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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Paperback)
by Jonathan Haidt
| Category:
Happiness, Life wisdom, Psychology, Nonfiction |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
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¥ 148.00
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MSL Pointer Review:
This amazing book does a great job of dealing fairly with science, religion, politics, and the meaning of life. Highly recommended to all.
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Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Basic Books
Pub. in: December, 2006
ISBN: 0465028020
Pages: 297
Measurements: 7.3 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01276
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0465028023
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- MSL Picks -
A terrific and superbly written book - ranges over a huge amount of ground without ever becoming either dull or gimmicky, and the author's wisdom as well as erudition comes shining through.
The metaphor for mind that pervades the book is that of a rider on an elephant; the elephant is our animal brain, which evolution has perfected over the eons, while the rider is our relatively underdeveloped and uniquely human rational brain. The rider can look around and decide where she and the elephant ought to be going, but is too weak to force the elephant go somewhere it doesn't want to. Personal development, then, is not about intellectual understanding alone - it's about training the elephant through daily routine, coaxing and guiding your elephant to want the same things "you" do.
Haidt is a "positive psychologist" - meaning he is more interested in how to maximize mental health than minimize mental illness - and some of the most interesting parts of the book focus on concepts like Csikszentmihalyi's idea of"flow", and the phenomenon of "vital engagement" which develops when you find your work intrinsically interesting and worthwhile, and through it you become ever more closely connected to a community of like-minded people and a tradition of ways of doing things. Haidt points out the futility of seeking meaningfulness by either seeking only to change yourself or only to change your environment: "Vital engagement does not reside in the person or the environment; it exists in the relationship between the two."
One to re-read, take notes on, and re-read again. Highly recommended.
(From quoting Andy Carlisle, USA)
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Jonathan Haidt is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Winner of the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology, he is the editor of Flourishing. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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From Publisher
In his widely praised book, award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt examines the world's philosophical wisdom through the lens of psychological science, showing how a deeper understanding of enduring maxims-like Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, or What doesn't kill you makes you stronger-can enrich and even transform our lives.
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From Chapter 6: Love and Attachments
No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbor, if you would live for yourself. (Seneca)
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. (John Donne)
In 1931, at the age of four, my father was diagnosed with polio. He was immediately put into an isolation room at the local hospital in Brooklyn, New York. There was no cure and no vaccine for polio at that time, and city dwellers lived in fear of its spread. So for several weeks my father had no human contact, save for an occasional visit by a masked nurse. His mother came to see him every day, but that’s all she could do – wave to him and try to talk to him through the glass pane on the door. My father remembers calling out to her, begging her to come in. It must have broken her heart, and one day she ignored the rules and went in. She was caught and sternly reprimanded. My father recovered with no paralysis, but this image has always stayed with me: a small boy alone in a room, looking at his mother through the glass.
My father had the bad luck to be born at the confluence point of three big ideas. The first was germ theory, proposed in the 1840s by Ignaz Semmelweis and incorporated into hospitals and homes with gradually increasing ferocity over the next century. Pediatricians in the 1920s came to fear germs above all else as they began to collect statistics from orphanages and foundling homes. As far back as records went, they showed that most children dropped off at foundling homes died within one year. In 1915, a New York physician, Henry Chapin, reported to the American Pediatric Society that out of the ten foundling homes he had examined, in all but one of them all of the children had died before their second birthday. As pediatricians came to grips with the deadly effects of institutions on young children, they reacted in a logical way by launching a crusade against germs. It became a priority in orphanages and hospitals to isolate children as much as possible in clean cubicles, to prevent them from infecting each other. Beds were separated, dividers were placed between beds, nurses retreated behind masks and gloves, and mothers were scolded for violating quarantine.
