An Unquiet Mind

In the Spring I joined my local psychological association with the idea of getting to know my professional colleagues and maybe networking a bit. One group I've been very involved with is our Psychological Book Club. We meet every 2 months after reading a book that is in one way or another associated with psychology. Previous entrants have included Couple Skills, Oh the Glory of it All, and (my choice) Crazy.

For today's meeting we are reading Dan Siegel's The Mindful Brain. I was initially really excited to read this, as Dr. Siegel's work in interpersonal neurobiology is pretty exciting stuff. However... This book blows. I mean, hard. In a major way. In fact, we are meeting at 7pm tonight and I have finished less than half of it. Not because I couldn't, but because I can't, if you understand the distinction. I will at some point this afternoon skim the rest and perhaps force my way through the last chapter, but I am accepting defeat on this one.

The book proposes to explore the psychobiology of how mindful awareness increases personal well being and can be so effective at treating certain disorders, such as pain, ADHD, and anxiety. I am all for this! Don't get me wrong! However... What I am not on board with is Dr. Siegel's sweeping statements, such as how he equates mindfulness with "good" and mindlessness with "evil". Or how he makes that particularly infuriating statement to the effect that "in the past" people were more mindful and thus happier, while now we are all living in a cesspool of mindless shit. This I cannot abide, nor can any student of history. People who make the current society out to be the worst ever, or the wellspring of all evils, have read neither fiction nor historical research about older societies than our own, all of which faced their own evils, and all of which felt that theirs was the dawn of the apocolypse for some foolish reason or other. It is such a myopic argument that it completely spoiled the rest of the book for me, appearing as it did early in the first chapter.

I'm so disappointed in this book, particularly because Seigel's other work is so noteworthy. I keep trying to see if there is something in me that is resisting the message, or otherwise questioning my judgement. Why am I more interested in reading Dorothy Sayers' fictionalized accounts about how admitting women to Oxford was considered by some to be the end of the world? Perhaps because her work captured the Zeitgeist, rather than trying to create it.

Ultimately, the good news is that I passed my last exam, so, mindful or not, the state of California has no excuse but to license me forthwith!