and Intriguing Insight
The title was interesting but I wasn't sure about the book or exactly what it may have entailed until I started reading, It is an interesting look into the mind, multiple minds, Wylie is a psychologist and writes this imprinted memoir after great research into the heart of mental illness, His theories and insight bring out a great perspective of the evolution of ones mind, I will definitely keep this book as a reference for some of my future writing projects, It was all and all a fascinating and enlightening work, Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind is a personal memoir by a psychiatrist who gradually discovers from his patient's descriptions of their mental illnesses that human motivations have been evolved over millions of years for productive engagement rather than competitive fitness.
A new uplifting and spiritual view of human nature emerges that is not only consistent with the science of human evolution, but also opens up a simple explanation for such ancient mysteries as selfawareness, reflective thought, and the vast complexity of language.
All other books about the evolution of emotion approach it from the “outside” as an object this book is about the biological evolution of the “inside” experience of emotionandmotivation, which can only be known empathetically.
This essay will give you a good feeling for the book: themontrealreview. com/
INSIDE THIS BOOK YOU WILL LEARN:
How our craving for sex and attention created human culture,
How our penises and breasts got to be so big,
Why belief is really an emotion,
How ape dominance evolved into human authority,
Why mental illness is a “side effect” of our species evolution,
The biology of the human spirit,
The origin of vanity, and why gold is so valuable,
Why upright posture is so essential to being human,
The intimate connection between sex, music, and language, I'm not sure how I feel about this book,
Wylie presents an interesting hypothesis, based on his experience and extensive reading, I am not sure just how realistic his claims are, This book changed my view of human nature, Book brings fresh insights to evolutionary theory by delving into how emotions, relationships, and group cooperation evolved, Dr. Wylie also delivers thoughts on mental illness through an evolutionary perspective, and shows how mental illnesses are byproducts of what makes us uniquely human,
Ape Mind,Old Mind, New Mind is a personal memoir by a psychiatrist who gradually discovers from his patient's descriptions of their mental illnesses that human motivations have been evolved over millions of years for productive engagement rather than competitive fitness.
A new uplifting and spiritual view of human nature emerges that is not only consistent with the science of human evolution, but also opens up a simple explanation for such ancient mysteries as selfawareness, reflective thought, and the vast complexity of language.
Note: I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway
Just as this book speaks of multiple conceptions of the mind, I was also of more than one mind about this book.
I do think that not enough questions are posed by longtime practitioners in any scientific field these days, as the strictures of the scientific method are too narrow for scientists to present an issue until they have already found an answer to it.
So on that level, I applaud the questions the author poses, and shares his observations and ruminations which lead him to publish them,
I do however, think it was a mistake to market this book as a volume for the popular market, The book reads like an extended presentation at a conference for psychologists, and the language has the soporific effect that such presentations create, Some of the ideas were very interesting, yet weighed down by so many side issues and so much meandering that it was sometimes difficult at the end of a chapter to remember what the topic was that opened the chapter.
If the author plans other works, I hope he will have a mass audience in mind and write to that audience or get help with that if he needs it.
I have an IQ ofand I have been an interested amateur of psychology all my adult life, yet I had a difficult time reading through it over a period of weeks.
A well written academic book written in a style and at a scientific level that most of us can connect with, even if we cant quite compute all the scholarly depth that make up the full picture.
I definitely place myself in the superficial understanding category but never felt intimidated by complexity, Wylie reexplores evolutionary biology bringing into play his clinical and philosophical knowledge and private observations in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and medicine, Wylies observations which build into a broad psychological theory that fits as a complementary extension to classic Darwinism, add considerably to our conventional understanding of human evolution, With the obvious exception of many dogmatic scripturalists, I think this book has a lot for all those interested in why we are what we are questions, Wylie adds to our understanding of personality evolution, looking at the intellectual creature that with all the psychological baggage we carry from our ancestors,
I did rather question some of what I read to be rather afterthought attempts to tie in sacred spirituality and philosophy, I guess some attempt at this is, though, beneficial if it might draw in all but the most dogmatic of Abrahamists, Anyway, arguably, religion could not be left out of a fully rounded thesis, Otherwise I had no personal issues with any ideas in this very well written book, Nearly always, Wylie found simple ways of distilling out the complexity of his arguments, A few more reallife anecdotes from Wylies career would Im sure add a great deal of enjoyment for the general reader, without losing the focus required by the more scholastic.
This is a serious book, exploring the whys and wherefores from a full range of psychological illnesses balanced against normal, average, behaviours, that make us the deep thinking but not always rational creatures that we have become.
I won this in a GOODREADS giveaway, Here's a new vision of human nature
Seeking insight into myself and others, I've read other books on human evolution, Most of them flow from, and further, a negative view of our species, Maybe that's understandable after Darwin, Freud, two world wars, and the Holocaust, Our loss of confidence in ourselves leads to glib, bleak statements: "We're just dressedup apes, " And to shallow "survival of the fittest" notions that equate human nature to an animalistic toothandclaw level,
Dr. Wylie builds his contrary vision on Darwin's largely suppressed second great theory, the role of mate selection in evolution, Specifically how our hominid foremothers harnessed the male sex drive to domesticate males, They selected for those who would stick around and help raise offspring, for kinder, gentler mates, After our species split off from apes, we actually evolved much longer as hominidsfor about six million years, From this base, Homo Sapiens arose only about,years ago,
This leads to one of Dr, Wylie's most exciting insights: humans possess three "minds" from our layered evolution, Yes, we there's a
deep, lowly bequest from apes, the desire to dominate others, Our hominid legacy, in contrast, is a gentle, grouporiented mentality, which graces us with our spiritual linkage to otherswhat Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, And then there's our young ego mind: clever, anxious, craving constant attention,
A psychiatrist who was trained as a Freudian and inspired by Jung's more positive view of the human psyche, Dr, Wylie became a student of Darwin early in his career, While working in a maximumsecurity prison, he was stunned by the prisoners' cruelly primitive relationships based on dominance and submission, Oddly, they were also obsessed with justice, After Dr. Wylie was almost killed by an inmate, he became an avid researcher into human evolution, In private practice, he came to see the serious psychiatric disorders he treated as "emotional fossils," as clues to humans' layered psychology,
Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind brings together the strands of hisyear inquiry, He traces the origin of core human emotions, such as the universal thirst for goodness, mercy, and justiceespecially justice, These positive, ethereal, and intrinsically spiritual qualities tend to unite humans in shared efforts, to replace clans with community, to bind people together in everlarger groups,
I'm grateful for this sweeping vision of human evolution and human nature, Yes, we can be cruel and brutal, but the larger truth is that most people seek harmony and justice, Ape Mind, Old Mind, New Mind shows how and why our history and evolution arc toward a more peaceful and humane future,
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