Pushing the envelope, a psychotherapist explores a world where psychology, the supernatural, and spirituality intersect. Heckler (Waking Up Alive, 1994), a director of the Hakomi Institute of San Francisco and a professor of counseling and psychology at John F. Kennedy University, interviewed and recorded the stories of people whose lives were transformed by an unexpected happening. He asked his subjects to characterize their lives before the event, to detail the event itself, and then to describe the changes, both internal and external, that followed. Nine of these stories are reported here, told in large part by the subjects (identified by first names only) in their own words. The unexpected happenings range from the drama of Rebecca’s survival of a storm at sea and Ben’s brush with death in a car crash to the subtlety of Christopher’s glimpse of a church against a night sky and Brooke’s visualization of musical notation in a French cafÇ. Many involve visions and voices: A grandfather figure appears before Tara as she’s cleaning house in Washington, telling her to come to Taos, and Jesus confronts Charlotte in her gym, telling her to exercise an hour a day. What to make of all this? Heckler sees a six-step pattern of personal evolution: the slumber of everyday life, the call of the unexpected event, an incubation period in which the event is assimilated, followed by a search for its meaning, a leap, i.e., life-altering decision, and finally an integration phase in which the individual enters a new life with a greater sense of purpose, control, and a profound awareness of life’s possibilities. Heckler expresses no skepticism about his interviewees— stories and even accepts the idea that time and space can be altered by human intervention. Those who find shamanic flights on the backs of eagles credible may find value in Heckler’s interpretations; those requiring more rigorous science will not be persuaded.(Book-of the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-15-100341-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
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
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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