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.

This Encyclopedia provides a comprehensive overview of individual differences within the domain of personality, with major sub-topics including assessment and research design, taxonomy, biological factors, evolutionary evidence, motivation, cognition and emotion, as well as gender differences, cultural considerations, and personality disorders. It is an up-to-date reference for this increasingly important area and a key resource for those who study intelligence, personality, motivation, aptitude and their variations within members of a group.

"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."--

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 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"--

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie - man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. The book argues that human civilisation is a defence against the knowledge that we are mortal beings. Becker states that humans live in both the physical world and a symbolic world of meaning, which is where our 'immortality project' resides. We create in order to become immortal - to become part of something we believe will last forever. In this way we hope to give our lives meaning.In The Denial of Death, Becker sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after it was written.