Thoughtful advice for personal growth.
Guidance on the road to wellness.
Frustrated with traditional therapy, which “was designed to make it impossible for patients to change,” psychotherapist Stutz argues that facing life’s challenges requires developing one’s inner energy and acknowledging “the life forces of the universe.” As he argued in his previous book, The Tools, individuals have the power to effect productive transformations in their lives if they make a serious and ongoing determination to do so. He emphasizes the importance of a transcendent connection “to higher life forces,” which need not derive from organized religion, but must nurture our feeling of faith, “the force that gives us peace and certainty regardless of our outer circumstances.” Stutz cautions against believing that happiness can be achieved through accumulating wealth, renouncing responsibility, or indulging in pleasure. Real freedom “is exactly the opposite. It is developed through submission to the three inescapable aspects of reality: pain, uncertainty, and effort.” He underscores the importance of effort in living creatively, giving up destructive habits to set an example for one’s children, and practicing self-love: “the process of accepting the most inferior part of yourself.” Love is central to overcoming anger, as well—projecting “a loving energy to someone who has hurt you is called active love, and is the highest stage of selfhood.” To counter negative thinking, Stutz advises directing one’s inner energy to gratitude for gifts large and small that come from “the dynamic spiritual organism that underlies reality.” He offers advice on parenting young children and surly teenagers, marriage, friendships, work problems, and relationships with elders. Self-control, discipline, and empathy are as vital for positive change as connection to a “holistic universe.” “If you find yourself without spiritual direction,” he writes, “without interest in anything creative, without involvement in a community, without deep relationships, you are not moving forward.”
Thoughtful advice for personal growth.Pub Date: Nov. 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593731086
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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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