Introductions to Psychology
Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past (2001)
Douwe Draaisma
Teach Yourself Jung (2005)
Ruth Snowden
50 Psychology Classics (2006)
Tom Butler-Bowdon
50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need To Know (2008)
Adrian Furnham
Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older is a set of connected but discrete essays
opening up a relatively new area for psychology - autobiographical
memory. It should be of great value to creative writers. Draaisma (Professor of the History of Psychology at Groningen Unversity) is not afraid to go beyond science into
literature in order to demonstrate a point. It is well worth reading if you are
interested in how you see the world yourself and why you might do so. It also respects subjectivity in a way that one hopes others, with equal
communications skills, will develop.
Teach Yourself Jung is a good basic introduction to Jung's life and
thinking. It can be recommended, although Frieda Fordham's 1953 classic text approved
by the old man himself, might be more fruitful to the serious
starter-student.
50 Pyschology Classics is another easy introduction but, this time, to the current
state of popular psychology (or rather to the arrival of serious
psychological research into mainstream culture). It is
particularly valuable for anyone whose education in these matters ended
before the massive flow of insights since the early 1980s on sexual
difference, techniques of persuasion, emotional intelligence and the
actual rather than theoretical workings of the unconscious. It does this through presenting just 50 influential texts.
A quiet revolution has taken place since the Generation of '68 stopped reading and started working. It helps to explain a lot about the disconnect between the political classes of the West and both the academic community and those who are under 45. Psychologists are a-political in general but their recent findings generally push to one side and forever the theory of the 'blank slate' that has driven so much progressive thinking for so long (of which more below).
Men and women are now increasingly recognised as thinking profoundly differently for very fundamental hormonal and brain structure reasons. Difference is increasingly respected and understood even if, tragically, the differences then get re-reified as identity politics. Society should eventually be better for a common sense realisation that each human is a complex and differentially evolved creature and neither a 'tabula rasa' nor an 'identity'.
A quiet revolution has taken place since the Generation of '68 stopped reading and started working. It helps to explain a lot about the disconnect between the political classes of the West and both the academic community and those who are under 45. Psychologists are a-political in general but their recent findings generally push to one side and forever the theory of the 'blank slate' that has driven so much progressive thinking for so long (of which more below).
Men and women are now increasingly recognised as thinking profoundly differently for very fundamental hormonal and brain structure reasons. Difference is increasingly respected and understood even if, tragically, the differences then get re-reified as identity politics. Society should eventually be better for a common sense realisation that each human is a complex and differentially evolved creature and neither a 'tabula rasa' nor an 'identity'.
This has no implications, in fact, for equality of opportunity or outcome for anyone, quite the contrary. The new
gender psychology gives its due to both sexes' rights to negotiate their
own sexual identity and remain responsible for themselves. The new psychology more generally allows difference to be both a matter of pointing out where power has privileged some attributes (as in conservative politics) and how the process of turning attributes into power (as in progressive identity politics) disrespects difference. Indeed, I guess that under-25s are going to be a lot more sexually and culturally 'together' (on average), despite their naive politics, than anyone
hitting their late 50s and above.
As for the manipulative aspects of psychology, thinking on these matters started as early as Stanley Milgram's experiments and the analyses of the Jonestown massacre in the 1970s. It has taken almost thirty years and Abu Ghraib (and recent child abuse scandals) for it to sink into public consciousness that any claim of authority must be looked on with a very jaundiced eye if we are to avoid being dragged back into the social criminalities of the last century. This, too, is fundamentally political. If the rising generations may become psychologically 'conservative', they are also profoundly distrusting of the State and libertarian - and more highly educated and potentially more resistant to the persuasive techniques of the market.
They will accept the latter but only as a form of permanent consumer-led entertainment, a process helped by the critical role of new technologies in moving sentiment against those who would manipulate too crassly. On the other hand, through movements like NLP, 'manipulation' has become democratised, creating an uncertain environment in interpersonal relations. It may take a while for these changes to work through the system. Post-55 voters clearly dominate the agenda in recent elections but this will change over time.
