Books and Me

by Walter Mischel (2015) It's hard to take Mischel's  argument  for nurture terribly seriously immediately after reading Plomin's  "Blueprint" .  It isn't as if Plomin's  book isn't flawed , but it nonetheless did make a pretty convincing case that we are largely determined by our genes.   Mischel, on the other hand, whilst also giving a nod to the importance of genetic determinism, remains far more optimistic than Plomin that we can choose to alter ourselves in a way that can change outcomes in a meaningful sort of a way.  He argues that it doesn't all come down to whether we were able to resist the marshmallow aged three and a half.  According to him, we can learn optimism, a growth mindset and various  other strategies for resisting temptation.  The problem is that the marshmallow test and their ilk, including Dweck's Growth Mindset theory have been subject to the replication problem from which it seems possible to conc...

by Robert Plomin (2018) Oh boy is it a relief to get this one done!  It isn't so much the message - I can't possibly offer a reasonable take on that, given my very tenuous grasp of genetics, though plenty of others have been critical . Rather it is the seemingly endless repetition of the same or (at least very similar) argument, ie: that we are largely a product of a massive number of genes that add tiny but multiple effects.  OK, this seems like a big theme, but believe me, you have got the message pretty early on, and the rest of the book is a series of iterations of this central idea.  It hardly ever lets go.  Admittedly there is a chapter towards the end where Plomin discusses the ethical and practical implications of this evidence, for which one is phenomenally grateful as it does offer a bit of variety, but just as you limp over the finishing line of what you may reasonably assume is the last chapter, up pops an epilogue to tell you the whole thing all ov...

by Bessel Van Der Kolk (2015) Where to start?  This book is monumental, being vast in scope, beautifully argued and hugely significant all at once.  It is also deeply humane and potentially healing.  It would have been very easy for Bessel to have turned out an angry diatribe but instead he quietly makes his case, and you only gradually begin to clock, whilst reading between the lines, that his argument represents a huge challenge to current psychiatric, schooling and social services. His argument is that the epidemic of unhappiness which is currently so often attributed to snowflakery/lack of resilience is actually, often as not, a response to deeply traumatic events which for whatever reason, we do not really want to acknowledge or confront. So instead of blaming the victim or imposing deeply cruel methods of treatment (he gently explains why CBT so often fails),  Bessel gets about delineating the effects of trauma upon the mind, brain and body, an...

by Katherine Andler (2013) This is a twenty minute read at most, but extremely helpful nonetheless.  As it happens, I am simultaneously reading three other  books  on related subjects, one of which mentioned EMDR therapy for PTSD and anxiety in early chapter, and frankly, I couldn't wait to know more about the technique that seemed to promise so much and so went in search of something that could explain it a bit more. Andler's short tract didn't let me down.  She explains EMDR succinctly and memorably and provides useful links to youtube and further reading at the back.  I tried the technique on myself using a minor source of anxiety along with  this video , and OK, so I am hardly terribly traumatised and have worked on my stuff with various tools over the years, (CBT, mindfulness, yoga, attachment theory etc) but, let's face it, sources of at least some level of trauma are ever present, so it wasn't terribly difficult to think something up....