This important book offers a model to analyze the configurations of reality as manifested in everyday practices of eating and drinking in relation to the development of human subjectivity. The author uses concrete examples from daily life related to eating and drinking habits such as "eating tacos" or "taking a shot of mezcal", to offer an interface of interaction between body/mind and material entities connecting all scales of reality. Borrowing scientific insights from molecular biology and neuroscience, combined with a touch of decolonial spirit, the author examines specific 'processes' and/or 'objects' triggered by eating and drinking events, such as the production of heat as you eat a taco, or the interchange of knowledge while drinking mezcal. The book develops an approach to human subjectivity informed by material and aesthetic encounters beyond the analysis of language, representation, and social structures and aims to contribute to the contemporary landscape of efforts decentering our understanding of both human and non-human affairs. With its multidimensional exploration of our relationship with food, this is thought-provoking reading for scholars and students in critical psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences.

This fascinating book explores the different methodologies, resources and strategies that have been used to study emotion, and identifies emerging trends and research perspectives in the field. Emotion is a subject that has been thoroughly investigated in all fields of social and behavioural sciences. And yet the more we have attempted to individualize emotions and set limits that separate the different types of emotions, the more the subject has resisted these categorizations. Mapping the changes and diverse perspectives in the study of emotion, author Simone Belli explores how a critical psychology of emotion has emerged in order to answer this paradox, examining emotions within a social framework. Divided into five chapters, the book uses interdisciplinary critical approaches to cover everything from the interaction between emotion and language, to emotional contagion such as the spread of fear in a pandemic. There is also a particular focus on emotion analysis in digital environments, which have left a deep mark on our lives from the beginning of this century. Showcasing a selection of important investigations that have dealt with the study of emotions in society, Critical Approaches to the Psychology of Emotion is essential reading for students of critical social psychology, sociolinguistics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.

This essential book questions the psychological construct of Internet Addiction by contextualizing it within the digital technological era. It proposes a critical psychology that investigates user subjectivity as a function of capitalism and imperialism, arguing against punitive models of digital excesses and critiquing the political economy of the Internet affecting all users. Friedman explores the limitations of individual-centered remediations exemplified in the psychology of internet addiction. Furthermore, Friedman outlines the self-creative actions of social media users, and the data processing that exploits them to urge psychologists to politicize rather than pathologize the effects of excessive net use. The book develops a notion of capitalist imperialism of the social web and studies this using the radical methods of philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. By synthesizing perspectives on digital life from sociology, economics, digital media theory, and technology studies for psychologists, this book will be of interest to academics and students in these areas, as well as psychologists and counselors interested in addressing Internet Addiction as a collective, societal ill.

The Event of Psychopoetics overviews and investigates the notion of psychopoetics, a sociopsychological event that involves re-creative slips and that emerges under certain cultural conditions and power relations in the context of everyday interaction and through certain modes of dialoguing and conversing. This transdisciplinary text takes the reader through the thought processes of Deleuze, Guattari, Agamben, Maffesoli, Foucault, Butler, Haraway, and Braidotti, among others, addressing debates that are integral to the critique of psychology and its devices of subjectivization and normalization. Garcia takes a unique approach by reflecting on how psychopoetics contrasts institutionalized dialogues, while constantly emphasizing the generative and transformative potency of social worlds effectuated in the impetuous play of poetics. The book combines the rigor of academic research with the creative display of ideas that open diverse, suggestive lines of reflection on everyday interlocution and its possibilities of reinvention, modes of social existence, and the relation between subjectivity and the designs of power. A truly unique reading experience, this book is ideal for students, instructors, and researchers in the fields of philosophy, social psychology and sociological thought, discourse studies, literary theory, and cultural analysis.

Providing a comprehensive perspective on human desire, this volume brings together leading experts from multiple psychological subdisciplines. It addresses such key questions as how desires of different kinds emerge, how they influence judgment and decision making, and how problematic desires can be effectively controlled. Current research on underlying brain mechanisms and regulatory processes is reviewed. Cutting-edge measurement tools are described, including practical recommendations for their use. The book also examines pathological forms of desire and the complex relationship between desire and happiness. The concluding section analyzes specific applied domains--eating, sex, aggression, substance use, shopping, and social media.

There is an emergent movement of scientists and scholars working on somatic awareness, interoception and embodiment. This work cuts across studies of neurophysiology, somatic anthropology, contemplative practice, and mind-body medicine. Key questions include: How is body awareness cultivated? What role does interoception play for emotion and cognition in healthy adults and children as well as in different psychopathologies? What are the neurophysiological effects of this cultivation in practices such as Yoga, mindfulness meditation, Tai Chi and other embodied contemplative practices? What categories from other traditions might be useful as we explore embodiment? Does the cultivation of body awareness within contemplative practice offer a tool for coping with suffering from conditions, such as pain, addiction, and dysregulated emotion? This emergent field of research into somatic awareness and associated interoceptive processes, however, faces many obstacles. The principle obstacle lies in our 400-year Cartesian tradition that views sensory perception as epiphenomenal to cognition. The segregation of perception and cognition has enabled a broad program of cognitive science research, but may have also prevented researchers from developing paradigms for understanding how interoceptive awareness of sensations from inside the body influences cognition. The cognitive representation of interoceptive signals may play an active role in facilitating therapeutic transformation, e.g. by altering context in which cognitive appraisals of well-being occur. This topic has ramifications into disparate research fields: What is the role of interoceptive awareness in conscious presence? How do we distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive somatic awareness? How do we best measure somatic awareness? What are the consequences of dysregulated somatic/interoceptive awareness on cognition, emotion, and behavior? The complexity of these questions calls for the creative integration of perspectives and findings from related but often disparate research areas including clinical research, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, anthropology, religious/contemplative studies and philosophy.