Frank Tallis

What the leading theories of mind can teach us about the search for meaning For most of us, the major questions of life continue to perplex: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? In the late nineteenth century, a class of thinkers emerged who made solving these problems central to their work. They understood that human questions demand human answers and that without understanding what it means to be human, there are no answers. Through the biographies and theories of luminaries ranging from Sigmund Freud to Erich Fromm, Frank Tallis shows us how to think about companionship and parenting, identity and aging, and much more. Accessible yet erudite, The Act of Living is essential reading for anyone seeking answers to life's biggest questions.

What the Great Psychologists Can Teach Us About Finding Fulfillment

The Act of Living

Obsessive thoughts, erratic mood swings, insomnia, loss of appetite, recurrent and persistent images and impulses, superstitious or ritualistic compulsions, delusion, the inability to concentrate—exhibiting just five or six of these symptoms is enough to merit a diagnosis of a major depressive episode. Yet we all subconsciously welcome these symptoms when we allow ourselves to fall in love. In Love Sick, Dr. Frank Tallis, a leading authority on obsessive disorders, considers our experiences and expressions of love, and why the combinations of pleasure and pain, ecstasy and despair, rapture and grief have come to characterize what we mean when we speak of falling in love. Tallis examines why the agony associated with romantic love continues to be such a popular subject for poets, philosophers, songwriters, and scientists, and questions just how healthy our attitudes are and whether there may in fact be more sane, less tortured ways to love. A highly informative exploration of how, throughout time, principally in the West, the symptoms of mental illness have been used to describe the state of being in love, this book offers an eloquent, thought-provoking, and endlessly illuminating look at one of the most important aspects of human behavior.

Love as a Mental Illness

Love Sick

“Mengembalikan aspek psikologis dalam kriminalitas ... ditulis oleh seorang ahli.” —Oliver James Tuhan, ampuni aku atas apa yang telah kulakukan. Di dunia ini memang ada pengetahuan yang terlarang. Ia akan membawaku ke neraka—dan tak ada jalan untuk bertobat. Pesan yang mirip surat bunuh diri ini ditemukan di dekat tubuh Charlotte Löwenstein, wanita medium misterius yang ditemukan tewas dengan luka tembak di ruangan yang terkunci dari dalam. Tak ditemukan senjata, tak ada jejak peluru. Benarkah dia bunuh diri? Mungkinkah itu pembunuhan supernatural? Adakah hubungannya dengan badai besar pada malam itu dan Seth, dewa kehancuran—dewa badai dan kejahatan? Dengan ketajaman analisisnya, psikiater muda Max Liebermann membantu sahabatnya, Inspektur Oskar Rheinhardt, memecahkan misteri kematian itu. Kedua tokoh ini mengajak kita menjelajahi Wina, kota eksotik Eropa yang kaya dengan seni, filsafat, musik, dan sains dalam Seri The Liebermann Papers. “‘Sherlock Holmes’ bertemu Freud dalam cerita yang mengasyikkan ... misteri (psikologis) dalam balutan investigasi.”—Guardian “Frank Tallis tahu benar apa yang ditulisnya dalam cerita misteri yang mengagumkan ini ... paparannya tentang eksotisme Eropa masa itu tak tertandingi.”—Marcel Berlins, The Times “Orisinal dan menggelitik.” —Joan Smith, Sunday Times [Mizan, Qanita, Novel, Indonesia]

A Death in Vienna

A psychologist explores the intersection of love and madness through the riveting stories of the patients he has treated In The Incurable Romantic, Frank Tallis recounts the extraordinary stories of patients who are, quite literally, madly in love: a woman becomes utterly convinced that her dentist is secretly infatuated with her and drives him to leave the country; a man destroys his massive fortune through trysts with over three thousand prostitutes -- because his ego requires that they fall in love with him; a beautiful woman's pathological jealousy destroys the men who love her. Along the way, we learn a great deal about the history of psychiatry and the role of neuroscience in addressing disordered love. Elegantly written and infused with deep sympathy, The Incurable Romantic shows how all of us can become a bit crazy in love.

And Other Tales of Madness and Desire

The Incurable Romantic

While hunting for a serial murderer who has been targeting prostitutes in Vienna, Detective Oskar Reinhardt and young psychoanalyst Max Liebermann receive a tip from a patient who relays disturbing dreams.