Each text covered by the book is reviewed in a short, usually six-page, summary, that helps one choose which books might be chosen to read later because of one's particular interests. The author (who has produced recent similar guides on self-help, spiritual and wealth creation) has a talent for distilling complex arguments into sufficient narrative that you move on feeling that you have both learnt something and want to learn more.
The only quibble is a common irritation that publishers always seem to insist on introducing books or ideas alphabetically - an irrational approach derived from the dictionary and encyclopedia. This is wholly inappropriate for contextual learning, ironically showing that the publishers and author (in this case) have not mentally moved on from older patterns of thinking. This approach weakens the reader's ability to see how the discipline of psychology has developed, from William James, Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget to Pinker, Seligman, Schwartz, Gladwell, Brizendine and Gilbert.
Fortunately, the author is intelligent enough to provide a useful introduction on the 'themes' at the beginning of the book and then a chronological list of texts (and another 50 influential books also introduced chronologically) at the back.
As for the manipulative aspects of psychology, thinking on these matters started as early as Stanley Milgram's experiments and the analyses of the Jonestown massacre in the 1970s. It has taken almost thirty years and Abu Ghraib (and recent child abuse scandals) for it to sink into public consciousness that any claim of authority must be looked on with a very jaundiced eye if we are to avoid being dragged back into the social criminalities of the last century. This, too, is fundamentally political. If the rising generations may become psychologically 'conservative', they are also profoundly distrusting of the State and libertarian - and more highly educated and potentially more resistant to the persuasive techniques of the market.
They will accept the latter but only as a form of permanent consumer-led entertainment, a process helped by the critical role of new technologies in moving sentiment against those who would manipulate too crassly. On the other hand, through movements like NLP, 'manipulation' has become democratised, creating an uncertain environment in interpersonal relations. It may take a while for these changes to work through the system. Post-55 voters clearly dominate the agenda in recent elections but this will change over time.
Each text covered by the book is reviewed in a short, usually six-page, summary, that helps one choose which books might be chosen to read later because of one's particular interests. The author (who has produced recent similar guides on self-help, spiritual and wealth creation) has a talent for distilling complex arguments into sufficient narrative that you move on feeling that you have both learnt something and want to learn more.
The only quibble is a common irritation that publishers always seem to insist on introducing books or ideas alphabetically - an irrational approach derived from the dictionary and encyclopedia. This is wholly inappropriate for contextual learning, ironically showing that the publishers and author (in this case) have not mentally moved on from older patterns of thinking. This approach weakens the reader's ability to see how the discipline of psychology has developed, from William James, Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget to Pinker, Seligman, Schwartz, Gladwell, Brizendine and Gilbert.
Fortunately, the author is intelligent enough to provide a useful introduction on the 'themes' at the beginning of the book and then a chronological list of texts (and another 50 influential books also introduced chronologically) at the back.
50 Psychology Ideas You Really Need to Know is, on the other hand, a disappointing book but a lot of this is down
to the format and to weak editing rather than the quality of the
material. Breaking down latest thinking and history into just 50
four-page gobbets of information just does not work. It is not only that
there is no cohesion to the book but some subjects are presented like
technical treatises while others are trite run-throughs of complex
matters that are far better covered by a quick search through Wikipedia.
The editing, at times, is a disgrace. There are occasions where you can tell that Furnham, who is a serious psychologist (Professor of Psychology at University College, London), has had his text whittled down to the point of nonsense in order to fit the format. The indexing is haphazard, there are repetitions and the format ends up giving us irrelevant quotations that appear to have little to do with the subject in hand. These fillers show laziness.
The reason that the book is not to be rejected out of hand lies in the fact that, if you can struggle through the unhelpful ordering and the lack of narrative (you would certainly think psychologists should know better), there are moments when Furnham shines and the book does give important insights into the revolution in psychology and neuroscience that is already starting to transform our public policy and culture.
The editing, at times, is a disgrace. There are occasions where you can tell that Furnham, who is a serious psychologist (Professor of Psychology at University College, London), has had his text whittled down to the point of nonsense in order to fit the format. The indexing is haphazard, there are repetitions and the format ends up giving us irrelevant quotations that appear to have little to do with the subject in hand. These fillers show laziness.
