Human Minds: An Exploration - Hardcover

Donaldson, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713990813 ISBN 13: 9780713990812

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1993

Synopsis

An acclaimed developmental psychologist sums up years of research and draws from history and theology to present a dramatic new model of the way the mind develops from infancy to maturity. 10,000 first printing.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

In this densely written but often simplistic treatise, Donaldson ( Children's Minds ) maps a theory of how the mind develops and works. She posits four distinct yet interdependent modes of mental functioning: living in the here and now ("point mode"); acknowledging one's personal past and future ("line mode"); active concern with the wider world ("construct mode"); and the "transcendent mode" exemplified by logic, mathematics and certain types of spiritual experience. A developmental psychologist who holds an honorary chair at Edinburgh University, Donaldson attempts to trace the interplay of these four modes in the origins of religion and science, in artistic creativity, in psychoanalysis and cognitive therapy, and in specific historical epochs. She pays particular attention to Buddhism, which she views as a system for escaping undesirable modes at will. Donaldson calls for a "dual enlightenment"--a sustained effort to develop children's intellectual skills and the cultivation of transcendent experience which, she feels, modern society tends to suppress.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0713990813
• ISBN 13: 9780713990812
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320