Latest news with #AmyGriffin
CNBC
20-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
10 books to read this summer to be smarter, happier and more resilient
J.P. Morgan's reading list has provided a glimpse into the literary habits of the wealthy for 26 years. The latest installment of the bank's summer reading list released this week, and features titles ranging from a coffee table book of Martian photography to a bestselling self help manual. The list was created by soliciting more than 1,000 suggestions from the bank's client advisors and narrowing down the selections through a review committee, according to CNBC. The bank also consulted with family offices to learn what books were highly valued for the leadership and psychological lessons they offered. Of the 16 titles on this year's list, 10 are focused on making readers smarter, happier and more resilient. Take a look. By: Suzy Welch The Harvard-trained career expert's guidebook gives readers a step-by-step method they can employ to build "a meaningful, productive and connected life." Buy it here. Welch's book will take center stage in July after being selected as the book of the month for the CNBC Make It Book Club. If you want to read along with us, you can join our community here. By: Melinda French Gates Using her departure from the Gates Foundation as one of several examples, Melinda French Gates' book offers guidance "on how to make the most of the time between an ending and a new beginning and how to move forward into the next day when the ground beneath you is shifting." Buy it here. By: James Lawrence Fifty triathlons. Fifty straight days. In "Iron Hope," James Lawrence breaks down the secrets to the mentality that allowed him to complete the superhuman athletic feat. Buy it here. By: Amy Griffin The "Oprah's Book Club" pick sees G9 Ventures founder and managing partner Amy Griffin recount the at-times messy story that resulted in her "perfect" life. Buy it here. By: Dan Heath Heath's bestselling book provides strategies to tackle the feeling of being "stuck" at work, including finding "leverage points" where a small effort can result in outsized change. Buy it here. By: Shigehiro Oishi, PhD Japanese psychologist Shigehiro Oishi argues that pursuing a life full of "psychological richness," rather than happiness and meaning, can help lead you to living a fuller, more satisfying life. Buy it here. By: Mike Colias Automotive reporter Mike Colias documents the transformation of the auto business following the advent of electric vehicles, from corporate boardrooms to family-run car dealerships. Buy it here. By: De Kai As artificial intelligence works its way into more and more aspects of our day-to-day life, industry trailblazer De Kai writes about how humans can coexist and thrive with the revolutionary technology. Buy it here. By: Dr. Mandeep Rai Gathering lessons from 101 countries around the world, Dr. Mandeep Rai "shows how we can incorporate the values that animate nations into our own lives." Buy it here. By: Kenneth Rogoff In 'Our Dollar, Your Problem,' Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff traces the events that turned the U.S. dollar into the world's dominant currency and questions how long its dominance can last. Buy it here. ,
Vox
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Are repressed memories real? A hit memoir clashes with the science.
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. What if something terrible happened to you, and you weren't able to remember it? That's one of the questions at the center of Amy Griffin's memoir, The Tell, which is quickly becoming one of the year's most talked-about books. Griffin's buzzy bestseller doesn't offer easy answers or tidy conclusions about its dark subject matter — its author's sexual assault by a trusted teacher as a preteen — which only seems to make her story about recovering harrowing memories of the abuse after trying psychedelic therapy all the more powerful for readers. Griffin's status as a high-powered investor and Silicon Valley 'girlboss' working with companies like Goop and Bumble gave her attention in high places. She has the support of book club titans like Oprah Winfrey, Jenna Bush Hager, and Reese Witherspoon. Elle praised the memoir as 'a new kind of story about abuse.' According to Elle, it 'isn't a book about trauma, it's an investigation of what happened to Griffin and of the ways that the pressure to achieve perfection damages girls and women.' Kirkus Reviews summarized the book as 'an important, wholly believable account of how long-buried but profoundly formative experiences finally emerge.' Yet at the book's center is a particularly thorny issue: that of repressed memories, which are considered an impossibility by most research psychologists and neuroscientists but touted by many therapists who work directly with patients. A repressed memory is one in which, allegedly, a memory that previously didn't exist of a previously unknown experience suddenly appears. Such memories are routinely depicted as real throughout pop culture, and while The Tell confronts the possibility that they may be false, Griffin herself quickly loses all doubt. Add in the potentially dicey treatment that Griffin underwent: psychedelic MDMA therapy. Despite reportedly helping patients with trauma and