Our local learning-in-retirement organization said they could use an additional presentation in their line-up. What has stimulated my thinking lately? The two books: Incognito by David Eagleman and Seven and a Half Lessons about Your Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett. They both emphasize that our conscious minds are only a small part of what our brains do.
Why does it matter? Because there is much more to me and my personality and my impulses and my emotions and my memories. The book by Louann Brizendine, MD called "The Female Brain" helped me be aware of some of the differences typical female human brains experience and mine. Eagleman wrote that scientists at one time felt clear that humans have few or no instincts but they started to think about a man being attracted to a woman while a bull frog gets turned on by a gorgeous female frog. Brizendine points to hormones to explain much behavior and desire.
I was surprised to find that a while back, I had already created a web page listing books I had read about the unconscious. Here is a short link to that page: t.ly/rKeG
The books listed are these:
Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives
Prof. Wilson's "Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change
Wray Herbert's On Second Thought: Outsmarting Hard-Wired Habits
Prof. Timothy Wilson's Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
Many conversations about brains, thinking, minds and humans make little or no distinction between a brain and a mind. Those two words seem the best so far for naming the gooey mass under my skull vs. the invisible source of my conscious, marvelous but error-prone thinking.
Just this morning, I started re-reading "Seven and a Half Lessons About Your Brain". The writing is very good and the message clear: it seems I have one brain, not three.
