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THE TALKING CURE

THE SCIENCE BEHIND PSYCHOTHERAPY

``I am a microsurgeon of the mind,'' announces the author, in this unusually engaging presentation of her theory about how psychotherapy alters the way the brain operates and thus how the mind works. Vaughan, a psychiatrist and NIMH research fellow at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, is a gifted explicator of scientific concepts. Here she draws on research in cognitive science, neurobiology, and developmental psychology to back up her theory about the effects of psychotherapy on the human brain. Vaughan proposes that a network of neurons in the cerebral cortex functions as a ``story synthesizer'' that shapes our approach to relationships in daily life, and that the connections between these neurons are rewired through intensive, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. Well-crafted descriptions of sessions with patients in her private practice provide the framework within which she develops her theory and describes the research that she believes substantiates it. Data about the neural pathways of sea slugs, anxiety in monkeys, and the neurobiology of infants alternate with passages revealing her thoughts about and interactions with her patients. Clear and precise when it needs to be, Vaughan's writing is informal without being chatty. She has the knack of seeming to converse directly with the reader, and she can turn a memorable phrase: ``For most people . . . medication changes how they feel, but psychotherapy is what changes what their lives are like.'' What she is doing here is fusing two positions in psychiatry—the biological approach, which explains mental disorders in terms of the brain and advocates medication to correct the disorder, and the psychological approach, which sees talk therapy as the answer. Whether her theory meets with the approval of her professional colleagues remains to be seen. Meanwhile, she has given the general reader a highly readable explanation of how one psychotherapist views her work. Especially interesting to those who have experienced psychotherapy or are considering it.

Pub Date: April 14, 1997

ISBN: 0-399-14229-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997

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MASTERY

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

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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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