The Growth of the Mind: And the Endangered Origins of Intelligence

by Stanley I. Greenspan and Beryl Lieff Benderly

Book Overview

This compelling book reveals the six fundamental levels that form the architecture of our minds. The growth of these levels, four of which are deeper even than the unconscious, depends on a series of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201483025
• ISBN13: 9780201483024
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Merloyd Lawrence Books
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Bravo!

In this work, Dr. Greenspan provides the reader with a general thesis on human development, from birth through mature adulthood. His arguments center on the role that emotions play in our mind's growth, from birth through death, and in so doing reveals the foundations of both our human fragility and greatness, on an individual and societal level. This is powerful, intoxicating stuff: it will resound in your heart what you've suspected all along, make clear what was hidden, and lay bare what makes us most human. As a layman unversed in the field of psychology, I found it absolutely riveting and exhilarating - and as a father of an 8 month daughter, it provided a sound framework on which to base my parenting - to see the forest through the trees and approach my role as a father with true confidence and newfound excitement.

At last, the true nature of human behavior illuminated

Although this book has been favorably reviewed, I suspect reviewers did not grasp the truly profound nature of Greenspan's propositions. I wish this book had been available to as I was writing my own book on the nature of addiction. Addiction, dysfunction, mental disorders are the principal plagues of all societies. Classical psychoanalyis, behavior modification, cognitive psychology, and scores of therapeutic techniques continue to tinker with the essential human problem. But until we understand and accept the nature of our emotional life as Greenspan explains it, we can expect no meaningful changes. Back in 1962 Susanne Langer (Mind:An Essay on Human Feeling) wrote: "The thesis I hope to substantiate here is that the entire psychological field - including human emotion, responsible action, rationality, knowledge - is a vast and branching development of feeling." In 1944, Ernst Cassirer (An Essay on Man) was proposing that we should drop our description of man as the rational animal in favor of symbolic animal. Quantum physicists asserted that reality cannot be grasped by what we think it is but by how we experience it. Physicist Eric Jantsch (Design for Evolution) writes, "Rationality, as it turns out, begins to play a role only after the knowledge has been obtained viscerally." And Danah Zohar (The Quantum Self) says, "All definite answers - all passion, all reason - are classical structures. They arise at the point where the wave function of thought collapses, that is, after the moment of choice. Our logic does not make our choices." In depth psychology, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (The Broken Connection) shifted the Freudian model from instinct and defense to death and the continuity of life, brilliantly illuminating the symbolic connections by which mankind thrives or perishes. And just this year we hear from science writer Tor Norretranders (The User Illusion)that the human organism is predominantly a non-conscious organism - consciousness processes about 16 to 40 bits of information per second, while the non-conscious levels process and discard about 11 million bits of information per second. Experiments prove that decisions are made a full half second before we become conscious of them. For me, all this culminates in Greenspan's beautifully written book. Hopefully, his work will will lead other researchers to pursue this essential line of thought. Schools are at last beginning to introduce youngsters to their feelings, but this movement must become universal and taught at the highest academic levels. Thank you, Dr. Greenspan and Beryl Lief Benderly!