Author of biographies of Hannah Arendt (1982) and Anna Freud (1988) as well as the novel Virgil (1983), Young-Bruehl hits the ground running in this demanding approach to understanding creativity. Proceeding from issues raised during her biographical research work—the very different styles of her two celebrated subjects—she attempts to construct a typology that resists common assumptions about creativity, especially the idea of a single unifying factor, and argues instead for an intricate and diverse configuration of traits and motivations that illumines the development of creative minds. Young-Bruehl first refers to ancient Greek theories and the dualistic European philosophers, then begins a trellislike elaboration of her own pluralistic scheme featuring three broad character-types, or ways of being creative: the artisanal/sexual, the spiritual, and the political. She amplifies these concepts in a variety of ways, leaning heavily on psychodynamic insights (id-, superego-, and ego-dominated characters), referring to particular biographers' ways of presenting their subjects (one of the book's more accessible parts), and straining to relate and balance issues relevant to each part of the superstructure—issues of cultural significance, gender, and personal history among them. Many of her observations are apt, lucid, and well supported, e.g., on themes in Freud's writings about Leonardo da Vinci and Moses. She offers some memorable quotations for verification, such as Marguerite Yourcenar's comment on the purifying element involved in her own writing technique: ``One sheds one's clothing in order to be bronzed by the sun's rays.'' And she ably dramatizes the influence of late adolescence on her subjects' works. Unfortunately, Young-Bruehl's text has a fudgelike density, with the highly hyphenated prose frequently distracting from a clear presentation of ideas. She suggests that this work is ``a map for further inquiry'' but its conclusions are less than compelling, and most readers, even psychodynamically oriented ones, will find a number of serious roadblocks here.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-415-90369-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Routledge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
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
IN THE NEWS
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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