I’ve mentioned this book at length in a blog article called the Psychobiology of Suggestion. I found the first half of the book an utter revelation as Bruce Lipton shatters the central dogma of biology – that genes drive behaviour, by showing intriguing evidence for the primacy of the environment. If he’s right it offers […]

Ian Robertson does a fabulous job of bringing the ‘trembling web’ of the brain to life. He gives a real sense of its plasticity and our ability to grow it productively. I first read it about three years ago and I still find myself recommending it to my students on a regular basis despite having […]

I love Stephen Johnson as a writer, I’d read his shopping list. He presents ideas in a beautifully coherent way, in this case by cleverly using an examination of his own brain as a structure for exploring the latest theories from neuroscience. Stunningly relevant on many levels, and a lovely read.

When I first read this book the first 100 pages or so were such a trial I could hardly bear to continue. Something made me persevere, and I’m glad I did. The book opens up into a wonderful exploration of information theory applied to consciousness. Probably ahead of its time, it really makes you think […]

Martin Seligman is the guy who began the Positive Psychology movement, which has provided some of the most useful insights into how to improve our mental wellbeing. Authentic Happiness is packed with the results of studying how happy people create their happiness – and how unhappy people can change. Optimism is a state of mind […]

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favourite writers. He has that rare ability to find stories that link together to both inform and entertain. The subject of Blink is what Galdwell calls ‘thin slicing’; the ability of our intuition to make a decision based on a momentary exposure to information. As a therapist and trainer […]

Steven Heller is sadly no longer with us, and it says much for this beautiful book that by the end of it I felt the loss of someone I’d never met. Incredibly prescient, this book is written so wittily and so familiarly that the pages flow by. Based around his view that ‘there’s no such […]

This is the book that began a completely new direction for me as a therapist. I think it contains the basis for a revolution in therapy by getting us to recognise that trance states are just part of normal brain functioning; the means by which the brain creates our perception of reality – including our […]