Vienna Twilight

Fatal Lies

Mayat terpotong—pembunuhan dengan mutilasi—memunculkan berbagai simbol aneh, juga latar belakang korban yang acak. Dalam cekaman musim dingin Siberia 1902, Wina diguncangkan oleh pembunuhan berantai. Sang murid Freud, detektif psikoanalis Dr. Max Liebermann, kembali harus membantu sahabatnya, Inspektur Detektif Oskar Rheinhardt, memecahkan misteri rumit ini. Penyelidikan pun membawa mereka pada sebuah perkumpulan rahasia, gerakan bawah tanah beranggotakan kaum elite sastra Jerman, pencetus teori rasial dan para ilmuwan yang terinspirasi oleh teori baru evolusi dari Inggris. Awalnya, pemikiran sang pembunuh seolah tak tertembus—sikap dan jejak yang ditinggalkannya tak tersentuh oleh interpretasi psikoanalisis. Namun lambat laun, semakin jelas bahwa latar belakang yang luar biasa dan mencengangkan mendasari tindakannya. Sementara pada saat yang sama, Liebermann pun harus memecahkan mister hati dan cintanya …. [Mizan, Qanita, Novel, Indonesia]

Vienna Blood

A chronicle of Vienna's Golden Age and the influence of Sigmund Freud on the modern world by a clinical psychologist whose mystery novels form the basis of PBS's Vienna Blood series. Some cities are like stars. When the conditions are right, they ignite, and burn with such fierce intensity that they outshine every other city on the planet. Vienna was one such city and, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the birthplace of the modern mind and the way we live today. Long coffee menus and celebrity interviews are Viennese inventions. ‘Modern’ buildings were appearing in Vienna long before they started appearing in New York and the idea of practical modern home design originated in the work of Viennese architect Adolf Loos. The place, however, where one finds the most indelible and profound impression of Viennese influence is inside your head. How we think about ourselves has been largely determined by Vienna’s most celebrated resident, Sigmund Freud. In Mortal Secrets, Frank Tallis brilliantly illuminates Sigmund Freud and his times, taking readers into the mind of one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century, chronicling the evolution of psychoanalysis and opening up Freud’s life to embrace the Vienna he lived in and the lives of the people he mingled with from Gustav Klimt to Arnold Schönberg, Egon Schiele to Gustav Mahler. Mortal Secrets is a thrilling book about a heady time in one of the world’s most beautiful cities and its long shadow that extends through the twentieth century up until the present day.

Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind

Mortal Secrets

When promising psychiatrist, James Richardson, is offered the job opportunity of a lifetime, he is thrilled. Setting off to take up his post at Wyldehope Hall in deepest Suffolk, Richardson doesn't look back.One of his tasks is to manage a controversial project - a pioneering therapy in which extremely disturbed patients are kept asleep for months. As Richardson settles into his new life, he begins to sense something uncanny about the sleeping patients - six women, forsaken by society. Why is the trainee nurse so on edge when she spends nights alone with them? And what can it mean when all the sleepers start dreaming at the same time?It's not long before Richardson finds himself questioning everything he knows about the human mind as he attempts to uncover the shocking secrets of The Sleep Room.

The Sleep Room

And Other Unsettling Revelations

Incurable Romantic

Em 1902, Viena é uma cidade pulsante. Na mesa de seus cafés, cultura e política são debatidas até tarde da noite. Quando uma misteriosa médium é encontrada morta, Dr. Max Liebermann é chamado a colaborar nas investigações. Discípulo de Freud, o médico lança mão da psicanálise, que dava seus primeiros passos, para desvendar o crime.

Trapaça mortal

Vienna, 1903. Two men are found beheaded on church grounds, on opposite sides of the city. Reinhardt is baffled. Liebermann is drawn into an urban underworld that hosts and hides virulent racists on one side, and followers of kabbalah on the other.