PTSD, it has yet to win federal approval in the US. Technically, it's illegal. As The Tell continues to dominate the New York Times bestseller list, how should we think about the less-than-legal therapy that inspired it and the splashy, concerning revelations that came next? The complicated therapy at The Tell's core A lifelong runner, Griffin uses her hobby as a metaphor for the pressure she places on herself, not only to succeed but to avoid confronting her own trauma. This is how she pushes through her overachieving childhood; through a horrifying date rape in college; through a busy life juggling work, home, and family. But all this running isn't just toward the next achievement — it's away from something deeper she just can't name. At one point, her then 10-year-old daughter tells Griffin that she and her sister don't feel connected to her. 'We don't feel like we know who you are,' Griffin recounts her saying. 'You're nice, but you're not real.' This rejection inspires her to look deeper within, and her husband John introduces her to the therapist whose MDMA sessions he's benefited from. Rebecca Lemov, a historian of behavioral science and author of the new book The Instability of Truth: Brainwashing, Mind Control, and Hyper-Persuasion, points out that there's a clear appeal to psychedelic therapy: 'I'm sure the drugs make it more fun,' Lemov said, 'and especially if you're experiencing PTSD, you probably are thinking, the least I can have to deal with this is a little bit of ecstasy.' MDMA therapy proponents proclaim that the drug promotes empathy and well-being, which has benefits for PTSD treatment. Though the treatment came remarkably close to FDA approval, the fact it was being considered was a step forward that underscores its growing popularity. Research indicates that it can induce vivid memories and can help patients revisit their traumatic experiences without any accompanying fear or anxiety. Generally speaking, though, MDMA therapy is thought to help patients process difficult memories, not recover them. Typically, prior to the actual therapy session, patients will have a few preparation meetings where their therapist sets their expectations about the drug. Griffin tells the therapist she's 'talking around' something, saying, 'I don't know what it is. It's like I can't remember. Or maybe I don't want to remember.' In her own telling, it's not clear whether she actually even needed the drugs to recall the memory or whether, as her longtime friend Gwyneth Paltrow recently suggested to her, things in her life had just 'aligned' at the right time. Before the drugs have even kicked in, we're told, Griffin's mind supplies her with a visceral flashback of being sexually assaulted by a trusted middle school teacher. Although Griffin is initially horrified and confused, she returns for further sessions, uncovering more memories of what she claims was a prolonged period of abuse that lasted through part of middle school and then recurred once more during her teen years. While the flashbacks themselves are harrowing, she describes her encounters with them as deeply cathartic, writing, ''I did nothing wrong.' I exhaled, accepting it. 'This all happened.'' The science — and messy reality of — repressed memories It's clear from The Tell that Griffin's revelations are a relief to her, and her self-conception as a survivor is firm. But the science on recovering events from the past is less certain. We owe the concept of repressed memories to — who else? — Sigmund Freud. In the late 1890s, Freud developed a theory that children could recall forgotten traumatic memories with therapeutic coaxing. However, he soon abandoned that theory, later writing that while the children he studied were remembering a variety of lurid scenes, 'I was at last obliged to recognize that these scenes of seduction had never taken place, and that they were only phantasies which my patients had made up or which I myself had perhaps forced on them.' Fast-forward to the late 1970s and '80s, when psychotherapists returned to Freud's abandoned theories. As psychologist Richard Beck details in his book We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s, they were looking to explain what they claimed were thousands of Satanic ritual abuse and extreme domestic abuse cases being recalled by their patients. Today, it's well-known that memory can be extremely malleable, and we now know these particular claims to have been entirely manufactured as part of a widespread cultural hysteria. Yet many of the therapists who perpetrated the Satanic Panic continue to have influence. Some, like the controversial therapist group International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, still fixate on likely fictional causes of trauma in children such as mind control and organized ritual abuse. And many of the pseudoscience-based therapy techniques of the '80s, such as hypnosis, are still with us today. The Tell — which arrives with an avalanche of stories mainstreaming the idea of repressed memories — appears at a moment when pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and debunked medical techniques are all making an aggressive resurgence. The focus on trauma as the pivotal underlying cause has continued to dominate the public's understanding of memory loss. And that makes