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THE GROWTH OF THE MIND

AND THE ENDANGERED ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE

A plea that we should put our money where our mouth is in the service of raising emotionally secure and healthy children. Psychiatrist Greenspan (George Washington Univ. School of Medicine; The Essential Partnership, 1989, etc.) offers a multistage theory of emotional development that somewhat parallels Erik Erikson's theory of emotional growth. Greenspan argues that developmental theories based on the separation of reason and emotion are misguided: You can't have one without the other in the nurturing of a whole and healthy adult. As cognitive development proceeds from sensation-seeking to ``operational'' thinking, so emotional development proceeds from ``making sense of sensation'' through organizing symbols based on cues from caregivers to the ability to recognize and reflect on feelings and thoughts. Greenspan devotes the first part of the book to defining the six stages of emotional development that form the basic structure of our mind and tracing how they influence intelligence and awareness. The later chapters are devoted to tracing the consequences of stunted emotional development, from high divorce rates to street violence and even war. Along the way Greenspan discusses how mental health professionals, educators, and social service workers frequently miss the boat in trying to help troubled children and families. He puts a heavy stress on parental responsibility, emphasizing that emotional—and hence intellectual—development must begin with an intense but sensitive and flexible one-to-one relationship between caregiver and infant, and asserting that the same caregiver should be present throughout infancy and childhood. Nevertheless, even teenagers stuck at early stages of emotional development—unable to empathize with another, for instance—can pass along to reflective maturity with the help of a mentoring relationship that provides the requisite intensity and consistency. Adds weight to recent efforts to legitimize early emotions as something far more than elements of a rich (but unproductive) fantasy life.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-201-48302-5

Page Count: 432

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1996

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

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

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THE LAWS OF HUMAN NATURE

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

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