a Max Liebermann mystery

Vienna secrets

'Frank Tallis brings a lifetime's clinical experience and wise reflection to a condition that, by its own strange routes, leads us into the very heart of love itself. This is a brilliant, compelling book' Ian McEwan Love is a great leveller. Everyone wants love, everyone falls in love, everyone loses love, and everyone knows something of love's madness. But the experience of obsessive love is no trivial matter. In the course of his career psychologist Dr Frank Tallis has treated many unusual patients, whose stories have lessons for all of us. A barristers' clerk becomes convinced that her dentist has fallen in love with her and they are destined to be together for eternity; a widow is visited by the ghost of her dead husband; an academic is besotted with his own reflection; a beautiful woman searches jealously for a rival who isn't there; and a night porter is possessed by a lascivious demon. These are just some of the people whom we meet in an extraordinary and original book that explores the conditions of longing and desire - true accounts of psychotherapy that take the reader on a journey through the darker realms of the amorous mind. Drawing on the latest scientific research into the biological and psychological mechanisms underlying romance and emotional attachment, The Incurable Romantic demonstrates that ultimately love dissolves the divide between what we judge to be normal and abnormal.

Max Liebermanns zweiter Fall

Wiener Blut

Science, technology and western liberal democracy have all had a dramatic impact on our quality of life. Compared to previous generations, we have unprecedented access to information, increased personal freedom, more material comforts, more possessions, and greater life expectancy. Yet, a very significant number of people are depressed, anxious, or complain of being unfulfilled. Mental health statistics have never been worse.The goals of psychotherapy are not so very different from the goals of everyday life. People want to be happy and optimise outcomes. Within the context of the clinic, this is best achieved by focusing on, and eventually removing, symptoms; however, the models developed by psychotherapists have a far broader range of application. Freud used psychoanalysis primarily to treat his patients, but he also used it to explain aspects of civilisation, society, art, literature and the supernatural. As such, the theories and ideas that have arisen out of psychotherapy represent something of an undervalued resource. They are highly instructive and can illuminate many subjects - among them, the question of how to live.It is remarkable how the models of mind and behaviour arising from the practice of psychotherapy have had such little cultural impact. Shelves sag with self-help books, but most of these relate to specific problems and they do not address the broader challenges of the human condition. Yet, implicit in every model of mind are recommendations for life. THE ACT OF LIVING treats psychotherapy as a single, cohesive philosophical tradition. It synthesises the thinking of the principal figures in the history of psychotherapy (e.g. Freud, Jung, Adler, Frankl, Rogers, Fromm, Ellis and Laing) with a view to providing the reader with an accessible and practical guide to optimal living.

What the Great Psychologists Can Teach Us about Surviving Discontent and Finding Fulfilment

Act of Living

Vienna, 1904. The body of a man—still sitting in a chair—is discovered in an abandoned piano factory on the outskirts of the city. He has been shot dead but his face has been horribly disfigured with acid, making identification impossible. In front of the body are three chairs positioned conspicuously in a straight line. Who were the former occupants? Had they sat in judgement and pronounced a sentence of death? Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt calls on his good friend, Doctor Max Liebermann—psychiatrist and disciple of Sigmund Freud—to assist in an investigation that draws them both into the shadowy and sexually unconventional world of fringe political activism.

Mephisto Waltz

The author confirms the existence of the unconscious mind and traces its importance, using hypnosis, psychoanalysis, subliminal manipulation, dreams, and hard science to trace the existence of this "hidden mind" within each individual. 15,000 first printing.

A History of the Unconscious

Hidden Minds

The drug Naloxyl is Nick's only reliable source of income. He isn't making ends meet gigging in pubs in Essex so he's volunteered for a drug trial. But he's beginning to suspect it's giving him side-effects. Not least of which is the ability to recall other people's memories. But should he reveal this to his trial doctor, or is he just paranoid? And all this at a time when he really doesn't need the hassle. His friend Eric, former 70s rock star turned eco-warrior, has invited himself to stay. His relationship with older woman Cairo is swinging in and out of focus; and a Swedish producer wants to hear his band perform but the only gig they can fix is at a dodgy S & M club in Kings Cross...

Sensing Others

In the sequel to A Death in Vienna, 1902 Vienna is terrorized by a serial killer targeting prostitutes and leaving strange crosslike symbols in his wake, and Detective Oscar Rheinhardt and Dr. Max Liebermann, an expert in Freudian psychology, reunite to find a murderer, following a trail that leads to the city's murky underworld and an even greater evil. Original. 15,000 first printing.

A Novel

When a beautiful medium dies under extraordinary circumstances, shot in a room that only locks from the inside and with no trace of a bullet or gun, psychoanalyst Max Liebermann calls on his good friend, Detective Rheinhardt, to help him investigate.

Frank Tallis

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