The reason that the book is not to be rejected out of hand lies in the fact that, if you can struggle through the unhelpful ordering and the lack of narrative (you would certainly think psychologists should know better), there are moments when Furnham shines and the book does give important insights into the revolution in psychology and neuroscience that is already starting to transform our public policy and culture.
As noted above, the picture of humanity that is emerging today is very different from the 'tabula rasa' model that so long impressed policy-makers, especially those of the Left, often against all the instincts of common folk. As animals, we come out as a lot less flattering to ourselves than our leading intellectuals might have liked. We may, in fact, be close to ungovernable at times.
Before I go any further, I should express a personal prejudice - a distrust of science-derived theory being applied too easily to social relations. There is a particular problem that arises out of psychology - the 'science' of psychology is solely a method since no human, let alone collection of humans, can be knowable in the way that inanimate matter or even animals can be known. Psychology is only partially a science. It is a series of experimental probabilities and of 'norms' of highly variable reliability. The science of normal perception seems to be far more reliable than the science of normal behaviour and the 'science' of normal thought is probably unlikely to be meaningful at all. This should be borne in mind when assessing the material in the book.
The quintessential psychological tool is the Bell Curve. There is a danger that the centre of the Bell Curve is given a normative rather than a descriptive value - that the process of describing the Bell Curve both lessens the 'value' of the rims of the Bell and over-values the 'norm' at its centre. The 'norm' of Victorian or German fascist or Soviet Communist thinking would horrify our contemporary liberal. The 'good person' in all of these societies would, by modern liberal standards, have been normalised out of existence.
Sometimes I fear that contemporary psychology, neuroscience and sociology are tempted, funded as they are by the public purse and so the political process, to do 'scientifically' what could not be done under previous tyrannies - control us from within for agenda that are not our own. Contemporary liberalism has its dangerous totalitarian aspects. The association of these 'soft sciences' and power needs to be placed under permanent critical scrutiny. The assumptions behind every attempt at 'nudge' need to be questioned every time they are used which almost certainly weakens their use. Nevertheless, great strides in understanding the working of most brains in most circumstances have been made in the last two decades. A picture is emerging of a sort of arms race between the normal person's instinct to take the easy way out in dealing with data, in order to process the vast amounts of it coming into the mind through perception, and organised attempts to manipulate that laziness for commercial or political reasons.
As psychologists uncover the tram-line aspects of most people's behaviour under most conditions, so some, in learning these truths, learn also to resist manipulation and to build relatively independent world-views. The corporate and political manipulators, meanwhile, create ever-more sophisticated means to manage those who either cannot (for reasons of intelligence or access to information) or will not (for lack of will or excess of comfort) question their situation. The irony being that the manipulators in turn get trapped into complicity with what they believe is what people want when they only have part of the picture. Populism exists in part because the attempted manipulation of the mass by elites is inept: hat the people want is different from what elites want them to want and new manipulators can emerge to fill the gap. Freedom now means perpetual instability.
It could be argued that people in the advanced Western societies are falling into three broad classes of person in any one particular situation. A large majority who are unaware of or uninterested in their own manipulation, a class of manipulators for profit, power or (increasingly) 'security' and a minority who see what is happening and either fight it or seek to insulate themselves from the process ('fight or flight'). The last group which is far from small is made impotent by the sheer weight of numbers of the first group although, to be cynical, the weight of numbers depends on that weight being well fed and entertained. As food starts to become more expensive and imposed cultures more alien, democracy enables the manipulated to fight back or be manipulated by new manipulators more in tune with popular needs.
It may be that this is just the normal condition of humanity - as applicable to the Roman Empire as the modern West: a struggling mass, a manipulative ruling class and those who cannot but see how the trick is performed. However, a new factor may be the degree to which an understanding of psychology itself arms 'rebels' as much as elites. We may note that the experimental work in the wake of the authoritarian fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, notably that of Stanley Milgram, caused horror rather than emulation and drove ruling elites increasingly towards 'soft' forms of social management.