sense — after all, amnesia and other kinds of memory blackouts are real; why wouldn't repressed memories, sometimes called dissociative amnesia, function in a similar way? Because memories aren't made that way, explains Lawrence Patihis, a scientist specializing in memory reliability. Scientific research has shown that people who experience traumatic events are more likely to remember them with full accuracy, not less. While many therapists — roughly half of licensed psychologists in one study — believe in the possibility of recovered memories, the scientific evidence for it just isn't there. Reliable science on memory, Patihis emphasizes, comes from cognitive psychology and extensive, well-defined quantitative data using random subjects in large-scale experiments, rather than individual case studies. 'The good science is slow,' he said. 'It's careful.' It's also consistent with research on other areas of memory. The research shows what is likely to happen when a person experiences trauma, Patihis said: 'It tells us, first of all, it will be well remembered. Second of all, PTSD symptoms will be highest immediately after the trauma and fade over time. It is not the case that PTSD will suddenly occur in 2020 when somebody starts going to therapy. That is a bad sign. That's not how real trauma works.' Patients with PTSD can lose track of their traumatic memories over time and then remember them — but, Patihis emphasizes, that's not a repressed memory, it's a forgotten one. Recent research has found that memories are inscribed as neural patterns that can be overwritten. Traumatic memories are typically quicker to form neural patterns than other memories and they're harder, not easier, to overwrite. What's likely happening instead is that a combination of factors, probably different for every individual, are leading the patient to believe they've had a memory when they haven't, or believe a memory is newly revealed when it's not. In the case of drug-assisted therapy, they could easily mistake a hallucination for a memory. And it's also always possible that they could simply not be telling the truth, either about the memory or the idea that they had not previously recalled it. Why we can't totally ignore repressed memory claims Simply dismissing all instances of repressed memories, however, gets complicated. For one thing, repressed and recovered memories can frequently play a role in people's experience of dissociative identity disorder, which, while not well understood, reportedly impacts millions of people. For another, despite the research of scientists like Patihis that casts doubt on memory repression, the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, includes dissociative amnesia as a reason why trauma survivors may forget key aspects of their trauma. Its inclusion is a sign of its increasing acceptance among practicing clinicians. Another ongoing concern is simply the power and importance of a narrative like Griffin's. If we adhere to science that undermines survivors' experience of their abuse, who is that science really serving — especially given that survivors are frequently disbelieved to begin with? What if the abuse is real, even if the specific memory isn't? And if we truly want to believe abuse survivors, how do we reconcile a claim like that of Griffin's with the refuting science? Patihis acknowledges those are difficult questions — but for him, at least, the science is clear that trauma and memory repression aren't inherently linked. 'I think there's a correct answer scientifically to what's going on with memory,' he said, 'and the idea of repressed memories being reliable when they come back is not correct.' Patihis stresses that the idea of having and then overcoming a repressed memory through therapy is 'popular because there's a promise of cure. There's hope, and it's popular because a lot of people come to believe it.' That's not easy to discount, and Lemov, the historian and author, isn't sure we should. 'The author of The Tell reports profound healing from this experience,' she said. 'I would want to [ask], 'Can I open up a space for not knowing?'' Affirmation is one of the keys to successful therapy, after all, and it's significant that therapists, who have more direct contact with patients than researchers, are more likely to embrace their clients' realities. While Patihis holds that the best therapeutic results belong to patients who abandon their belief in repressed memory, the therapeutic process is what matters. 'I think clinicians have a responsibility to inform clients that memory distortions are possible in therapy, and then just let the client come to their own conclusion,' he said. 'And also, if they don't come to that conclusion on their own' — that is, that repressed memories are not a real phenomenon — 'you have to continue to do good therapy.' And that, he added, 'is so difficult.' The conversation poses new questions for him as a researcher: 'If I were a clinician and somebody brings to me memories that could be false, do I work with them through those memories as if they were real trauma? Oh my gosh.' That this core uncertainty lingers despite the knowledge that repressed memories have little scientific backing illustrates the complicated nature of therapy in an age where we know both more — and less — than ever.
