Beyond the Conscious Mind: Unlocking the Secrets of the Self - Softcover

Blakeslee, Thomas R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306452626 ISBN 13: 9780306452628

Publisher: Plenum Press, 1996

Synopsis

A new understanding of consciousness that helps you to better understand your own and others behavior. Your mind is a self-organized team of specialized, independent centers of thinking. When we discuss our thoughts and actions in words, it is our self speaking. Yet most of our behavior is controlled by specialized centers of thinking which prevail when the context requires their special abilities. 
Unfortunately, the self tries to explain all of our behavior, even though it is simply rationalizing. Being word-oriented, it has no direct knowledge of the real reasons for our non-verbal behavior. Chemical signals do give the self vague clues, such as queasy or elated feelings, but the self is forced to fabricate, sometimes elaborate, explanations for our behavior and feelings. With practice, you can learn to see through these rationalizations and better understand your own and other's behavior. 
Self-control is when the self actually takes control of behavior. Though useful for suppressing bad impulses, continual self-control is not a goal we should strive for. There are good reasons for the way our brain is organized as a consortium because logic and language are not always the best approach to everything. Intuition and "feel" are more effective for many tasks. Once you understand how the brain really works, you can work on developing mental habits that will increase your effectiveness by using minimal self-control and building a harmonious team of specialists in your head that know how to cooperate to get the job done.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The Nobel Prize-winning work of Roger Sperry revolutionized our understanding of human consciousness by proving that separate thinking and knowledge could exist in the left and right halves of the brain. Now, popular science writer Thomas Blakeslee - author of the highly acclaimed The Right Brain - takes us to a new level of understanding based on the theory of neural Darwinism by Gerald Edelman, another Nobel Prize winner. Blakeslee explains that our neurons spontaneously organize into hundreds of groups called modules that compete to respond to every situation in our lives - from reading this paragraph to falling in love. A vast preponderance of this activity operates outside of our conscious awareness. One of the most important, yet problematic of these modules is the one that rules our conscious thoughts - the self module. Planning, introspection, and interpreting behavior are among its chief specialties. However, just as a press secretary invents plausible explanations for a President's decision - without being privy to the real reasons - our self module often fabricates an explanation for our behavior when, in fact, it actually doesn't know our true motives. Since we accept its stories as true, it gives us a false sense of conscious control over all our actions and a distorted sense of reality. This distortion leads to many of the conflicts and misunderstandings that plague our relationships and work lives. Beyond the Conscious Mind helps each of us tap into and harness the natural creativity and talents of our whole mind. It is only by balancing our conscious mind with the wellspring of ideas in our unconscious that we can reach our full potential.|This book helps each of us tap into and harness the natural creativity and talents of our whole mind.

About the Author:

Thomas R. Blakeslee's books have been published in nine languages. His best-sellers, Digital Design (Wiley, 1975) and The Right Brain (Doubleday, 1980) cross-fertilize here into an exciting new understanding of consciousness. Blakeslee has founded three companies and holds patents in such diverse fields as vehicle guidance, digital telephony, information display, photography, hydraulics, and electronic circuits. His website is www.attitudefactor.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Plenum Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0306452626
• ISBN 13: 9780306452628
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308