At the same time, Milgram's work is known to far more people
than just the 'rebels' in society. This has helped everyone become more
resistant to blind authority and command. Ordinary soldiers are
increasingly volunteers from the least well educated and poorest
comunities and are less likely to be conscripts for good reason - better
educated conscripts are no longer prepared to accept authoritarian
claims to knowledge. The Kremlin has just had a nasty shock in this respect and NATO would have an even bigger one if it tried to corral its young into dying for its dodgy allies in Kiev. Child abuse, sexual abuse in general and discrimination are now easier to expose and authority be defied. Perhaps some personality types pine for a simple
world of command and control and military obedience but the cultural
norm is (at least in the Anglo-Saxon world) now one of a presumption of
liberty and of questioning authority to which ruling elites have now had to adjust.
Governments have been thrown back on intense surveillance, on the manipulation of media and on the cultural isolation and marginalisation of the people who are at the extremes of the political Bell Curve. In addition, fuelled on the centre-left by the post-Marxist interpretations of thinkers like Gramsci, they are more intent than ever on guiding the centre of the social Bell Curve into territories of automatic self-willed compliance with an authority that presents itself as benign, inclusive and liberal, albeit one investing vast sums in what it calls 'security'.
One suspects that this master plan of social management will last only so long as the population does not grow hungry. It is designed for a world in which economic growth or decline for large numbers of people is small, incremental and steady rather than precipitous or sudden. Whether this system can remain both effective and benign with a large angry population on the streets is another matter. 2023 and the surge in the cost of living this winter may be an interesting test of the public will to compliance.
This is relevant to this book because there are clues throughout it concerning the growing role of psychology to the maintenance of social consensus. Fortunately, psychiatry and abnormal psychology (in the sense of conditions that cause serious distress to a person) have been de-politicised fairly effectively by the medical establishment's historic compromise with the anti-psychiatry movement. But we should not be complacent - the sociopath (a biological reality), for example, is in danger of being quasi-medicalised as complaints grow about a 'broken society'. Some may approve this and yet if the alleged sociopath can be 'medicalised' and controlled fully so can any form of dissent from the manufactured 'norm' and that, dear reader, could include you.
At the other end of the social is the personal. Contemporary psychology paints a fairly grim picture of our general inability to think or act rationally or altruistically. In fact, psychologists tend to exaggerate what this means. Given their particular conditions of life, 'irrational' thought or conduct (including delusions and apparently self-destructive behaviour) may be wholly rational as far as the survival of the organism is concerned - a perfectly objective (conventionally 'rational') assessment of those conditions might well lead to despair or other mental trauma.
Governments have been thrown back on intense surveillance, on the manipulation of media and on the cultural isolation and marginalisation of the people who are at the extremes of the political Bell Curve. In addition, fuelled on the centre-left by the post-Marxist interpretations of thinkers like Gramsci, they are more intent than ever on guiding the centre of the social Bell Curve into territories of automatic self-willed compliance with an authority that presents itself as benign, inclusive and liberal, albeit one investing vast sums in what it calls 'security'.
One suspects that this master plan of social management will last only so long as the population does not grow hungry. It is designed for a world in which economic growth or decline for large numbers of people is small, incremental and steady rather than precipitous or sudden. Whether this system can remain both effective and benign with a large angry population on the streets is another matter. 2023 and the surge in the cost of living this winter may be an interesting test of the public will to compliance.
This is relevant to this book because there are clues throughout it concerning the growing role of psychology to the maintenance of social consensus. Fortunately, psychiatry and abnormal psychology (in the sense of conditions that cause serious distress to a person) have been de-politicised fairly effectively by the medical establishment's historic compromise with the anti-psychiatry movement. But we should not be complacent - the sociopath (a biological reality), for example, is in danger of being quasi-medicalised as complaints grow about a 'broken society'. Some may approve this and yet if the alleged sociopath can be 'medicalised' and controlled fully so can any form of dissent from the manufactured 'norm' and that, dear reader, could include you.