Los Angeles Times
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The 10 best memoirs of the 2020s, from Mariah Carey to Michelle Zauner
Calling all bookworms! Welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. Calling all bookworms! Welcome to the L.A. Times Book Club newsletter. I'm Meg. I write shut up and read, a book newsletter. I'm also on BookTok. I just flew through Amy Griffin's 'The Tell.' Her memoir — a powerful investigation of repressed memories, sexual trauma and the quest for perfection — took me less than two days to finish. Instead of walking to the gym, I took the train, just so I could have more time to read. Then I picked up Lauren Christensen's 'Firstborn.' My waking hours were at the mercy of the memoir, a moving account of the loss of her first child, Simone. I fought off sleep to keep reading and when I awoke, the book was the first thing I reached for. I turn to the stories of other people's lives to make sense of my own. There's no memoir I won't read, except for Melania Trump's. I'm a glutton for the juicy celebrity tell-all, but there is nothing like being surprised by an unexpected or unknown author. As we approach the decade's halfway mark, I thought I'd share some of my favorite memoirs from the past 5 years, as well as the titles I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this year. 'The Meaning of Mariah Carey' is best experienced as an audiobook. Carey's memoir is an incisive deep dive into her elusive persona. Come for the reflections on her long-spanning career — and the true account of her rags-to-riches story — but stay for Mimi bursting sporadically into song. André Leon Talley's 'The Chiffon Trenches' is also a wonderful audio experience. His distinctive voice oozes charisma and authority, and his front row seat to the fashion world provides 50 years' worth of stories—about Karl Lagerfeld, Diana Vreeland, and of course, Anna Wintour. Dr. Michele Harper pulls back the curtain on life as an emergency room physician in her debut memoir, 'The Beauty in Breaking.' Through her patients, Harper discovers how to heal, all while contending with the racism and sexism in an overwhelmingly white and male-dominated profession. 'Minor Feelings,' Cathy Park Hong's book of essays, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir. In her collection, Park Hong blends cultural criticism and memoir to examine the covert racism that is pervasive in our country. Her work is a celebration of her identity as an Asian American artist and a call to question white colonialist notions. A member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Elissa Washuta unpacks the commodification of Native American spirituality in 'White Magic.' Through layered essays, Washuta explores the effects of colonialism on sacred practices, as well as her heritage, and her struggles with men, drugs and alcohol — and how magic runs through it all. When I first read 'Crying in H Mart' by Michelle Zauner, I stayed up all night to finish, and I wept the whole way through. In her debut memoir, Zauner (who performs under the alias Japanese Breakfast) celebrates mother Chongmi's life, and mourns her early death. Zauner's tender tribute — and reckoning of who she is without her mother — is transformative. Suleika Jaouad's 'Between Two Kingdoms' is one of those memoirs that will knock the wind out of you. Jaouad's world turns upside down when she receives a leukemia diagnosis at 23. Four years later, she has survived, but is unsure of how to reenter the world, so she set out on a 100-day road trip to find out. My copy of 'In Love' by Amy Bloom is stained with fat teardrops. After Brian Ameche, Bloom's husband, receives an Alzheimer's diagnosis, he decides to end his life on his own terms. Bloom details their journey to Switzerland, where a nonprofit offers legal suicide, and paints us full vignettes of their love story along the way. Ina Garten's 'Be Ready When the Luck Happens' is a a four-course meal — plus dessert. Garten's words sing off the page. Reading her memoir makes you feel like you're in the kitchen with her, and Jeffrey! Getting a glimpse into Garten's life story is fascinating, and her cheerful demeanor and can-do attitude will galvanize you to chase your dreams. 