Author Topic: Understanding the human mind and the roots of social behavior  (Read 6067 times)

Joe Carillo

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Told with dry wit laced with modern insights in brain science and sociology, David Brook’s The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (Random House, 448 pages) is an engaging case study of how the unconscious mind shapes the way modern-day people live and relate to other people. It chronicles the life cycle of a fictional couple in the United States, Harold and Erica, from their formative years all the way to their subsequent meeting and courtship, marriage, family life, and pursuit of their respective careers.


Brooks, an op-columnist of The New York Times who writes on the social sciences and psychology, uses Harold and Erica’s life story to buttress his personal theories about social behavior, particularly (1) that reason is often subverted by genetically ingrained emotions and biases, (2) that social problems can be solved not by money but by cultural remedies, and (3) that the class divide is created not by money or power but by intelligence, deportment, and personal taste. 

“This is not a science book,” says Brooks about The Social Animal, which has been in the US bestseller list since its publication last March. “I don’t answer how the brain does things. I try to answer what it all means. I try to explain how these findings about the deepest recesses of our minds should change the way we see ourselves, raise our kids, conduct business, teach, manage our relationships and practice politics. This story is based on scientific research, but it is really about emotion, character, virtue and love.”

Reviewing The Social Animal for Amazon.com, Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute and former chairman of CNN, says that Brooks “has written an absolutely fascinating book about how we form our emotions and character” and that the book’s exploration of the workings of the unconscious mind “makes the recent revolution in neuroscience understandable.” On the other hand, New York University philosophy professor Thomas Nagel, reviewing The Social Animal for The New York Times, describes the book as “really a moral and social tract.” He observes that Brooks lacks the ability to create characters that compel belief, such that Harold and Erika don’t come to life despite the author’s earnest attempt to describe their psychological depths. “They and their supporting cast are [just] mannequins for the display of psychological and social generalizations,” Nagel says.

Read David Brooks’s essay “How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life” in NewYorker.com now!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks

Read Walter Isaacson’s review of David Brooks’s The Social Animal in Amazon.com now!
http://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-Sources-Character-Achievement/dp/140006760X

Read Thomas Nagel’s “David Brooks’s Theory of Human Nature” in The New York Times now!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-the-social-animal-by-david-brooks.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who writes an op-ed column on the social sciences and psychology for The New York Times. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly. He has previously written two books, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There and On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense.
« Last Edit: March 29, 2013, 03:40:27 PM by Joe Carillo »

bombgames01

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Re: Understanding the human mind and the roots of social behavior
« Reply #1 on: April 22, 2012, 06:04:39 PM »
understanding of the human mind and behaviour requires multiple approaches and involves a variety of academic disciplines.

wichitaannie123

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Re: Understanding the human mind and the roots of social behavior
« Reply #2 on: September 25, 2012, 02:25:18 PM »
As a therapy, psychoanalysis is based on observation that Individuals are often unaware of many of the factors that determine their emotions and Behavior.  It is, in addition, a method for learning about the mind, and also a theory, a way of understanding the processes of normal everyday mental functioning and the stages of normal development from infancy to old age. (psychology.com). Furthermore, since psychoanalysis seeks to explain how the human mind works, it contributes insight into whatever the human mind produces.