The other two big ideas were psychoanalysis and behaviorism. These two theories agreed on very little, but they both agreed that the infant’s attachment to its mother is based on milk. Freud thought that the infant’s libido (desire for pleasure) is first satisfied by the breast, and therefore the infant develops its first attachment (psychological need) to the breast. Only gradually does the child generalize that desire to the woman who owns the breast. The behaviorists didn’t care about libido, but they too saw the breast as the first reinforcer, the first reward (milk) for the first behavior (sucking). The very heart of behaviorism, if it had one, was conditioning – the idea that learning occurs when rewards are conditional upon behaviors. So unconditional love -- holding, nuzzling, and cuddling children for no reason - was seen as the surest way to make children lazy, spoiled, and weak. Freudians and behaviorists were united in their belief that highly affectionate mothering damages children, and that scientific principles could improve child rearing. Three years before my father entered the hospital, John Watson, the leading American behaviorist (in the years before B. F. Skinner), published the best seller Psychological Care of Infant and Child. Watson wrote of his dream that one day babies would be raised in baby farms, away from the corrupting influences of parents. But until that day arrived, parents were urged to use behaviorist techniques to rear strong children: don’t pick them up when they cry, don’t cuddle or coddle them, just dole out benefits and punishments for each good and bad action.
How could science have gotten it so wrong? How could doctors and psychologists not have seen that children need love as well as milk? This chapter is about that need – the need for other people, for touch, and for close relationships. No man, woman, or child is an island. Scientists have come a long way since John Watson, and there is now a much more humane science of love. The story of this science begins with orphans and rhesus monkeys, and ends with a challenge to the dismal view of love held by many of the ancients, East and West. The heroes of this story are two psychologists who rejected the central tenets of their training: Harry Harlow and John Bowlby. These two men knew that something was missing in behaviorism and in psychoanalysis, respectively. Against great odds they changed their fields, they humanized the treatment of children, and they made it possible for science to greatly improve upon the wisdom of the ancients. |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-02 00:00>
Starred Review. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, lamented St. Paul, and this engrossing scientific interpretation of traditional lore backs him up with hard data. Citing Plato, Buddha and modern brain science, psychologist Haidt notes the mind is like an "elephant" of automatic desires and impulses atop which conscious intention is an ineffectual "rider." Haidt sifts Eastern and Western religious and philosophical traditions for other nuggets of wisdom to substantiate-and sometimes critique-with the findings of neurology and cognitive psychology. The Buddhist-Stoic injunction to cast off worldly attachments in pursuit of happiness, for example, is backed up by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's studies into pleasure. And Nietzsche's contention that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger is considered against research into post-traumatic growth. An exponent of the "positive psychology" movement, Haidt also offers practical advice on finding happiness and meaning. Riches don't matter much, he observes, but close relationships, quiet surroundings and short commutes help a lot, while meditation, cognitive psychotherapy and Prozac are equally valid remedies for constitutional unhappiness. Haidt sometimes seems reductionist, but his is an erudite, fluently written, stimulating reassessment of age-old issues. |
Booklist (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-02 00:00>
Using the wisdom culled from the world's greatest civilizations as a foundation, social psychologist Haidt comes to terms with 10 Great Ideas, viewing them through a contemporary filter to learn which of their lessons may still apply to modern lives. He first discusses how the mind works and then examines the Golden Rule ("Reciprocity is the most important tool for getting along with people"). Next, he addresses the issue of happiness itself-where does it come from?-before exploring the conditions that allow growth and development. He also dares to answer the question that haunts most everyone-What is the meaning of life?-by again drawing on ancient ideas and incorporating recent research findings. He concludes with the question of meaning: Why do some find it? Balancing ancient wisdom and modern science, Haidt consults great minds of the past, from Buddha to Lao Tzu and from Plato to Freud, as well as some not-so-greats: even Dr. Phil is mentioned. Fascinating stuff, accessibly expressed. |
The Times of London (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-02 00:00>
Riveting...humane, witty and comforting...brilliantly synthesizing ancient cultural insights with modern psychology. |
Nature (MSL quote), USA
<2008-04-02 00:00>
A delightful book...by some margin the most intellectually substantial book to arise from the 'positive psychology' movement. |
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