'Grief Is For People' by Sloane Crosley grapples with the complexities of loss. She shared a piece of advice in an opinion piece she wrote for The Times in 2024: 'Give the grieving person a reprieve from the interrogation, the lion's share of which they will conduct themselves. Give them this for the same reason you would offer to do their dishes or run their errands: so they can get some rest.' Honorable mentions: (Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to whose fees support independent bookstores.) Anyone who's anyone is going to be at The Times' Festival of Books next month, including National Book Award winner Percival Everett, 'Wicked' director Jon M. Chu and aughts pop icon Joanna 'Jojo' Levesque. Scheduled for April 26 and 27, the 30th anniversary of the annual literary festival brings more than 550 storytellers to the USC campus across seven outdoor stages and 15 indoor venues. Itching for a mystery? Here are the four best crime novels to read right now, taking you everywhere from Alaska to Maine to Kaua'i to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is pressing pause on his press tour for his new book following his vote to move forward with Republican spending legislation last week. In 'A Better Ending,' James Whitfield Thomson looks back on the events of summer 1974, when his younger sister Eileen died at the age of 27 from a gunshot wound to the chest. His sister's death was quickly ruled a suicide, although it bore all the hallmarks of murder. There have been so many noteworthy memoirs released in the last five years, and the next five promise to make this a decade filled with notable works. Here are 10 due out in 2025 we can't wait to read. See you in the stacks — or on Goodreads!
The Hill
11-03-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Amy Griffin's ‘The Tell' is Winfrey's new book club choice
NEW YORK (AP) — Venture capitalist Amy Griffin's memoir about confronting childhood trauma is Oprah Winfrey's latest book club pick. Griffin's 'The Tell' was published Tuesday. It has been promoted as a 'journey of healing and truth-telling.' 'I've spent the last five years writing, drafting and considering every word I wanted to share about my experience,' Griffin, the founder of G9 Ventures, said in a statement. 'When Oprah called, I forgot every one of those words.' Griffin founded her firm in 2017. Her investments have included Goop, Bumble and Hello Sunshine. Winfrey established her book club in 1996 and currently presents it in partnership with Starbucks.
CBS News
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Read a free excerpt of "The Tell," Oprah's latest book club pick
In an exclusive reveal on "CBS Mornings," Oprah Winfrey names "The Tell" by Amy Griffin as her latest book club selection. The memoir explores Griffin's journey through psychedelic-assisted therapy, leading to the shocking discovery of hidden childhood trauma. In this excerpt, she reflects on a lifetime of running—only to realize she was running from something buried deep within herself. I ran. I ran in the mornings and in the afternoons, and I ran at night. I ran on the dirt roads through Palo Duro Canyon, in the Panhandle of Texas, where I grew up, jumping over the cattle guards and dodging rattlesnakes, to the pasture where the horses roamed free. With no one around, I felt free too, like I'd arrived at a place where nobody could touch me. You could see for miles out to the walls of the canyon in the distance. I loved being in motion, and I was proud of the mechanics of my body. The sun would set over the mesa, turning the sky golden, then blue. The fireflies would come out. Bullfrogs croaked in the distance. And I ran. I ran at summer camp and around the track at a high school in Oklahoma when I visited my grandparents for Thanksgiving. I ran in college, on the lawn, up the rotunda steps, and in and out of the serpentine garden pathways. I ran in New York City, where I moved after school, along the West Side Highway at night, although I knew it was dangerous. After I was married, I ran in Central Park nearly every morning, while the world was still asleep, dawn just breaking over the tree line. Everyone else who was running in the park at that hour had the same furious intensity as I did. We were the dedicated ones, the ones who would make it out for a run under any circumstances, no matter how hard it was raining or snowing. I ran when traveling all over the world, never mind the jet lag. In Laos, I passed three monks meditating in a pagoda. Their robes were bright orange, simple, and beautiful. The morning light hit them just so. I thought about them as I ran through the open-air market, past wooden bowls and sewn-cloth bags, wondering what it would feel like to be that peaceful. I ran in low-ceilinged hotel gyms on old treadmills. I ran on golf courses. "How many loops did you do today?" my dad would ask when I came home for the holidays. It was important to me to know that when I arrived at breakfast on a vacation with my family, I