Stress handbook series. This makes the publication much more affordable than the previously published four volume Encyclopedia of Stress (Elsevier 2007) in which stress subsections were arranged alphabetically and therefore required purchase of the whole work. This feature will be of special significance for individual scientists and clinicians, as well as laboratories. In this first volume of the series, the primary focus will be on general stress concepts as well as the areas of cognition, emotion, and behavior. Offers chapters with impressive scope, covering topics including the interactions between stress, cognition, emotion and behaviour Features articles carefully selected by eminent stress researchers and prepared by contributors representing outstanding scholarship in the field Includes rich illustrations with explanatory figures and tables Includes boxed call out sections that serve to explain key concepts and methods Allows access to specific self-contained stress subsections without the need to purchase the whole nine volume Stress handbook series

Cruel Optimism

Cruel Optimism PDF Author: Lauren Berlant
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9780822350972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.” Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory—with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary—is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.

The Art of Optimism

The Art of Optimism PDF Author: Jim Stovall
Publisher: Sound Wisdom
ISBN: 1640950222
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
Optimism is your secret weapon in business and in life. It is custom-designed specifically for you, and it is capable of bringing you everything you want. Optimism can overcome financial problems, physical disabilities, and personal challenges. In Jim Stovall’s latest book, The Art of Optimism, he uses stories, studies, and personal experience to illustrate how adopting an attitude of optimism can change your life. Read this book and learn: How to fuel optimism How to find opportunity through optimism How to overcome negative circumstances How to maintain optimism in business and in life How optimism is your most important asset And much more! “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” -Winston Churchill

Cosmic Pessimism

Cosmic Pessimism PDF Author: Eugene Thacker
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1937561879
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
“We’re doomed.” So begins the work of the philosopher whose unabashed and aphoristic indictments of the human condition have been cropping up recently in popular culture. Today we find ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world that is, at the same time, starkly indifferent to our species-specific hopes, desires, and disappointments. In the Anthropocene, pessimism is felt everywhere but rarely given its proper place. Though pessimism may be, as Eugene Thacker says, the lowest form of philosophy, it may also contain an enigma central to understanding the horizon of the human. Written in a series of fragments, aphorisms, and prose poems, Thacker’s Cosmic Pessimism explores the varieties of pessimism and its often-conflicted relation to philosophy. “Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?”