You may not agree with all of the thoughts in The Psychology of Denial, but it will cause you to think about issues that have the potential to change your life in a positive direction. The ideas are developed from the author's experiences with himself, his family, over three decades of experience as a psychotherapist, and the study of Psychological Science since 1953. The overall theme of The Psychology of Denial is that we deny that personal change is possible either from not expecting any change to be available, or by denying that our failed attempts at change needed more understanding. Serious change requires years of effort, and we often don't see that shortcuts to happiness usually just make matters worse. The Psychology of Denial makes it clear that durable happiness comes from making progress with our personal lives, not by meeting certain goals, or finding anything close to perfection. Most of us start our adult lives with serious limitations from our childhoods and need to develop patience and perseverance if we're to overcome them. Psychology has found that it takes a sense of belonging, adequate control over our lives, meaning, and self-esteem if we're to experience general happiness. The Psychology of Denial: The Complexities of a Simple Idea attempts to assists us in understanding how we let denial get in our way of developing these aspects of our happiness. Hopefully the reader of this book will be better able to understand at least the following issues: 1. Why willpower often fails. 2. That many of us just haven't been told how to change. 3. How trying can make a habit worse. 4. That developing self-esteem is critical for effective change. 5. That many of our failures were set up in early childhood. 6. That doing the groundwork presented here can lead to significant changes in our lives and our happiness.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In this new book, Jared Del Rosso argues that to understand contemporary social problems we need to become aware of the strategies that people use to deny the existence of those very problems. Drawing on research in sociology, criminology, psychology, and communication studies, Del Rosso develops a new vocabulary for describing denial and its consequences. With examples from everyday observations, current events, and social scientific research, Del Rosso also reveals just how widespread and varied the uses of denial are. Some uses of denial can help people repair their interactions and relationships with others. But most uses of it allows problems to fester, unrecognized. We need, Del Rosso concludes, forms of acknowledgement to surface long-denied problems. But more than that, we need collective forms of action to remedy the harms that those problems and our denial of them have done"--

"Science doubt, resistance, and denial are not new. Galileo challenged the prevailing geocentric view of our solar system and was dismissed as a heretic. What is the history of science denial, what's different now, and why does it seem worse? In this opening chapter, What is the Problem and Why Does it Matter? Sinatra and Hofer chart the development of this problem, examine how doubt has also been manufactured, and explain how media attempts at "balance" can become a form of bias. While acknowledging the limits and fallibility of science, they argue that if the US is to be a leader in sustainable economic and social progress, a greater percentage of Americans need to value, understand, and accept scientific methods and findings. When so many US citizens deny science, the health and wellbeing of Americans and our hopes for a sustainable future are put in peril."--

"This book is about dying, not about death. We are always dying a big, always giving things up, always having things taken away. Is there a person alive who isn't really curious about what dying is for them? Is there a person alive who wouldn't like to go to their dying full of excitement, without fear and without morbidity? This books tells you how." -- Front cover.

Blocking out, turning a blind eye, shutting off, not wanting to know, wearing blinkers, seeing what we want to see ... these are all expressions of 'denial'. Alcoholics who refuse to recognize their condition, people who brush aside suspicions of their partner's infidelity, the wife who doesn't notice that her husband is abusing their daughter - are supposedly 'in denial'. Governments deny their responsibility for atrocities, and plan them to achieve 'maximum deniability'. Truth Commissions try to overcome the suppression and denial of past horrors. Bystander nations deny their responsibility to intervene. Do these phenomena have anything in common? When we deny, are we aware of what we are doing or is this an unconscious defence mechanism to protect us from unwelcome truths? Can there be cultures of denial? How do organizations like Amnesty and Oxfam try to overcome the public's apparent indifference to distant suffering and cruelty? Is denial always so bad - or do we need positive illusions to retain our sanity? States of Denial is the first comprehensive study of both the personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical studies of depression, to media images of suffering, to explanations of the 'passive bystander' and 'compassion fatigue'. The book shows how organized atrocities - the Holocaust and other genocides, torture, and political massacres - are denied by perpetrators and by bystanders, those who stand by and do nothing.

