Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Barbara Malt
In many animal communications, there’s a transparent link between what is being communicated and how that message is communicated. Animal threat displays, for instance, often make the aggressor look larger and fiercer through raising of the hair and baring of the teeth. A dog communicates excitement through look and sound.
By Jane Williams
Diagnosed with epilepsy more than half my lifetime ago, I can’t remember what it’s like not to know about it. Despite it being the most common serious neurological condition in the UK, there is still a surprising amount of misconceptions surrounding it.
By Bruce Miller Dementia is a collection of symptoms caused by a number of different disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. The term dementia describes a progressive decline in memory or other cognitive functions that interferes with the ability to perform your usual daily activities (driving, shopping, balancing a checkbook, working, […]
By Ephrem Fernandez, Ph.D.
What is anger? In essence, anger is a subjective feeling tied to perceived wrongdoing and a tendency to counter or redress that wrongdoing in ways that may range from resistance to retaliation. Like sadness and fear, the feeling of anger can take the form of emotion, mood, or temperament.
By George Graham and Owen Flanagan
Even before the much-heralded DSM-5 was released, Thomas Insel the Director of NIMH criticized it for lacking “scientific validity.” In his blog post entitled “Transforming Diagnosis,” Insel admitted that the symptom-based approach of DSM is as good as we can get at present and that it yields “reliability” by disciplining the use of diagnostic terminology among professionals.
By KWM Fulford
Back in 1963 the New York Times reported enthusiastically that “….a young doctor at Columbia University’s New York State Psychiatric Institute has developed a tool that may become the psychiatrist’s thermometer and microscope and X-ray machine rolled in to one.”
By Joel Paris, MD
The reception of DSM-5 has been marked by very divergent points of view. The editors of the manual congratulated themselves for their achievement in an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “The Future Arrived.”
By Edward Shorter
We’re all suffering from DSM-5 burnout. Nobody really wants to hear anything more about it, so shrill have been the tirades against it, so fuddy-duddy the responses of the psychiatric establishment (“based on the latest science”).
We don’t often discuss book awards on the OUPblog, but this year the inaugural British Academy Medals were awarded to three authors and their titles published by Oxford University Press: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, edited by Noel Malcolm; The Organisation of Mind by Tim Shallice and Rick Cooper; and The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia (USA only).
By Arthur Shimamura
We love art. We put it on our walls, we admire it at museums and on others’ walls, and if we’re inspired, we may even create it. Philosophers, historians, critics, and scientists have bandied about the reasons why we enjoy creating and beholding art, and each has offered important and interesting perspectives.
By Robert Goldney, AO, MD
Not all suicide can be prevented. That is particularly so when help is not sought. On other occasions suicide can be interpreted as the inevitable outcome of a malignant mental disorder, and that can be of some comfort to grieving families and friends who may be feeling guilty at their sense of relief that uncertainty is over. Clinicians may also share those emotions. However, if adequate assessment of each individual is undertaken and appropriate management pursued, on balance there will be an overall reduction in the unacceptable rate of suicide worldwide.
By Arthur P. Shimamura
As a child, I encountered the Man of Steel in the Adventures of Superman, the 1950s TV series that I watched as morning reruns a decade later. My Superman was “faster than a speeding bullet” and fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” My 26-year-old son, Thomas, encountered a similarly invincible superhero in Superman: The Movie, the 1978 blockbuster which starred Christopher Reeve.
Author Christopher Peterson passed away late last year. As the World Congress on Positive Psychology approaches (Oxford University Press will be at booth 110), we’d like to pay tribute to one of the founders of the field in this brief excerpt from Pursuing the Good Life.
By Suzanne Walker
The night I saw The Avengers for the first time, I took the train back to my apartment and immediately dashed off the following email to a friend of mine: “The Avengers was amazing, I can’t even describe it. Feeling strangely fearless about life, and my head is filled with too many intellectual thoughts about superheroes.”
It’s the summer of the superhero here at Oxford University Press. We’re publishing two essay collections on the real powers superheroes hold — on our imagination and our understanding of the world. Our Superheroes, Ourselves, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD, and What is a Superhero?, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and Peter Coogan, PhD, look at some of our greatest superheroes (and supervillains) and explore what exactly makes them “super”.
By Arthur P. Shimamura
Our memories, in many ways, define who we are as an individual or at least who we think we are. In the recent documentary, Stories We Tell, filmmaker Sarah Polley presents her own tale of the search for her biological father. Through interviews with relative and friends, snapshots, and re-enactments of pertinent events that look like old home movies, the documentary moves like a real-life Rashomon, wherein bits of the “truth” are revealed from various points of views.