At the other end of the social is the personal. Contemporary psychology paints a fairly grim picture of our general inability to think or act rationally or altruistically. In fact, psychologists tend to exaggerate what this means. Given their particular conditions of life, 'irrational' thought or conduct (including delusions and apparently self-destructive behaviour) may be wholly rational as far as the survival of the organism is concerned - a perfectly objective (conventionally 'rational') assessment of those conditions might well lead to despair or other mental trauma.
Some of the most interesting material
in the book is about irrational modes of thinking. The tiny section on
'group think' encapsulates in a few words why New Labour was consistently
incompetent in its decision-making and perhaps why Conservative politics have crumbled into disarray more recently. It was also pleasing (given my own
experience) to have the 'brainstorm' put firmly in its place as next to
useless.
There is also useful material from the behavioural economists on why we make dumb decisions on investment and cannot seem to get out quickly from a failing situation. These few pages alone are worth the trudge of the rest of the book. They should be required reading by anyone active in public life or in business. Unfortunately, most of the people making the decisions that affect us do not read books like this although behavioural economics is now an important element in financial market decision-making. It may take a generation before some of this commonsensical material feeds through into the wider public domain.
There is also useful material from the behavioural economists on why we make dumb decisions on investment and cannot seem to get out quickly from a failing situation. These few pages alone are worth the trudge of the rest of the book. They should be required reading by anyone active in public life or in business. Unfortunately, most of the people making the decisions that affect us do not read books like this although behavioural economics is now an important element in financial market decision-making. It may take a generation before some of this commonsensical material feeds through into the wider public domain.
Another
area of interest is memory. We construct ourselves and our society on
narratives of the past. Yet we forget and remember selectively even if
different people have different tendencies in this area, whether towards
repressing trauma or sensitising themselves through a talking
repetition of trauma. One can see how there would be a natural
conflict of interest between these two main personality types amongst
Jews in dealing with the Shoah. Some would want to put the horror behind
them and create a new life. Others would want to tell the world and get
them to understand and empathise. This happens in families with child
abuse histories. In the case of the Shoah, the narrative required by
Israel and European guilt forced the pace and gave the edge to the
'talkers'.
One powerful tool for transforming individuals has been Cognitive Behaviourial Therapy. We should not be too dismissive of its happy-clappy cognate, Positive Philosophy. Critics might say they merely create a better class of delusion but, if our aim is not to sink into the unproductive gloom of critical theory but to live long, prosper, love and be happy, then these practical applications of experimental psychology are wholly beneficial.
It is tough out there. If people can use the discoveries that the mind is malleable and that life can be made more tolerable and even be improved through thinking in a different way and positively, then psychology (so dangerous in the hands of governments and corporations) can be a liberating force. Indeed, a mentality of positive thinking might, eventually, help direct the mind to thinking not only about how to improve one's own condition but why our rulers are so signally failing to assist in that process. In our current crisis, a 'positive politics' is sorely needed and can only come from below.
Cognitive behaviour therapy seems to be particularly useful for conditions where distress (such as depression) is caused by a negative narrative of life that has been built up in the past for good reason but has become increasingly dysfunctional over time. Improvements in the treatment of mental illness in recent years have been considerable and are only be held back by lack of resources. If the £8bn spent by the New Labour Government on the Iraq War or the £10bn on trying to hold together the pro-NATO regime in Kiev had been directed into national mental health services and improved community conditions, a great deal of human distress amongst taxpayers might have been avoided.
Another positive development is in the increasing sophistication of psychological work on intelligence. This has two results. The first unnerves liberals but has to be faced - that we are not all equal in general intelligence and general intelligence matters. The 'tabula rasa' view is defunct and not only in relation to intellectual equality but in relation to gender difference. We can safely predict the imminent death of the extreme version of egalitarian ideology (although not that of the equal value of all persons regardless of intelligence).
The countervailing discovery (still uncertain in the detail) is of many different types of intelligence to be found in humanity, painting a picture of complexity of talent that no longer privileges people according to their place in a pecking order of general IQ. This means that a simple stratified society is likely to be sclerotic. The dynamism of society depends on it being a society of all the talents. This opens up society once again to people who may not be formally highly intelligent but have massive advantages in particular types of intelligence, skills and aptitudes. It suggests a society of respect for the potential of everyone rather than obeisance to a privileged exam-passing few. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this has been to high-functioning autists who are being given the safe space to become more productive (and happier).