could say: I already went for a run. I did it. Did I enjoy it? I did, on some level, but I never let myself ask that question. Running was just something I had to do, something I had always done. People, sometimes in a vaguely accusatory way, would wonder aloud about my exercise habits. "Do you run so you can eat the chocolate cake?" a friend of a friend asked at a dinner party. She eyed the last bit of whipped cream on my fork as I set it down on my dessert plate. I felt exposed, even though she had misidentified my motivation. It wasn't about the cake. I always ate the cake. I ran because I was afraid of what I would feel if I sat still. I was plagued by injuries; I had surgery on my lower back, then eventually on each of my hips. One rainy afternoon several years ago, I went to see a physical therapist a friend had recommended to me. I was in a rush, bolting through the city to make it to my appointment on time. My nerves were shot by the time I arrived. The physical therapist's office was in a fourth-floor walk- up; I could see the elevator was rickety, so I took the stairs, as I often did, since I didn't like confined spaces. As I lay face down on a massage table, the black pleather covered by a thin sheet of exam paper, she pressed her hand onto the left side of my lower back, which made me flinch reflexively. "It seems like you're doing too much," she said as we spoke about my lifestyle. Her voice was soft and gentle. "Do you always move this fast?" "I don't know," I said. "Your body is starting to break down," she said. "I think today we should take it easy. See how your body responds to gentle stretching and stillness." "No," I said. "I need to move." I became aware of a heavy, nauseated feeling in my stomach. There was a hollowness in my head, a vague buzzing in my ears. "You're not listening to yourself," she said. "There's something your body is telling you that you don't want to hear. What is it?" Suddenly I felt tight, zipped up, locked away. I did not have an answer for her, or if I did, I knew that I could not put it into words. She was right, of course; there was some-thing. I looked around the room to distract myself. I studied the books on her shelf— had I read any of them? There was a cup of warm tea steaming beside me, but the air was cold. Sunlight peeked through the window behind her, streaking the floor in bars of light. It looked familiar somehow, like something I'd seen in a dream or a distant memory. "Amy?" she said. "Are you all right?" I felt wetness on my cheeks. I pressed my hands to my face, which was streaked with tears. She looked concerned. "I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to upset you." "No, I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know why I'm crying. I'm so embarrassed." I composed myself and thanked her before heading back out into the bustle of the city. I never went to see her again. Yet I thought about her for years— what she'd asked me, and how it must have felt for her to have this strange woman crying in her space over such an innocuous question. She had observed something in me that I could not see myself. It was like I had a tell— a giveaway, a gesture, the way poker players do, that indicated I was hiding something. Mine was my need to push harder, to run faster, to keep moving. My fear of slowing down long enough to listen to what my body might say. She could see that there was something so deep within me that I did not even know it was there, a presence with no name or shape. Not an awareness but instead the absence of awareness. The way it felt to know that there was something about myself I did not know. . . . What is it like to hide something from yourself? Even after all this time, I cannot explain it. We talk about people being in denial as if it were a choice, a voluntary state. Like you can just snap your fingers and it's over, easy as waking up. But it's not like that. Denial is not a switch that can be turned off and on. Denial is a glass case that must be shattered before you realize you were trapped inside it in the first place. For many years, there were stories I could not tell. Secrets I guarded so tightly that I'd forgotten where I put them. Truths I ran circles around, believing that if I ran fast enough, they wouldn't catch up with me. I know now that this was an act of self-delusion. The physical therapist had touched a nerve, but she hadn't quite asked the right question. She'd wondered why I was moving so fast—why I couldn't seem to stop running. For such a long time, people discussed my running. It took up so much space in my life. And yet nobody ever thought to ask:
