A fascinating, if terrifying, look at psychopaths: the often charming, glib, sane-seeming people who rape and murder—and rip- off S&Ls—without a second's thought because they utterly lack the emotions that add up to the defining human characteristic of conscience. Hare (Psychology/University of British Columbia) gives thumbnail sketches of one psychopath after another—from John Wayne Gacy, the serial murderer who liked to entertain children as ``Pogo the Clown,'' to mere kids who torture and kill not only animals but other children. The author isolates the essential traits of the psychopath by using a ``psychopath checklist,'' a system of assessment he's devised during ten years of clinical practice with psychopaths in Canadian prisons. Again and again, Hare's rating system has verified a definition devised in 1941 by psychologist Hervey Cleckley, who concluded that psychopaths lack all personal values: ``It is impossible for [the psychopath] to take even a slight interest in the tragedy or joy or the striving of humanity as presented in serious literature or art,'' Cleckley wrote. ``He is also indifferent to all these matters in life itself.'' Hare cites provocative new evidence that the brain function of psychopaths may differ from that of normal adults: It seems that the speech of psychopaths is controlled by both hemispheres rather than by just the left, as is typical. In addition, ``neither side of the [psychopath's brain] is typical in the processes of emotion.'' While all the implications of psychopathic brain function remain unclear, Hare makes a strong case for the view that psychopaths are born, not made—and that, crucially, little can be done to unmake them. While advocating the firm training of psychopaths to consider rationally the outcome of their actions- -substituting head for heart—the author warns that denying the incorrigible nature of these cold, calculating beings will allow even more of them to prey on society. A chilling, eye-opening report—and a call to action.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-671-73261-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993
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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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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