The history of science abounds with momentous theories that disrupted conventional wisdom and yet were eventually proven true. Ajit Varki and Danny Brower's "Mind over Reality" theory is poised to be one such idea-a concept that runs counter to commonly-held notions about human evolution but that may hold the key to understanding why humans evolved as we did, leaving all other related species far behind. At a chance meeting in 2005, Brower, a geneticist, posed an unusual idea to Varki that he believed could explain the origins of human uniqueness among the world's species: Why is there no humanlike elephant or humanlike dolphin, despite millions of years of evolutionary opportunity? Why is it that humans alone can understand the minds of others? Haunted by their encounter, Varki tried years later to contact Brower only to discover that he had died unexpectedly. Inspired by an incomplete manuscript Brower left behind, Denial presents a radical new theory on the origins of our species. It was not, the authors argue, a biological leap that set humanity apart from other species, but a psychological one: namely, the uniquely human ability to deny reality in the face of inarguable evidence-including the willful ignorance of our own inevitable deaths. The awareness of our own mortality could have caused anxieties that resulted in our avoiding the risks of competing to procreate-an evolutionary dead-end. Humans therefore needed to evolve a mechanism for overcoming this hurdle: the denial of reality. As a consequence of this evolutionary quirk we now deny any aspects of reality that are not to our liking-we smoke cigarettes, eat unhealthy foods, and avoid exercise, knowing these habits are a prescription for an early death. And so what has worked to establish our species could be our undoing if we continue to deny the consequences of unrealistic approaches to everything from personal health to financial risk-taking to climate change. On the other hand reality-denial affords us many valuable attributes, such as optimism, confidence, and courage in the face of long odds. Presented in homage to Brower's original thinking, Denial offers a powerful warning about the dangers inherent in our remarkable ability to ignore reality-a gift that will either lead to our downfall, or continue to be our greatest asset.

In our fast-paced, tech-obsessed lives, rarely do we pay genuine, close attention to one another. With all that's going on in the world, and the never-ending demands of our daily lives, most of us are too stressed and preoccupied with our own thoughts and worries to be able to really listen to each other for long. Often, we seem to somehow "miss" each other, misunderstand each other, or talk past each other. Our ability to tune in to ourselves and to others seems to be withering. Many of us are left wishing for someone who could really listen, understand, and genuinely connect with us. In Missing Each Other, researchers and clinicians Edward Brodkin and Ashley Pallathra argue that we must find the ability to be in tune with each other again, and they show us how. Based on years of research that they conducted together in a National Institutes of Mental Health-funded clinical study, the authors take a wide-ranging and surprising journey through fields as diverse as social neuroscience and autism research, music performance, pro basketball, and tai chi. They use these stories to introduce the four principal components of attunement: Relaxed Awareness, Listening, Understanding, and Mutual Responsiveness. They outline the science, research, and biology underlying these pillars of human connection, but also providing readers with exercises through which they can improve their own skills and abilities in each.

An analysis of why people with knowledge about climate change often fail to translate that knowledge into action. Global warming is the most significant environmental issue of our time, yet public response in Western nations has been meager. Why have so few taken any action? In Living in Denial, sociologist Kari Norgaard searches for answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from her study of "Bygdaby," the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000-2001. In 2000-2001 the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible; and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on use of fossil fuels. Norgaard attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming. Norgaard finds that for the highly educated and politically savvy residents of Bygdaby, global warming was both common knowledge and unimaginable. Norgaard traces this denial through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. Her report from Bygdaby, supplemented by comparisons throughout the book to the United States, tells a larger story behind our paralysis in the face of today's alarming predictions from climate scientists.

An astute diagnosis of one of the biggest problems in business Denial is the unconscious determination that a certain reality is too terrible to contemplate, so therefore it cannot be true. We see it everywhere, from the alcoholic who swears he's just a social drinker to the president who declares "mission accomplished" when it isn't. In the business world, countless companies get stuck in denial while their challenges escalate into crises. Harvard Business School professor Richard S. Tedlow tackles two essential questions: Why do sane, smart leaders often refuse to accept the facts that threaten their companies and careers? And how do we find the courage to resist denial when facing new trends, changing markets, and tough new competitors? Tedlow looks at numerous examples of organiza­tions crippled by denial, including Ford in the era of the Model T and Coca-Cola with its abortive attempt to change its formula. He also explores other companies, such as Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and DuPont, that avoided catastrophe by dealing with harsh realities head-on. Tedlow identifies the leadership skills that are essential to spotting the early signs of denial and taking the actions required to overcome it.