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Behavioral inhibition, often displayed as shyness in children and avoidance in animals, can be observed in the earliest stages of infancy. Recent research indicates that in extreme cases the tendency to either approach or withdraw from uncertain events continues through late childhood and is supported by specific biological mechanisms, suggesting a genetic basis. To effectively study behavioral inhibition, researchers are departing from the essentially experiential and descriptive techniques of traditional psychology and turning to a multidisciplinary approach that integrates psychology, psychiatry, epidemiology, genetics, and ethology. Perspectives in Behavioral Inhibition brings together the most current research of leading scholars in the various disciplines involved.

Chronic pain is a medical mystery, debilitating to patients and a source of frustration for practitioners. It often eludes both cause and cure and serves as a reminder of how much further we have to go in unlocking the secrets of the body. A new field of pain medicine has evolved from this landscape, one that intersects with dozens of disciplines and subspecialties ranging from psychology and physiology to anesthesia and chiropractic medicine. Over the past three decades, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners have struggled to define this complex and often contentious field as they work to establish standards while navigating some of the most challenging philosophical issues of Western science.

In The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry, S. Scott Graham offers a rich and detailed exploration of the medical rhetoric surrounding pain medicine. Graham chronicles the work of interdisciplinary pain management specialists to found a new science of pain and a new approach to pain medicine grounded in a more comprehensive biospychosocial model. His insightful analysis demonstrates how these materials ultimately shape the healthcare community’s understanding of what pain medicine is, how the medicine should be practiced and regulated, and how practitioner-patient relationships are best managed. It is a fascinating, novel examination of one of the most vexing issues in contemporary medicine.

F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) was one of the leading voices in economic and social theory, but he also wrote on theoretical psychology, including in the landmark book The Sensory Order. Although The Sensory Order was not widely engaged with by either psychologists or social scientists at the time of publication, it is seen today as essential for fully understanding Hayek’s more well-known work.

The latest addition to the University of Chicago Press’s Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, The Sensory Order and Other Writings on the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology pairs the book, originally published in 1952, with additional essays related to The Sensory Order’s key themes, including a student paper from 1920 in which Hayek outlined the basic ideas he fully developed in the 1952 book. Rounding out the volume is an insightful introduction by editor Viktor Vanberg that sketches out the central problems Hayek was grappling with when he wrote The Sensory Order and the influential role this early thinking on theoretical psychology would play over the next six decades of his career. The book also features ample footnotes and citations for further reading, making this an essential contribution to the series.
 

Laurent Joubert (b. 1529) was an important figure in the medical world of the French Renaissance. His monumental Treatise on Laughter provides categories and examples of the laughable. The work describes laughter, its causes and effects, its types and differences. His subdivisions and categories, along with their examples, furnish today's critic and reader with a Renaissance vision of comic commonplaces. It is this vision that may prove to be of great value in analyzing comic literature of the Renaissance.