The shift from a stratified pre-modern world of fixed roles to a tabula rasa world that forced individuals into an egalitarian straitjacket (often under the malign influence of the behaviourists) is now turning into a further shift from the 'tabula rasa' to a respect for difference. We referred to this above but it bears repeating that nowhere is this clearer than in gender relations where the feminists of the 1970s school have found themselves on the run as society rediscovers the fact that boys and girls are fundamentally different even if you can get very boy-like girls and very girl-like boys where the Bell Curves overlap.
One powerful tool for transforming individuals has been Cognitive Behaviourial Therapy. We should not be too dismissive of its happy-clappy cognate, Positive Philosophy. Critics might say they merely create a better class of delusion but, if our aim is not to sink into the unproductive gloom of critical theory but to live long, prosper, love and be happy, then these practical applications of experimental psychology are wholly beneficial.
It is tough out there. If people can use the discoveries that the mind is malleable and that life can be made more tolerable and even be improved through thinking in a different way and positively, then psychology (so dangerous in the hands of governments and corporations) can be a liberating force. Indeed, a mentality of positive thinking might, eventually, help direct the mind to thinking not only about how to improve one's own condition but why our rulers are so signally failing to assist in that process. In our current crisis, a 'positive politics' is sorely needed and can only come from below.
Cognitive behaviour therapy seems to be particularly useful for conditions where distress (such as depression) is caused by a negative narrative of life that has been built up in the past for good reason but has become increasingly dysfunctional over time. Improvements in the treatment of mental illness in recent years have been considerable and are only be held back by lack of resources. If the £8bn spent by the New Labour Government on the Iraq War or the £10bn on trying to hold together the pro-NATO regime in Kiev had been directed into national mental health services and improved community conditions, a great deal of human distress amongst taxpayers might have been avoided.
Another positive development is in the increasing sophistication of psychological work on intelligence. This has two results. The first unnerves liberals but has to be faced - that we are not all equal in general intelligence and general intelligence matters. The 'tabula rasa' view is defunct and not only in relation to intellectual equality but in relation to gender difference. We can safely predict the imminent death of the extreme version of egalitarian ideology (although not that of the equal value of all persons regardless of intelligence).
The countervailing discovery (still uncertain in the detail) is of many different types of intelligence to be found in humanity, painting a picture of complexity of talent that no longer privileges people according to their place in a pecking order of general IQ. This means that a simple stratified society is likely to be sclerotic. The dynamism of society depends on it being a society of all the talents. This opens up society once again to people who may not be formally highly intelligent but have massive advantages in particular types of intelligence, skills and aptitudes. It suggests a society of respect for the potential of everyone rather than obeisance to a privileged exam-passing few. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this has been to high-functioning autists who are being given the safe space to become more productive (and happier).
The shift from a stratified pre-modern world of fixed roles to a tabula rasa world that forced individuals into an egalitarian straitjacket (often under the malign influence of the behaviourists) is now turning into a further shift from the 'tabula rasa' to a respect for difference. We referred to this above but it bears repeating that nowhere is this clearer than in gender relations where the feminists of the 1970s school have found themselves on the run as society rediscovers the fact that boys and girls are fundamentally different even if you can get very boy-like girls and very girl-like boys where the Bell Curves overlap.
This helps to explain why the ideological battle has moved on to the issue of trans-genderism where most trans-gender people are being ignored as individuals in order to allow 'activists' to pursue an entirely different ideological struggle where identity extremists are undertaking a last ditch defence of the tabula rasa - that the mind can triumph even over biological reality. There may be alchemical truth in the
magical position of the hermaphrodite where the male/female Bell curves meet but this does not stop that point expressing relatively rare cases and the fashion for becoming culturally queer as being in defiance of some deeper occult biological truths.
