7 books for the first acquaintance with psychology. Choice of Inna Khamitova

Of course, there are many more such books. And yet: where is it better to start your acquaintance with psychology for someone who is not going to devote his life to this science? Anyone who discovers the world of human relationships and wants to better understand themselves and their loved ones?

1. “Modern child. Encyclopedia of mutual understanding. Edited by Anna Varga

Articles by leading Russian psychologists, which are written in an accessible language and cover all areas of relationships between adults and children. Among the topics of the collection are computer addiction and domestic violence, age-related crises and early development issues, communication between brothers and sisters, and the role of money in raising children.

Confiding intonation and accuracy of presentation are combined here with an encyclopedic approach to the story about the features of the child’s mental development – from birth to adolescence. At the end of some articles there are practical sections – by carefully answering the proposed questions, parents will be able to better understand their family situation, while exercises and tips will help to cope with specific problems. The book is supplemented by a list of recommended literature. (OGI, 2006)

2. “Map of love.” John Gottman

The famous family psychotherapist formulated the principles of a happy marriage based on the results of his own many years of research. Volunteers, married couples of different ages and relationships, were tested by psychologists under the supervision of video cameras and microphones.

The analysis of their facial expressions, gestures, intonations and feelings during the discussion of controversial topics allowed John Gottman to refute many myths about marriage. For example, the notions that “a conflict-free marriage is successful”, “romantic relationships on the side are the reason for divorce”, “men and women will never understand each other.”

This study proved the laws of harmonious relationships, which were previously (empirically) discovered by prominent family psychologists Virginia Satir, Salvador Minukhin, Mara Selvini-Palazolli. (Eksmo, 2011)

3. “Family and how to survive in it.” Robin Skinner, John Cleese

Two men, psychotherapist Robin Skinner and his former patient, comic actor John Cleese, are having a frank conversation about the unconscious attitudes that we received in our parental family that prevent our own family from becoming healthier and happier.

Not silent about the problems and not driving away their painful memories, they reflect on what is the difference between men and women, why we fall in love with each other, what is a good and bad marriage, what parents should give their children.

The book is written in easy language, it is not surprising that it became a bestseller immediately after the release and has remained so for more than 30 years. (Class, 2016)

4. “Treatment for love and other psychotherapeutic novels.” Irvin Yalom

I recommend reading all the books of Irvin Yalom, an outstanding psychotherapist, one of the founders of existential psychotherapy – he is a surprisingly sincere, attentive and deep conversationalist. And you can start with “The Love Treatment”, which contains stories about his therapeutic work with ten different people.

About how their relationship developed, how they found (or did not find) the necessary answers, Yalom tells, as always, very lively and extremely honestly. These stories help you look into yourself and reflect on the deepest topics – why live, why we are here, what is the meaning of love and any close relationship. (Class, 2012)

5. “Pragmatics of human communications. The study of patterns, pathologies and paradoxes of interaction. Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, Don Jackson

An accessible and at the same time logically precisely built presentation of the principles of communication, with many recognizable examples from real life and fiction. Despite the fact that we are involved in the process of communication from birth, we are far from always aware of what its rules are based on.

Austrian social psychologist Paul Watzlawick and his colleagues explore communication as a complex multi-level process, which is considered in terms of context, content, encoding-decoding and message transmission. Even the very meaning of human existence is revealed here at the level of metacommunication, when the exchange of meaningless phrases or just silence contain an existential message addressed to another. (April-Press, 2000)

6. Ancestor Syndrome. Ann Schutzenberger

A brilliant study of how family history, the past, is present in the present and governs our lives. When she began working with cancer patients in the 1970s, French psychotherapist Anne Ancelin Schutzenberger discovered that some of them developed the disease at the same age as a relative died of cancer or died in an accident.

She began to regularly build genosociograms of patients (schematically describe the life of five to seven generations of the family) and found out that this was not a coincidence, but a pattern. Later, Schutzenberger created her own method of working with family heritage, calling it psychogenealogy. She described the principles of transgenerational (from generation to generation) transmission of unresolved conflicts and family secrets in this book. (Psychotherapy, 2011)

7. “In search of a mythical couple.” Allyn Bader, Peter Pearson

An interesting approach to the diagnosis of married couples is offered by American psychotherapists Ellin Bader and Peter Pearson. In their opinion, a long-term union, like a living being, goes through different stages of development. There are always five of them, and they are similar to the stages in the development of a child: symbiosis (the merging of two), differentiation (setting boundaries), learning (when everyone’s attention is directed to the outside world), the establishment of mature relationships and interdependence.

Describing in detail each stage, psychologists show that the key to a strong relationship is the passage of all stages. And the “stuck” of partners on one of them, for example, at the stage of symbiosis, makes the union dysfunctional, non-working. (IPSI, 2008).