A steady stream of insights into the psychology and neurological mechanisms of wise decision-making and the researchers...
A veteran science writer delivers a dense but illuminating combination of philosophical ideas and hard research.
Laboratories study intellect, emotion and ethics, writes Hall (Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness, and Success of Boys-and the Men They Become, 2006, etc.), but only recently have scientists turned their attention to wisdom, which may be defined as using all three to make a sensible decision. The author begins by sketching the teachings of history's first great wise men (Socrates, Buddha and Jesus) not forgetting Confucius's admonition that paths to wisdom include reflection (the noblest), imitation (the easiest) and experience (the bitterest). In the pre–CT scan era of the 1970s, a graduate student, Vivian Clayton, published pioneering research. Her first study, aimed at lawyers, attempted to determine if wisdom increases with age. The results were inconclusive; later studies suggested that it's important but not essential. This and her later papers produced a considerable buzz at psychological meetings, but she failed to receive research grants and left academia in 1982. By this time the ball was rolling, aided by swelling scientific fascination with the brain and dazzling high-tech instruments to examine it. It turns out that patterns of knowledge and judgment typical of wisdom appear in adolescence and don't measurably increase over time. Exposure to adversity such as war or personal loss helps, although it's not a good idea to have too much. Those searching for easy tips on achieving wisdom will not find them here, but diligent readers will be rewarded.
A steady stream of insights into the psychology and neurological mechanisms of wise decision-making and the researchers uncovering them.Pub Date: March 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-26910-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
Gray (Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, not reviewed) offers more of what he calls ``advanced relationship skills,'' a delightful term that says all that need be said about the author's hyper-instrumental, connect-the-dots approach to thinking about human relationships. Pull-quotes—perhaps indicating that not even Gray expects people to actually read the rest of the text—appear on nearly every page: ``Men must learn to use their ancient hunting skills of silently watching and waiting when listening to their mates'' or ``Fire gazing is the most ancient and potent of male stress relievers; when men today stare into the TV, they are, in effect, mindlessly looking into the fire.'' (This raises the question of whether there were beer commercials in Peking Man's first barbecue.) Gray does cover some of the same turf that Deborah Tannen does about differences between the way men and women speak and listen. And it's not all horse chips and piffle. But there comes a point when it's reasonable to ask whether all those horrid Greek myths full of rage and dismemberment and blindness weren't a better way to think about relations between the sexes than self- help books. (First printing of 500,000; first serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild split main selection; $350,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-017162-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
Memories of 25 years on the couch make for a curiously compelling recounting of the rewards and shortcomings of psychoanalysis. Chernin (Crossing the Border, 1994, etc.), herself a psychoanalyst, dives into recollections of time spent with three analysts over a quarter of a century. Using traditional analytic tools—primarily association—she recalls to life the passionate young woman in Vienna who sought intellectual and sexual adventure; the fragmented, newly divorced young mother in California who found in her first analyst a target of devotion; the emerging adult who found a life's work and a credo of bisexuality with her second analyst, and the mature woman who broke with classical ``interpretive'' psychoanalysis through her third analyst. All of these rewarding if drawn-out probes are tracked by a shadow self that has ``descended, as if in a diving bell, to uncharted regions.'' It is not Chernin's theories, but her ability to lead the reader into that ``teeming, fecund inner world,'' which rarely surfaced in the analysts' offices, that make this book appealing. With the help of yet another analyst who monitors her clinical work, she comes to believe that analysis is not the science of mining the psyche, but the art of storytelling. The ``patient'' molds a unique story for the ``doctor'' to appreciate without fitting either the tale or the telling into an established framework. Whether about infants as bisexual beings or adults as their own best storytelling analysts, Chernin's sudden ``insights'' echo ideas that have been chewed over since Freud (and long before, if you count mythology). Still, she pleads for respect, citing those insights as hers for the moment, invested with the ``aha'' of personal discovery—like a child who finally understands that c-a-t is more than squiggly lines. Despite her angry critique of traditional psychoanalysis, Freud remains a hero and psychoanalysis has ``a lasting place among the major achievements of our culture.'' There are echos of Erica Jong in this book's naive self- absorption, but Chernin's hard-core fans will find it rich with discovery.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017118-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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