Following in the footsteps of Carol Gilligan, a study showing that boys learn to hide their real selves and may suffer from it more than girls do. Schools, parents, and society fail boys by demanding that they fit into an unwritten “Boy Code,” says psychiatrist Pollack (co-director of the Center for Men at Harvard Medical School). The code challenges boys to be self-reliant and confident, risk takers, powerful and dominant and unemotional. The toughening process begins as early as preschool, when according to Pollack, boys are encouraged to separate from their parents—in particular their mothers—far too early and are shamed into hiding their fears and sorrow. The shaming process (don’t be a —wimp,— don’t be a —wuss—) continues into adulthood, perpetuated sometimes unconsciously by parents, teachers, and peers. Boys can become confused, frustrated, lonely, sad, and disconnected as they learn to bury feelings and behavior that would lead to taunts or teasing. Their confusion can lead to actions that on one end of the scale are characterized as “boys will be boys”—calling out in class, daring each other to new exploits—but on the other end are violent and suicidal. School statistics, which show far more boys than girls diagnosed as learning disabled or emotionally disturbed, support Pollack’s findings. The book is divided into three parts, the first an overview of the Boy Code and its effect on boys’ development. The second section gives advice to mothers and fathers on how to offset social pressure, so boys can develop into their “real selves.” Part three is a discussion of sadness, suicide, and depression, often misdiagnosed in boys, because they may try to hide it with bravado. There is a section generally approving sports as molder of boys— character but warning of tyrannical and insensitive coaches, and a section on homosexuality. Sympathetic, but with little that’s new, this project unfortunately has a kind of “Hey, we’re sensitive too” quality. Better to wait for Gilligan’s study of boys, now in the works. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-50131-2
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
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
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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