Of Two Minds: A New Approach for Better Understanding Your Emotional Life

Schiffer, Frederic

ISBN 10: 067103314X / ISBN 13: 9780671033149

Published by Pocket Books, 2000

About this Item

Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present.

Seller Inventory # M0067103314X-G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Of Two Minds: A New Approach for Better Understanding Your Emotional Life
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067103314X
• ISBN 13: 9780671033149
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

Most people experience themselves as two-sided, but have you ever wondered if there are two minds in each of us? This text offers evidence that each side of the brain possesses an autonomous, distinct personality, and illustrates how their interaction determines our psychological nature.

Review

Ever since Freud, we've known that we share our mental space with another mind, one that may prove quite a hindrance. It can be like a bad roommate we can't evict, leaving dirty dishes in the sink and playing the stereo too loud, and all we can do is try to adjust its excesses with a few carefully worded notes. Dr. Fredric Schiffer believes that he has located the culprit and learned how to talk to it, and his clinical success with problems like cocaine addiction, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder suggest that he's on to something. Of Two Minds is his report from the front.

A psychiatrist affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Schiffer has studied split-brain research and devised his own experiments to show that stress and anxiety are often felt more strongly in one hemisphere than the other. No simple "left brain good, right brain bad" dichotomy, it seems that those who have been affected by emotional trauma lateralize the effects, perhaps in an effort to maintain more-or-less-normal functioning. One hemisphere or the other gets stuck in the past, says Schiffer, and acts out through the patient's symptoms. His goal is integration of these two minds into a kind of team by using clever manipulation of sensory stimuli and other tools of cognitive science.

Of Two Minds is unusual in its acceptance of both scientific and emotional validity. Alternating reviews of the data with often heart-wrenching transcripts of therapy sessions, it offers a two-pronged assault on what seems to be a dual-natured problem. While it might not solve your "roommate problem" overnight, it may start you on the road to reconciliation. --Rob Lightner