The Growth of the Mind: And the Endangered Origins of Intelligence [Paperback]

Stanley I. Greenspan (Author), Beryl Lieff Benderly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 1998

This compelling book reveals the six fundamental levels that form the architecture of our minds. The growth of these levels, four of which are deeper even than the unconscious, depends on a series of critical but subtle emotional transactions between an infant and a devoted caregiver. In mapping these interactions, Dr. Greenspan formulates the elusive building blocks of creative and analytic thinking and provides an exciting missing link between recent discoveries in neuroscience and the qualities that make us most fully human. He also sounds a warning: these mind-building experiences are being eroded in child-rearing and educational practices. He offers specific solutions to restoring them in families, daycare, schools and in social policy.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The study of children's minds got off track, Greenspan thinks, when investigators started watching youngsters putting pegs in holes rather than taking part in interpersonal actions. Greenspan's major thesis is that emotional relatedness is a substantial element in the child's mental development. He demonstrates the importance of emotions not only in the child's relations with family members but also in education, socializing, conflict resolution, and the prevention of violence both between individuals and in groups. Emotions, Greenspan argues, play roles in the organization of experience and behavior and even in the conceiving of abstractions; indeed, emotions affect the entire structure of personality (the fundamental limitation of artificial intelligence is that a computer can't experience emotion). Until educators learn how to foster the individual child's emotional growth, he maintains, they will continue to shortchange the future of our country. William Beatty --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A plea that we should put our money where our mouth is in the service of raising emotionally secure and healthy children. Psychiatrist Greenspan (George Washington Univ. School of Medicine; The Essential Partnership, 1989, etc.) offers a multistage theory of emotional development that somewhat parallels Erik Erikson's theory of emotional growth. Greenspan argues that developmental theories based on the separation of reason and emotion are misguided: You can't have one without the other in the nurturing of a whole and healthy adult. As cognitive development proceeds from sensation-seeking to ``operational'' thinking, so emotional development proceeds from ``making sense of sensation'' through organizing symbols based on cues from caregivers to the ability to recognize and reflect on feelings and thoughts. Greenspan devotes the first part of the book to defining the six stages of emotional development that form the basic structure of our mind and tracing how they influence intelligence and awareness. The later chapters are devoted to tracing the consequences of stunted emotional development, from high divorce rates to street violence and even war. Along the way Greenspan discusses how mental health professionals, educators, and social service workers frequently miss the boat in trying to help troubled children and families. He puts a heavy stress on parental responsibility, emphasizing that emotional--and hence intellectual--development must begin with an intense but sensitive and flexible one-to-one relationship between caregiver and infant, and asserting that the same caregiver should be present throughout infancy and childhood. Nevertheless, even teenagers stuck at early stages of emotional development--unable to empathize with another, for instance--can pass along to reflective maturity with the help of a mentoring relationship that provides the requisite intensity and consistency. Adds weight to recent efforts to legitimize early emotions as something far more than elements of a rich (but unproductive) fantasy life. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738200263
• ISBN-13: 978-0738200262
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #545,451 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo!, May 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Growth of the Mind: And the Endangered Origins of Intelligence (Paperback)

In this work, Dr. Greenspan provides the reader with a general thesis on human development, from birth through mature adulthood. His arguments center on the role that emotions play in our mind's growth, from birth through death, and in so doing reveals the foundations of both our human fragility and greatness, on an individual and societal level. This is powerful, intoxicating stuff: it will resound in your heart what you've suspected all along, make clear what was hidden, and lay bare what makes us most human. As a layman unversed in the field of psychology, I found it absolutely riveting and exhilarating - and as a father of an 8 month daughter, it provided a sound framework on which to base my parenting - to see the forest through the trees and approach my role as a father with true confidence and newfound excitement.

55 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last, the true nature of human behavior illuminated, December 13, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Mahwah, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Growth of the Mind: And the Endangered Origins of Intelligence (Hardcover)

Although this book has been favorably reviewed, I suspect reviewers did not grasp the truly profound nature of Greenspan's propositions. I wish this book had been available to as I was writing my own book on the nature of addiction. Addiction, dysfunction, mental disorders are the principal plagues of all societies. Classical psychoanalyis, behavior modification, cognitive psychology, and scores of therapeutic techniques continue to tinker with the essential human problem. But until we understand and accept the nature of our emotional life as Greenspan explains it, we can expect no meaningful changes. Back in 1962 Susanne Langer (Mind:An Essay on Human Feeling) wrote: "The thesis I hope to substantiate here is that the entire psychological field - including human emotion, responsible action, rationality, knowledge - is a vast and branching development of feeling." In 1944, Ernst Cassirer (An Essay on Man) was proposing that we should drop our description of man as the rational animal in favor of symbolic animal. Quantum physicists asserted that reality cannot be grasped by what we think it is but by how we experience it. Physicist Eric Jantsch (Design for Evolution) writes, "Rationality, as it turns out, begins to play a role only after the knowledge has been obtained viscerally." And Danah Zohar (The Quantum Self) says, "All definite answers - all passion, all reason - are classical structures. They arise at the point where the wave function of thought collapses, that is, after the moment of choice. Our logic does not make our choices." In depth psychology, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (The Broken Connection) shifted the Freudian model from instinct and defense to death and the continuity of life, brilliantly illuminating the symbolic connections by which mankind thrives or perishes. And just this year we hear from science writer Tor Norretranders (The User Illusion)that the human organism is predominantly a non-conscious organism - consciousness processes about 16 to 40 bits of information per second, while the non-conscious levels process and discard about 11 million bits of information per second. Experiments prove that decisions are made a full half second before we become conscious of them. For me, all this culminates in Greenspan's beautifully written book. Hopefully, his work will will lead other researchers to pursue this essential line of thought. Schools are at last beginning to introduce youngsters to their feelings, but this movement must become universal and taught at the highest academic levels. Thank you, Dr. Greenspan and Beryl Lief Benderly!