Thu Aug 27 18:54:19 PDT 2015
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
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Emotions and feelings are difficult to understand - for everyone - and for me in particular! Some feelings are especially hard to understand - hence dedicated books. In reading through you will discover many things. Alixithymia, for instance, a condition by which people can be 'feeling numb' - able to be aware of feelings - but not be connected to them. Stumbling on Happiness takes you through a detailed analysis of feelings, awareness and experience - and provides the customary selection of experiments involving folk wandering around universities worldwide - not all of whom were paid - but all of whom interact with people asking for directions, looking glamorous on dangerous bridges, and so forth, with the customary selfless dedication of those committed to the ways of learning.
The conclusions are interesting - and like the non-academic 'You Version 2.0' will help you to understand the stack of capabilities and functions (and frequent miss-wirings between them) that constitute You. This is not a self-help book - it is a book by a psychologist (a specialized human animal) written with the general understanding that psychology is a valid science (despite its lack of electricity) with a solid emphasis on overviewing human psychology and injecting humour in the process.
Interestingly, I observed the card trick of 'Why Didn't I Think of That' early on in this book - and naturally was not taken in by that a second time. (Actually, I think that I saw through the trick the first time around, too).