A psychologist puts humanity on the client’s couch, but a cure seems unlikely.
Thoughts on the human condition from a cognitive psychologist–turned–armchair philosopher.
The thesis of Deary’s (Health Psychology/Northumbria Univ.) debut, the first book in the How to Live trilogy, is simple: As creatures of habit, we have arranged our physical, emotional and interpersonal environments to support these habits, a mindset that makes change especially difficult. The author takes this basic idea and runs with it in so many directions that the main message is intermittently lost amid the tangential evidence. Deary’s early examples of mankind’s penchant for treading the beaten path, even if a better route is clearly available, are clear: He writes about landscape designers whose artfully arranged pathways are ignored by the masses marching to and from the market in a straight line. There’s little chance that anyone will take Robert Frost’s celebrated road “less traveled.” The irony is that Deary himself asks us to walk on the waysides rather than stride efficiently from one point to another. Much of the text is given over to movie references of uncertain merit—Adam Sandler features largely here—and interesting, if strained, literary comparisons. Putting aside the question of whether Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Stephen King’s The Shining have much in common, one leaves these discussions wondering what impact Deary’s observations actually have on his central question. Readers looking for an organized presentation of ideas and supporting studies will be disappointed in the relative lack of scientific support here, and the author footnotes some ideas but not others. How We Break and How We Mend are the next two books in the trilogy, for those who want to see where Deary’s stream-of-consciousness musings will lead.
A psychologist puts humanity on the client’s couch, but a cure seems unlikely.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0374172107
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
IN THE NEWS
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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