Reading Minds: A Guide to the Cognitive Neuroscience Revolution / Edition 1

by Michael A. Moskowitz

Overview

Reading Minds is a practical guide to the cognitive science revolution. With fascinating descriptions of studies of the mind, from the brain scans of lovers and liars in London to the eye movements of babies in Budapest, this book takes the reader into the laboratories of the most innovative psychological researchers around the world. Using anecdotes from everyday life and his clinical practice, renowned psychotherapist and academic the author shows how to use the insights of science to better understand and relate to others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781855757141
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/31/2010
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Michael Moskowitz is a psychoanalyst and organizational consultant in New York City and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Silver School of Social Work, New York University, as well as being Co-Editor of the journal, Organisational and Social Dynamics. His past positions include CEO and Publisher, Other Press; Publisher, Jason Aronson; Director of the City University of New York Graduate School and Medical School Counseling Offices; and Team Leader, Operation Outreach Vietnam Veterans Center, New Haven, CT. He is author of articles and chapters on psychoanalytic theory, organizational dynamics, morality, and race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

About the Author vii

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 Reading minds 1

Chapter 2 Rock, paper, scissors: it pays to have a theory 21

Chapter 3 What the brain tells us about the mind 41

Chapter 4 Trauma: how events shape the brain and the mind 73

Chapter 5 Ways of understanding 105

Chapter 6 Bad feelings 125

Chapter 7 Look me in the eye 145

Chapter 8 Intimate relationships: reading your family, friends, and lovers 163

Chapter 9 Why we don't know what we know 193

References 215

Acknowledgements 227

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

”It’s about brain research and depression, romance and developmental psychology, primate research and borderline pathologies—sometimes all at the same time. We are carried along and rewarded with a fascinating read: Moskowitz has profound psychological knowledge—he explains studies and takes us into research laboratories; he shows us his warm-hearted and humorous way of talking to his patients about their needs and desires in their lives with others.

German National Radio On Culture

”This very engaging and scholarly volume serves as an excellent introduction to this increasingly relevant subject and is to be enjoyed not only by the general public, but by those of us in the field as well.

Brian Koehler PhD

Michael Moskowitz’s mind works by visiting every known knowledge depository on a topic he is interested in, acquiring what is most interesting and suggestive, taking all the bits home, assembling them into a coherent story of development by discovering their hidden connections, and then figuring out what is new and what is truly significant in the story. The method works well when he is being a clinician; and it works well when he is being an intellectual historian. In Reading Minds, it works really, really well as Moskowitz explains why modern cognitive neuroscience is revolutionary in its take on how minds work. He tells the theory, and he shows it as a theory builder.

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

”An analyst, an academic and an editor, Moskowitz is a psychoanalytic entrepreneur with a mission. He wants to rescue psychoanalysis from the academic isolation and bitter scholarly skirmishes that have dogged it for the last twenty years by bridging the divide between clinicians and theorists who work in various disciplines.

The New York Times

”An analyst, an academic and an editor, Moskowitz is a psychoanalytic entrepreneur with a mission. He wants to rescue psychoanalysis from the academic isolation and bitter scholarly skirmishes that have dogged it for the last twenty years by bridging the divide between clinicians and theorists who work in various disciplines.”

“Michael Moskowitz’s mind works by visiting every known knowledge depository on a topic he is interested in, acquiring what is most interesting and suggestive, taking all the bits home, assembling them into a coherent story of development by discovering their hidden connections, and then figuring out what is new and what is truly significant in the story. The method works well when he is being a clinician; and it works well when he is being an intellectual historian. In Reading Minds, it works really, really well as Moskowitz explains why modern cognitive neuroscience is revolutionary in its take on how minds work. He tells the theory, and he shows it as a theory builder.”

”This very engaging and scholarly volume serves as an excellent introduction to this increasingly relevant subject and is to be enjoyed not only by the general public, but by those of us in the field as well.”

”It’s about brain research and depression, romance and developmental psychology, primate research and borderline pathologies--sometimes all at the same time. We are carried along and rewarded with a fascinating read: Moskowitz has profound psychological knowledge--he explains studies and takes us into research laboratories; he shows us his warm-hearted and humorous way of talking to his patients about their needs and desires in their lives with others.

From the Publisher