Reading Recommendations for Summer 2025

This video series is taking a short break while Dr Moffic travels. For now, enjoy the rerun of this video with updated commentary.

We continue the annual summer reading recommendations. Last year, we recommended Covert: The Psychology of War and Peace, with psychiatrist Neil Aggarwal being one of the coauthors. He informed me that he has an updated commentary coming out soon, titled “Restarting Diplomacy Between India and Pakistan by Working Through Impasses,” to be published in Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 53(4) issue. Certainly, our current wars in Ukraine and Gaza need these insights. Russia just conducted its largest bombing after President Trump talked to Putin. This literature provides a potential way for better negotiation.

In addition, if you follow my recent columns, I have been focusing on aspects of death: past lives, dying, and the afterlife. Death and war go together. These 2 recommended books by my friend Al Simon I would also recommend for you:

• Brian Weiss, MD. Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives. Touchstone; 1988.
• Annie Kagan. The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There’s Life After Death. Hampton Roads; 2013.

Both read easily and quickly, like mystery stories. In addition, I mention my own serendipities often and a leading psychiatrist authority of them just came out with his own memoir:

• Bernard Beitman, MD. Life-Changing Synchronicities: A Doctor’s Journey of Coincidence & Serendipity. Park Street Press; 2025.
  

All of these new book recommendations touch upon parapsychology, on the fringes of mainstream psychiatry, but worth considering for their potential importance. As Hamlet said, there is likely much more in the world to know than we already do, including about an afterlife.

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.