A fascinating tour of the sexual fringes of our society, an inside look at worlds into which most of us will never seek or gain entrÇe. Starting with the notion that activities at the margins of society eventually move into the mainstream, and her belief that our society is simultaneously sexually promiscuous and repressive (as in politically correct codes of sexual behavior), Eurydice plunges into various circles of sexual deviancy, only to be amazed by the ordinariness of the individuals engaging in bizarre erotic behavior. “What they did in private might quality as abnormal,” she writes, “but they did not.” What begins as a kind of highbrow voyeuristic tour of the fringes turns into a compelling portrait of contemporary anomie as we are guided through the worlds of cross-dressing, sexual addiction, sadomasochism, cybersex, and even necrophilia. What we see is disturbing—priests who can—t overcome their sexual addiction, women who choose to be sex slaves in a S/M relationship, vampires reveling orgiastically in each other’s blood—but equally disturbing is the inner deadness that drives them to seek extreme forms of sexual activity. Of women who cut themselves as part of the sexual act, the author writes, “for those who wear their scars as “badges of honor,” . . . What I do find utterly disquieting is that its scars are advertisements for the invisible scars of an increasingly violent and hollow society.” “All I really want is to feel alive,” says one sex addict who has slept with more than a thousand men. Eurydice’s ponderings about what she sees are not always convincing; in writing about sex in the military, she is irritatingly attracted to the idea that sex and violence must be linked in men who are being trained for war. But at her best, she offers insights into the pleasures and dangers offered by contemporary society. This study of our sexual mores is far from erotic. It is illuminating, provocative, unsettling, dark, and disturbing.
Pub Date: Feb. 14, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-83951-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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