A moderately intriguing book that may cause readers to think twice about their actions—but that may also leave them largely...
A succinct look at the junction point of psychotherapy and Buddhism.
In this how-to self-help guide, psychiatrist Epstein (The Trauma of Everyday Life, 2013, etc.) attempts to find similarities between Buddhism and psychotherapy, though he never tries to equate them, and, in doing so, qualify them as the same practices. “The ego needs our help,” he writes, “If we want a more satisfying existence, we have to teach it to loosen its grip.” So begins the author’s efforts to understand what practical measures exist in both practices to help us cope with the weight of our selves. In undertaking such a complex question, Epstein makes it clear that there is only one way to comprehend this exercise: “Awakening does not make the ego disappear; it changes one’s relationship to it.” To reach such states of wellness, the author explains that we must reposition our attitudes toward the vicissitudes of life, opting for a series of approaches: Right View (be present in the now), Right Motivation (“we do not have to be at the mercy of our neuroses”), Right Speech (how we talk to ourselves), Right Action (“not acting destructively”), Right Livelihood (“avoiding…deceit or exploitation”), Right Effort (do not allow the ego to “sabotage its goal”), Right Mindfulness (“a dispassionate knowing of thoughts…as they come and go”), and, finally, Right Concentration (“temporarily dispelling the repetitive thoughts of the everyday mind”). To illustrate these mindsets, Epstein sprinkles the text with personal anecdotes, which are alternately pedantic and useful in visualizing his arguments. The author often refers to his patients and his friends to demonstrate how one mindset can quickly change to a healthier one, though it is clear he has taken himself as the primary example, with Freud and Donald Winnicott as theoretical foundations.
A moderately intriguing book that may cause readers to think twice about their actions—but that may also leave them largely unchanged.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-56432-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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