A capable explanation of a complicated field.
Thorough yet concise history of the talking cure.
“Of course you have to start with Freud,” writes Engel (Health Care Policy and Management/Seton Hall Univ.; The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS, 2006, etc.). No matter how modern psychology may attempt to distance itself from its out-of-fashion master, there is no escaping Freud’s work in psychoanalysis. For better or for worse, it indelibly shaped not only the enterprise of psychotherapy but also the ways in which people think about themselves and the workings of their inner lives. Engel quickly moves on with an outline of the extended turf wars over who had the better claim to the promotion of sanity and mental health: The medically trained psychoanalysts with their biological understanding of psychopathology? The research-trained doctorates whose field had its roots in psychological testing? The social workers who brought with them an emphasis on understanding the context in which mental illness occurred? Half a century after these questions were first raised, many of them are still debated. Engel also walks the reader through such subjects as the growing recognition of alcoholism as a disease and the foundation of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous as extra-therapeutic means of dealing with it; lobotomies and other surgical interventions; the development of vastly different schools of psychological thought, from cognitive-behavioral therapy and humanistic therapy to the current trend in “eclectic” therapies. The book closes with the rise of pharmacotherapy and the decline of traditional psychoanalysis. In the final chapter, Engel describes the frightening impact of managed care, which effectively bars psychoanalysis for all but the wealthiest patients and pushes those suffering from a variety of maladies to try less time-consuming and costly pharmacological remedies first. This despite the fact, he notes, that multiple studies have shown psychotherapy—of many different kinds—to be as effective or more effective than pills alone.
A capable explanation of a complicated field.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-592-40380-6
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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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