AHP readers will be interested in a new book, Mind Reading as a Cultural Practice edited by Laurens Schlicht, Carla Seemann, and Christian Kassung. The book is described as follows:

This book provides a genealogical perspective on various forms of mind reading in different settings. We understand mind reading in a broad sense as the twentieth-century attempt to generate knowledge of what people held in their minds – with a focus on scientifically-based governmental practices. This volume considers the techniques of mind reading within a wider perspective of discussions about technological innovation within neuroscience, the juridical system, “occult” practices and discourses within the wider field of parapsychology and magical beliefs. The authors address the practice of, and discourses on, mind reading as they form part of the consolidation of modern governmental techniques. The collected contributions explore the question of how these techniques have been epistemically formed, institutionalized, practiced, discussed, and how they have been used to shape forms of subjectivities – collectively through human consciousness or individually through the criminal, deviant, or spiritual subject. The first part of this book focuses on the technologies and media of mind reading, while the second part addresses practices of mind reading as they have been used within the juridical sphere. The volume is of interest to a broad scholarly readership dealing with topics in interdisciplinary fields such as the history of science, history of knowledge, cultural studies, and techniques of subjectivization.

Contents

Introduction
Laurens Schlicht, Carla Seemann

Technology and Mind Reading: Perspectives on Media and Occult Practices

Electrical Potential: Mind Reading as Collaborative Action
Melissa M. Littlefield

The Omega Factor: The Revival of Telepathy in the 1970s
Roger Luckhurst

Visualizing Thoughts: Photography, Neurology and Neuroimaging
Anthony Enns

How Stage Magic Perpetuates Magical Beliefs
Christine Mohr, Gustav Kuhn

Reading and Interpreting the Criminal Mind: Practices of Policing and Political Control

The Idea of Reading Someone’s Thoughts in Contemporary Lie Detection Techniques
Larissa Fischer

Reading the Criminal in the Austrian School of Criminology: Unveiling the Deviant Character Through Measurement and Intuitive Introspection
Christian Bachhiesl

Reading Children’s Minds: Female Criminal Police and the Psychology of Testimony, ca. 1920–1944, the Cases of Maria Zillig and Berta Rathsam
Laurens Schlicht

Mind Reading Through Body Language in Early Spanish Criminology and Juridical Psychology
Annette Mülberger

“Talk to Each Other—But How?” Operative Psychology and IM-Work as “Micro-Totalitarian Practice”
Martin Wieser

A New Look for Psychology: Reading the Political Unconscious from the Authoritarian Personality to Implicit Bias
Michael Pettit