Recommended Books

Read Montague explores the new field of Computational Neuroscience. Does that sound like it's going to be easy? You're right, it's not, but Read Montague writes well, and with a light touch. There are definitely useful things to come out of this book for us therapists, and my small brain needs to read it again (and probably again) to figure out exactly what. Clients come to us to help them change their minds, and within this book are some of the rules that will achieve this.

As an addendum, I've just re-read this book and it is definitely worth taking the time to absorb its message. It's definitely helped to shape my thinking about why we do the things we do.

I have a feeling that this will turn out to be one of the most important books I've read, Gerd Gigarenzer provided much of the research material the Malcolm Gladwell used when writing his brilliant book, Blink. GG lays out rules of thumb the brain uses as short cuts to make decisions and create beliefs. He also demonstrates how these intuitions are often more effective than reason. These rules could prove a marvelous guidance system for how to construct effective suggestions - something I'm working on now.

Richard Wiseman is one of my favourite authors. He writes in a really engaging way and always brings interesting things to the table. In Quirkology he excels himself in the range of weird and wonderful experiments he's conducted or reports on that shed a fascinating light on the vagaries of being human. Entertaining and educational, a perfect 'dip into' book.