Books like The horrors of the half-known life by G. J. Barker-Benfield

A groundbreaking work that explains how trauma rewires the brain and body, and presents evidence‑based therapies—from neurofeedback to yoga—that unlock the mind’s natural capacity for healing.

Oliver Sacks explores the many faces of hallucination, weaving patient stories and his own psychedelic encounters to reveal how these visions illuminate brain function, culture, and the human experience.

Robert Burton explores human nature and emotion through the historical lens of melancholy, blending early medical, psychological, and literary insights into the experience of sadness.

Anjan Chatterjee blends neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to explain how pleasure shapes our perception of beauty and art, exploring questions about the universality of aesthetic experience and the evolutionary roots of artistic instinct.

"In describing and explaining the sexes, medicine and science participated in the delineation of what was "feminine" and what was "masculine" in the Middle Ages. Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus, among others, writing about gynecology, the human constitution, fetal development, or the naturalistic dimensions of divine Creation, became increasingly interested in issues surrounding reproduction and sexuality. Did women as well as men produce procreative seed? How did the physiology of the sexes influence their healthy states and their susceptibility to disease? Who derived more pleasure from sexual intercourse, men or women?" "The answers to such questions created a network of flexible concepts which did not endorse a single model of male-female relations, but did affect views on the health consequences of sexual abstinence for women and men and on the allocation of responsibility for infertility - problems with much social and religious significance in the Middle Ages. Sometimes at odds with, and sometimes in accord with other forces in medieval society, medicine and natural philosophy helped to construct a set of notions that divided significant portions of the world - from the behavior of animals to the operations of astrological signs - into "masculine" and "feminine." Even cases that seemed to exist outside the definitions of this duality, for example, hermaphrodite features or homosexual behavior, were brought under control by the application of gendered labels, such as "masculine women.""--Jacket.

An illustrated scholarly study of how phallus imagery shaped politics, law, and gender in ancient Athens, revealing both its dominance and the early counter‑movement of feminism and anti‑militarism.

An interdisciplinary study of gender, sexuality, and women’s roles in ancient Mesopotamia, offering a feminist theoretical framework and new methodology for Near Eastern antiquity.

John Tosh explores how Victorian ideals shaped men's lives, revealing the tensions between domestic expectations and emerging bachelor culture in 19th‑century Britain.

A collection of essays examining feminist history, female friendships, and gender roles in nineteenth‑century America, with discussions of Davy Crockett, the feminine cycle, hysteria, abortion, and androgyny.