Compassionate and, perhaps for some readers, encouraging.
A sympathetic exploration of the misunderstood phenomenon of women and "the stubbornness of romantic obsession."
Phillips (Journalism/SUNY, New Paltz; Public Radio: Behind the Voices, 2006) believes studying female romantic obsession can increase our understanding of relationships and gender in a way "that tamer emotions rarely do,” and she proposes that a woman's fixation on someone who doesn't love her back need not be altogether negative. Through the words of historical writers (including Sappho, Ovid, Miguel de Cervantes, Carl Jung and others), studies by behavioral, social and forensic psychologists, and dozens of examples from women (both straight and gay) who shared their stories with her, Phillips argues that lovelorn women—who, she writes, experience unreciprocated love differently than men and are underexamined, perhaps due to the fact that only 1 out of 10 stalkers is female—can ultimately benefit from this "potentially meaningful and life-changing" passion. Using accessible language and terminology for lay readers, the author offers an empathetic, below-the-surface examination of what the "beloved" means to the scorned woman. Phillips responsibly acknowledges and doesn't ignore how "aggressive unwanted sexual pursuit"—including her own experience as an unwanted woman engaging in such invasive behavior, which she recounts in depth—can disrupt and ruin the well-beings of both the pursuer and the object of her attention. In fact, the confessed aggressive actions of some of these women are frightening and extreme, but the author also presents a compelling argument that, in such a heightened emotional state, women might redirect that passion to transcend limits and push toward action and attainment of a specific goal. In this way, the beloved may become a muse, and wanting someone you can't have doesn’t have to be necessarily pitiful or tragic.
Compassionate and, perhaps for some readers, encouraging.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0062114013
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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
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IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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