Synopsis
In Stranger in the Mirror, social psychologist Robert Levine offers a provocative, wide-ranging, and entertaining tour of the most personal and consequential of all landscapes: the entity we call our self. Who are we? Where is the boundary between ourselves and everything else? Are we all multiple personalities? And how can we control who we become? Levine tackles these questions with a combination of surprising stories, case studies, and cutting-edge research from biology, neuroscience, virtual reality, psychology, and many other fields. The result challenges our assumptions about who we are and, most importantly, what we are capable of becoming. Transformation, Levine shows, is our human condition. Physically, our very cells are unrecognizable from one moment to the next. Cognitively, our self-perceptions are equally changeable: A single glitch can make us lose track of a body part, or of our entire body, or to confuse our very self with that of another person. Psychologically, we switch back and forth like quicksilver between incongruent, sometimes adversarial sub-selves. Socially, we appear to be little more than an ever-changing troupe of actors. And culturally, the boundaries of the self may stretch anywhere from the confines of one s body to an entire village. The self, it becomes clear, is a fiction-- vague, arbitrary and utterly intangible. But it is also interminably fluid. And this, Levine argues, unleashes a world of potential. Fluidity creates malleability. And malleability creates possibilities. Engaging, informative, and ultimately liberating, Stranger in the Mirror will change how you think about your self and what it might become.
About the Author
Robert V. Levine is professor of psychology and former Associate Dean at California State University, Fresno. He is former president of the Western Psychological Association and has served as a Visiting Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niteroi, Brazil, at Sapporo Medical University in Japan, Stockholm University in Sweden and as a Fellow in the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University in the UK. His previous books include "A Geography of Time" and "The Power of Persuasion: How We re Bought and Sold." His writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, American Scientist and Discover and he has appeared on shows such as ABC Prime Time and WNYC's Radiolab. He divides his time between Fresno and Gualala, California.
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