In short, it should no longer be regarded as helpful for most women to strive to become like men any more than for most men to strive to be more like women. The model is one not of separate but equal (with all the apartheid implications) or equal and not separate but of complementarity and difference yet equal in worth and access to resources with the possibility of some genuine cases where the Bell curves overlap. This more sophisticated formulation has been seized upon by younger women (as sex-positive or 'lipstick' feminism) as far more truly liberatory than 'traditional' feminism. Although the new could not have taken place without the struggle of the old, the new really is based on the science that we have in place so far.
Language too now looks as if it follows Chomsky's model of having innate characteristics even if one can dispute the detail. Deep brain structures imply profound predispositions in learning, language, behaviour and gender difference - not to the extent of presenting any silly predestination arguments but as representing natural constraints on radical versions of existentialism. Brain matter, in short, matters. Anyone who has been at the birth of his child knows that twenty years later aspects of personality present then are present now.
The historical elements in the book are far less satisfactory. A history is a narrative and the lack of narrative - a rather random leap into the Rorschach inkblot test, phrenology (somewhat absurdly), extremely basic accounts of Freudian and Behaviourist ideas, discredited left/right brain theories - means that some of these ideas are in danger of being given more credence than they deserve. Recent discoveries make much past experimentation redundant (as they should) and even silly so that, as tools for understanding oneself, or for creating a dialogue about personal meaning, the ink blot and dream interpretation are now as one with the Tarot cards.
This is not to say that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Freudianism increasingly looks daft in its potty theorising about repressed sexuality but it was a vital stepping stone in exploring the unconscious even if the path best taken was back into neuroscience on the one hand and into imaginative cultural studies (Jung and some space for dreams, automatism and the Tarot) and the closer investigation of particular drives (Adler, Reich) on the other. Behaviourism too seems more like an ideology than a considered exploration of the mind but its experimentation on conditioning has proved central to effective treatment of phobia as well as providing further proof in its findings that cruelty and conditioning can debase both child and man. All in all, this book has its stimulating moments. It might serve as a bedside reference for the general reader but there are almost certainly better books out there.
In short, it should no longer be regarded as helpful for most women to strive to become like men any more than for most men to strive to be more like women. The model is one not of separate but equal (with all the apartheid implications) or equal and not separate but of complementarity and difference yet equal in worth and access to resources with the possibility of some genuine cases where the Bell curves overlap. This more sophisticated formulation has been seized upon by younger women (as sex-positive or 'lipstick' feminism) as far more truly liberatory than 'traditional' feminism. Although the new could not have taken place without the struggle of the old, the new really is based on the science that we have in place so far.
Language too now looks as if it follows Chomsky's model of having innate characteristics even if one can dispute the detail. Deep brain structures imply profound predispositions in learning, language, behaviour and gender difference - not to the extent of presenting any silly predestination arguments but as representing natural constraints on radical versions of existentialism. Brain matter, in short, matters. Anyone who has been at the birth of his child knows that twenty years later aspects of personality present then are present now.
The historical elements in the book are far less satisfactory. A history is a narrative and the lack of narrative - a rather random leap into the Rorschach inkblot test, phrenology (somewhat absurdly), extremely basic accounts of Freudian and Behaviourist ideas, discredited left/right brain theories - means that some of these ideas are in danger of being given more credence than they deserve. Recent discoveries make much past experimentation redundant (as they should) and even silly so that, as tools for understanding oneself, or for creating a dialogue about personal meaning, the ink blot and dream interpretation are now as one with the Tarot cards.
This is not to say that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater. Freudianism increasingly looks daft in its potty theorising about repressed sexuality but it was a vital stepping stone in exploring the unconscious even if the path best taken was back into neuroscience on the one hand and into imaginative cultural studies (Jung and some space for dreams, automatism and the Tarot) and the closer investigation of particular drives (Adler, Reich) on the other. Behaviourism too seems more like an ideology than a considered exploration of the mind but its experimentation on conditioning has proved central to effective treatment of phobia as well as providing further proof in its findings that cruelty and conditioning can debase both child and man. All in all, this book has its stimulating moments. It might serve as a bedside reference for the general reader but there are almost certainly better books out there.