William James, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin define the origins of the western traditions of psychology, psychoanalysis, and evolutionary affective neuroscience. Our understanding of current mind-brain research and its relation to literature depends on having a strong grip on these landmark texts:

William James—The Principles of Psychology (1890) (Especially Ch 9: "The Stream of Thought"; Ch 10: "The Consciousness of Self"; Ch 19: "The Perception of things; Ch 25: "The Emotions")

Sigmund Freud—The New Introductory Lectures (1933) (Especially "Revision of the Theory of Dreams; "Anxiety and Instinctual Life", "Femininity"); Civilization and Its Discontents (1930); "Mourning and Melancholia" (1915))

Charles Darwin—On the Origin of Species (1859) (Especially "Introduction"; Ch 3: "The Struggle for Existence"; Ch 4: "The Nature of Selection"; Ch 6: "Difficulties of the Theory")

Charles Darwin, The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1886) (Especially "General Principles" Ch 1 — 3)

Essays by leading authorities of the brain/mind collected in the two special issues introduce with lucidity and scope the general principles that govern each area of neuroscience as well as situate them in the history of western intellectual thought:

“The Brain” (1998): A special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Especially Vernon B. Mountcastle's 'Brain Science at the Century's Ebb', Gerald M Edelman's 'Building a Picture of the Brain' and Andy Clark's 'Where Brain, Body, and the World Collide')

“What is the Brain Good For?” (2015): A special issue of Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Especially Tom Albright's 'Perceiving', Joseph E LeDoux's 'Feelings: What Are They & How Does the Brain Make Them?' and Larry R Squire and John T Wixted's 'Remembering')

Field-defining writers and research on Affective Neuroscience, Behavioral Neurology and its practices, Memory, and Reading, New Directions in the Brain and Mental Health:

Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error (1994)

Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience (1998) (Especially Ch 1: "Affective Neuroscience"; Part Ill: "The Social Emotions": Ch 12 — 16)

Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (2009)

Daniel Schachter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (2001)

Henrich, Heine, Norenzayan, "The Weirdest People in the World"

Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depresssion, and Transcendence (Especially Prologue "A New Door"; Ch 5 "The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics"; Ch 6 "The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy"; Epilogue "In Praise of Neural Diversity")

Seminal works by psychologists, philosophers and linguists on Phenomenology and Skepticism and their evolution—Enactivism and the Embodied Mind and Feeling Body:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (1945)

(Especially "Introduction"; Part Il: "The World as Perceived)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from The Visible and the Invisible (1968): "The Intertwining—The Chiasm" 

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (1991) (revised edition 2016)

Stanley Cavell, from Must We Mean What We Say? (1968): "Knowing and Acknowledging"

Thomas Nagel, “What is it Like to be a Bat?" (1974)

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980)

Giovanna Colombetti, The Feeling Body (2013) (Especially Ch 1 "Primordial Affectivity"; Ch 2 "The Emotions: Existing Accounts and Their Problems"; Ch 6 "Ideas for an Affective 'Neuro-physio-phenomenology'"; Ch 7 "Feeling Others")

Foundational philosophic writers and works on Aesthetics, Embodiment, and their relation to Affect:

Suzanne Langer, Feeling and Form (1953) (Especially Part I; Part Il Chapters 13 — 19)

Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge (1990): Introduction: "Form and Content"

Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain (1986) (Especially "Pain and Imagining; "The Structure of Torture")

Elaine Scarry, Dreaming By the Book (2008) (Especially "On Vivacity"; "On Solidity")

A spectrum of the range and evolution of contemporary psychoanalytic research, practice, and approaches by some of its great innovators:

Jacques Lacan, Écrits (1966, first English edition 2006) (Especially "The Mirror Stage"; "Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis"; "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis")

Jacques Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-1960) (Especially Section 2: "The Problem of Sublimation"; Section 5: "The Tragic Dimension of Analytical Experience")

D. W. Winnicott, "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena—A Study of the First Not-Me Possession" (1953)

D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (1971)

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

John Bowlby, "Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood" (1960)

John Bowlby, Attachment (1969): "Preface"; Ch 11 "The Child's Tie to His Mother"; Ch 12 "Nature and Function of Attachment Behavior"; Separation (1973): "Forward"; Ch 1: "Prototypes of Human Sorrow"; Loss (1980): "Forward"; Ch I "The Trauma of Loss"; Ch 25 "Young Children's Responses in the Light of Early Cognitive Development"; "Epilogue"

Daniel N. Stern, The Interpersonal World of the Infant (1986) (Especially "Forward"; "Introduction"; Part One: "The Questions and Their Background"; and from Part Two: Ch 7 "The Sense of a Subjective Self: Il. Affect Attunement" and Ch 8: "The Sense of a Verbal Self)

Stern et al, "Non-Interpretive Mechanisms in Psychoanalytic Therapy: The 'Something More' Than Interpretation" (1998)

Christopher Bollas, "The Aesthetic Moment and the Search for Transformation" (1978)

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982) (Especially Ch 1: "Approaching Abjection")

George Bermudez, "The Vulnerable Self and the Vulnerable Community: A Challenge/Problem for Psychoanalysis?" (Online Journal Other/Wise)

Bracha Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace (2006) (Especially Ch 1 : "The Matrixial Gaze"; Ch 3: "Wit(h)nessing Trauma and the Matrixial Gaze")

Jessica Benjamin, from Like Subjects, Love Objects (1995): "Recognition and Destruction: An Outline of Intersubjectivity"

Jessica Benjamin, Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (2018) (Especially "Introduction"; Ch 1: "Beyond Doer and Done to: an intersubjective view of thirdness")

Veronica Abney, "African-American Psychoanalysts in the United States: Their Stories and Presence in the Field" (Unpublished dissertation, selections)

A sample of the significant work currently being done in the medical humanities prompting evolution and change in the practice of medicine and in our understanding of mental health and neurodiversity through the interactive engagements and accounts of medical research and practice with narrative, memoir, and the verbal arts:

Rita Charon, Narrative Medicine (2008) (Especially Ch 5 "The Patient, the Body and the Self"; Ch 10 "The Bioethics of Narrative Medicine")

Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (1993) (Especially chapters 1 — 4)

Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (2015) (Especially Ch 1 1, 12)