Reviews for Attachment Theory and Close Relationships

The average rating for Attachment Theory and Close Relationships based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-03 00:00:00 Thomas Harrison If, to riff on the New Age urban legend that we only use 10 percent of our brains, it turns out that only 10 percent of our mental activity is conscious, then Dennett hasn't explained very much. But, the idea that much of our mental activity is unconscious is scary to many people. This includes not just John and Jane Does, but many educated people and even many cognitive scientists. It's of a partial piece, at least, with fears over the lack of free will. On that subject, note that even a Dennett, while denying the existence of a Cartesian Central Meaner, has spilled ink enough for two whole books illogically continuing to defend the existence of free will. Some parts of fears of unconscious mental behavior touch on its free will aspects. A fair amount do. Probably the second biggest fear behind worries about unconscious mental activity is the risk that humans will look more, well, animalistic. And that's precisely what "The New Unconscious" addresses. Without any of its authors putting percentages on conscious versus unconscious mental activity, the cognitive science essays collected here ask -- and in large degree answer -- just what all is happening in our minds out of the reach of our own selves. Does subliminal programming work? Yes, to a moderate to modest extent, depending on the exact goals of specific subliminal ideas. At the same time, no, if it's on New Ageish self-help audio tapes; to the degree subliminal programming works, it works far better with visual than with audio programming. Related to that, do various forms of unconscious priming -- such as priming one toward certain emotional or belief states, or reinforcing old ones -- work? The answer is a pretty strong yes. Sometimes, as in how racial attitudes can be effective, this is somewhat scary, yet challenging to national issues of sociology, indicating that at least some change in racial attitudes in America is in fact, pardon the pun, only skin deep. Can unconscious thoughts and processes be controlled? The answer appears to be yes. Does this mean we have unconscious free will? The authors of the main study in this area of the book say yes. They don't answer, though, how that would square with the absence of a Central Meaner, and whether it might not imply an Unconscious Central Meaner. I say it does, until the authors further develop their idea. However, that's just their theory of unconscious free will. Unless one believes that lack of a conscious central meaner is some weird form of an emergent property, I don't see how unconscious free will, let alone an implied unconscious Cartesian Meaner, can actually exist. I charge that they don't, and that Jack Glaser and John Kihlstrom need to do more work. But that's not all in here. Tying in to Malcolm Gladwell, the relative accuracy of thin-slice, quick-slice judgments of other people has been clinically upheld. The power of assimilating to other people's mannerisms and becoming unconscious mimics has also been demonstrated. Ditto on mimicry of emotional affect, similarity judgments and other things. Our minds are less our own than we thought. Of course, with no Cartesian Meaner, they're really not "our" minds anyway.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-15 00:00:00 Naveed Cheema (Darn it, the SFPL copy is LIB USE ONLY, and I really don't wanna sit and the library reading it, nor do I want to buy it. Huh, I wonder if Interlibrary Loan will work for books like that.)