A welcome collection of excerpts and essays from the work of the celebrated psychoanalyst (A Way of Looking at Things, 1987, etc.) who died in 1994. Coles, the eminent colleague and biographer of Erikson (Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson, p. 506), divides this volume into five sections: Coles’s Introduction; On Children, Nearby and Far Away; On Psychoanalysis and Human Development; On Leaders; and On Moral Matters. The most extensive selections are from the now-classic Childhood and Society and Young Man Luther. For those who have never read Erikson—or have not read him in a while (his last book appeared a dozen years ago)—the compilation vividly illustrates the vast scope of his thought, explains the elements of his theories of development, and displays the language of an author whose best writing was often as lyrical as it was instructive. Commenting on his own profession, for example, Erikson writes: “A man, I will submit, could begin to study man’s inner world only by appointing his own neurosis that angel with whom he must wrestle and whom he must not let go until his blessing, too, has been given.” Erikson writes about a dazzling array of subjects—from the Lakota Sioux to Tom Sawyer (whose behavior at the fence-whitewashing Erikson playfully explores) to Martin Luther, Gandhi, and Jesus. He studies the small as well as the great, as in his account of a Yurok “doctor,” an aged woman of the tribe, who sucks from the navel of a disturbed child the pain that afflicts him. Erikson’s achievement, as presented by Coles, readily justifies such occasional excesses as his occasional descent into psychobabble: “A man should act in such a way that he actualizes both in himself and in the other such forces as are ready for a heightened mutuality.— Edited with intelligence and vision—a volume that confirms Erikson’s honored place in the pantheon of psychological theorists.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-393-04845-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.
It isn’t only computers that have memory problems. Just ask anyone over a certain age—or take a look at this entertaining new book.
As the title indicates, Schachter (Psychology/Harvard Univ.) describes seven generic failings to which everyone’s memory is prone. Transience is the loss of details over time; everyone remembers last night’s dinner better than that of a week ago, and that of a year ago is often entirely forgotten. Absentmindedness is the familiar inability to remember where you left your car keys or whether you took your medicine. One of the most frustrating is blocking (the “it’s right on the tip of my tongue”) phenomenon, in which a familiar word or name refuses to emerge from memory (often coming back in the middle of the night). Also common is misattribution, for example crediting Sean Connery for a role played by some other actor. Suggestibility is the tendency to adopt and hold onto false memories suggested by some other outside influence (such as a leading question) or to recall feeling at the time of a past event an emotion only experienced much later. A variety of biases lead us to reconstruct the past to match current beliefs, or to place ourselves at the center of events in which we were minor participants. Finally, there is persistence, the inability to forget even years later some traumatic event such as a rejection or a faux pas. For each of these traits, the author suggests causes as well as potential remedies: gingko biloba for transience, for example. In a summary chapter, Schacter argues that each of these failures is in fact an aspect of some positive trait without which memory would be far less valuable.
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-04019-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
To exorcise the demons of irrationality, turn to this rigorous—if overzealous—study of everyday logic. Cognitive illusions—like optical illusions—hold us in their thrall, says Piattelli-Palmarini (Cognitive Science/Institute San Raffaele, Milan). But theoretical breakthroughs in cognitive science provide revolutionary new avenues for thought. Addressing everyone who wants to make more rational decisions, Piattelli- Palmarini unveils the ``discovery'' of the ``cognitive unconscious.'' This term, with its nod to Freud, refers to the reflexive patterns of reasoning in which we engage unreflectively, even though counterintuitive but logically correct thinking would serve us better. Asked, for instance, which outcome is more likely in a coin flip, ``heads-heads-heads'' or ``heads-tails-heads- tails,'' most people use incorrect logic to conclude that the latter is more likely (in fact, ``the longer the sequence, the less probable it is''). Piattelli-Palmarini explores the ``tunnels'' of cognitive illusion, showing how familiar problems, (drawn from the realms of medicine, demography, economics, and gambling) flummox most people. Then he corrects common misapprehensions, mapping the rational terrain that lies outside these tunnels, even making an arcane but crucial fact about statistics clear to the general reader. By revealing how most respondents err in, for instance, guessing someone's profession based on a personality profile, Piattelli-Palmarini rigorously defines the rules of probability and deduction. Some will object that what he calls ``irrationality'' is itself a function of the abstraction of such problems, but he vigorously defends cognitive science against such arguments. Perhaps less defensible is his pretense that its ideas represent a revolutionary breakthrough; the issues he raises are, after all, part of a 2,000-year-old philosophical debate. Whether or not his grand claims are justified, as a primer for problem-solvers, this book has great merit.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58126-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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