Siegel (Psychiatry/UCLA; Mindsight, 2010, etc.) and Bryson dissect the different sections of the brain and offer useful parental tools that can limit temper tantrums as well as ensure well-rounded development.
The authors, both of Los Angeles’ Mindsight Institute, reveal 12 “whole-brain” strategies the entire family should implement as part of a holistic approach to child development. They suggest that the more we know about how the human brain operates, the more we can do to control it in difficult times. Most readers are already aware, for example, that there is a “right brain” and a “left brain.” But what about the “upstairs” and the “downstairs?" When we’re at our best, all of these parts work together harmoniously. Tantrums and meltdowns occur when one part of the brain temporarily takes over, causing “dis-integration.” To remedy this, the authors suggest 12 strategies designed to “re-integrate” the brain. These suggestions can also benefit adults who are prone to “dis-integration” as well. The authors include a fair amount of brain science, but they present it for both adult and child audiences. To facilitate a greater understanding of the process for the entire family, the authors summarize each strategy into comics form at the end of each chapter for easy comprehension. The appendix includes a handy reference guide that provides a quick refresher course when needed. Useful child-rearing resource for the entire family.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-553-80791-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where...
A head-spinning guide to supercharged meditation.
If life is like a box of chocolates, to quote the philosopher Forrest Gump, then, to quote Siegel (Clinical Psychiatry/UCLA; Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, 2016, etc.), “consciousness is like a container of water”—undrinkable if a tablespoon of salt is put into an espresso cup but just fine if the container is a bathtub. And why is it like a container of water? That’s never quite explained, except to say that cultivating the mind to maximize awareness makes our experience of things different. That heightened experience can be a deeply positive thing, for, as the author points out, neural integration makes problem solving easier, and “open awareness” boosts the immune system. Siegel delivers a “Wheel of Awareness” to visualize the process, with attention as the spoke, knowing or awareness as the hub, and “knowns” on the rim. But those knowns can be awareness-inhibiting prejudices as well as hard-won knowledge of how the world works. Siegel favors a murky, circular style: “When we open awareness to sensation, such as that of the breath, we become a conduit directing the flow of something into our awareness.” Well, yes, that’s how breath works, but Siegel means something different—“enabling the sensation of the breath at the nostrils to flow into consciousness.” Further along, the author complicates the picture: “And so both focal attention involving consciousness and nonfocal attention without consciousness involve an evaluative process that places meaning and significance on energy patterns and their informational value as they arise moment by moment.” Can there be meaning without consciousness? That’s a question for Heidegger, but suffice it to say that it’s a clear if empty statement relative to the main, which is laden with jargon, neologisms (“plane-dominant sweep”; “SOCK: sensation, observation, conceptualization, and knowing”), and lots of New Age cheerleading.
If Charles Reich is your bag, then this may be your book. If you want your neuroscience qua science, then head over to where Damasio and Dennett are shelved.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-99304-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
A psychiatrist with a specialty in international relations provides a timely and insightful investigation into group identity and ethnic violence. As a native Turkish Cypriot, Volkan (Life After Loss, 1993) brings a personal as well as professional understanding to the question of ``why, beyond their individualized motivations, people kill for the sake of protecting and maintaining their large-group identities.'' Although geared toward diplomats and academics, this study is readily accessible to the lay reader. The bulk of it is comprised of analyses of specific ethnic struggles in Europe and the Middle East—between Egyptians and Israelis, Bosnian Serbs and Muslims, Turks and Greeks on Cyprus—as well as of the newly independent or democratized countries of Latvia, Estonia, and Romania. Interspersed throughout these chapters are sections that provide the terminology and theoretical foundations for Volkan's thought-provoking analyses of specific situations. He introduces several useful concepts for understanding the formation of large-group identities and what motivates such groups to exaggerate their ethnocentrism: ethnic tent (Volkan's metaphor to illustrate large-group psychology); we-ness (a shared reservoir of ethnic identifiers that define a group); chosen glory (a historical event that induces feelings of triumph and thus bolsters a group's self-esteem); chosen trauma (the collective memory of a past calamity that remains dormant but may later be reactivated and distort perceptions); time-collapse (in which the feelings and fantasies about a past shared trauma are projected onto the current situation); psychological DNA of a group (as kept alive by literature, art, song, e.g., the Battle of Kosovo is psychological DNA among Serbs). Volkan is an astute observer of both the small detail and the broader canvas of human behavior. An urgent study of what transforms ethnic pride into violence against others.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-374-11449-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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