Author Description

Product Description Elaborates a new concept of how the human mind works, on the paradigm of a "mental operating system" composed of diverse separate components with special functions, and discusses split personality and other forms of psychosis in terms of the new concept From Publishers Weekly The author of The Psychology of Consciousness here defines the human mind as a "bastard hybrid system." Each of us has many "small minds" that simultaneously process feelings, fantasies, ideas, fixed routines, interpersonal responses and bodily skills. While Ornstein's "multimind" theory is more descriptive than explanatory, it offers a welcome alternative to trendy computer models, split-brain theories and Freudianism. Multimind helps explain why our emotions and attitudes are easily swayed, the difficulty of ever really knowing oneself or another person, and how mental shortcuts we rely on to make snap judgments can harden prejudices. Ornstein faults the narrowness of IQ tests by stressing the varied abilities that make up intelligence. He cites studies of hypnosis and multiple personality in support of the view tht several minds can coexist in one person. It's worth heeding his axiom, "Whatever enters consciousness is greatly overemphasized." Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the Author Psychologist Robert Ornstein's wide-ranging and multidisciplinary work has won him awards from more than a dozen organizations, including the American Psychological Association and UNESCO. His pioneering research on the bilateral specialization of the brain has done much to advance our understanding of how we think. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from City University of New York in 1964 and his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University in 1968. His doctoral thesis won the American Institutes for Research Creative Talent Award and was published immediately as a book, On the Experience of Time. Since