Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human

by Daniel J. Siegel M.D.

Overview

A New York Times Bestseller.

A scientist’s exploration into the mysteries of the human mind.

What is the mind? What is the experience of the self truly made of? How does the mind differ from the brain? Though the mind’s contents—its emotions, thoughts, and memories—are often described, the essence of mind is rarely, if ever, defined.

In this book, noted neuropsychiatrist and New York Times best-selling author Daniel J. Siegel, MD, uses his characteristic sensitivity and interdisciplinary background to offer a definition of the mind that illuminates the how, what, when, where, and even why of who we are, of what the mind is, and what the mind’s self has the potential to become. MIND takes the reader on a deep personal and scientific journey into consciousness, subjective experience, and information processing, uncovering the mind’s self-organizational properties that emerge from both the body and the relationships we have with one another, and with the world around us. While making a wide range of sciences accessible and exciting—from neurobiology to quantum physics, anthropology to psychology—this book offers an experience that addresses some of our most pressing personal and global questions about identity, connection, and the cultivation of well-being in our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393710533
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/18/2016
Series:	Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	684,513
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Noted neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute in LA. He is founding editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.

Table of Contents

1 Welcome 1

The Mind's Curiosity About Itself 5

A Common View: The Mind Is What the Brain Does 7

Our Identity and the Internal and Relational Origin of Mind 12

Why this Book About the Mind? 13

An Invitation 16

The Approach of Our Journey 17

Words Reflecting on Reflecting Words 20

2 What Is the Mind? 26

Working on a Working Definition of Mind (1990-1995) 26

The System of Mind: Complex Systems, Emergence, and Causality 42

Reflections and Invitations: Self-Organization of Energy and Information Flow 51

3 How Does the Mind Work in Ease and Dis-Ease? 62

Self-Organization, Lost and Found (1995-2000) 63

Differentiation and Linkage: The Integration of Healthy Minds 75

Reflections and Invitations: Integration and Well-Being? 85

4 Is the Mind's Subjective Reality Real? 99

Adapting to a Medical World that had Lost Its Mind (1980-1985) 100

Mind sight in Health and Healing 110

Reflections and Invitations: The Centrality of Subjectivity 115

5 Who Are We? 123

Exploring the Layers of Experience Beneath Identity (1975-1980) 124

Top-Down and Bottom-Up 127

Reflections and Invitations; Identity, Self, and Mind 140

6 Where Is Mind? 145

Could Mind Be Distributed Beyond the Individual? (1983-1990) 145

Neuroplasticity and Cultural Systems 177

Reflections and Invitations; Within and Between 182

7 A Why of Mind? 188

Meaning and Mind, Science and Spirituality (2000-2005) 188

Integration as the "Purpose of Life?" 200

Reflections and Invitations; Purpose and Meaning 206

8 When Is Mind? 212

Exploring Presence in Mind and Moment (2005-2010) 212

Attunement, Integration, and Time 227

Reflections and Imitations; Awareness and Time 235

9 A Continuum Connecting Consciousness, Cognition, and Community? 257

Integrating Consciousness, Illuminating Mind (2010-2015) 258

Consciousness, Non-Consciousness, and Presence 277

Reflections and Invitations: Cultivating Presence 287

10 Humankind: Can We Be Both? 302

Being, Doing, and Integrating Mind (2015-eternal present) 302

The Systems of a Plural Self and Integration of Identity 316

Reflections and Invitations: MWe, an Integrating Self, and a Kind Mind 323

Editorial Reviews

"With a graceful blend of humility and certainty, Dan Siegel ushers us through one of life's biggest questions: "What is the mind?" The book invites us to consider who we are as humans, our value systems, and to explore some of life's most confounding questions. Defining myriad aspects of being human with clarity, poetry, and accessible academic intelligence, this book is a philosophical, neurobiological, scientific, and spiritual tour de force. Its clarity and brazen innovation puts it in a category all its own."

Alanis Morissette

"[A]n outstanding and inspirational volume that will appeal to a wide audience. It will unequivocally transport the reader into a spiritual voyage with scientific blend combined with personal reflections, perceptions, and intentionality constituting an electrifying and illuminating reading."

The Inquisitive Mind

"Dan Siegel is a true pioneer in applying the latest science to well-being, education and public policy. In Mind, he takes us on a scientific and philosophical journey far beyond the view that the mind is just brain activity, with profound implications on how we think, how we feel, and how we live."

Arianna Huffington

"[A] powerful and immensely readable exploration of the how, what, when, where, and even why of who we are."

Forbes.com

"Dan Siegel is in my opinion one of the most knowledgeable persons on the mind. His insights into the mind as an embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information in the ecosystem of life have had a deep impact on my own understanding of mind and life and have impacted the way I practice and understand the healing process. His latest book takes the understanding of interpersonal neurobiology and self regulation to a new level. If you are interested in the science of healing, this book is a must read."

Deepak Chopra

"Mind explores and illuminates concepts that have previously been defined with vague metaphors, thereby unlocking past restraints and freeing clinicians so that they can act more sensitively and sensibly. . . . My work is better because I study his contributions. . . . And your mind, world, and clinical practice will also improve when you read Mind."

The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Newsletter

"Mind is a book only the inimitable Dr. Siegel could write, a rich fusion of science, personal narrative, mindfulness teachings, and new metaphors for picturing the wraithlike mind at work, as it quests for certainty in an uncertain world, and busily tailors a sense of self from the fabric of its varied relationships. It's no surprise that Siegel has improved the lives of many thousands of people the world over; this new book promises to open the eyes of even more."

Diane Ackerman

"Daniel Siegel widens our world with this mind-opening – and mind-bending – exploration of mind itself. From a journey through Mind emerges a compelling sense of our connection to each other, and to the universe."

Daniel Goleman

"[P]rovides the social group worker ways to tap into the mind’s potential creativity at the individual and group-as-a-whole level."

Social Work with Groups

"At once erudite and highly readable, with the proper mix of science and speculation, this book takes the reader on a journey from mind as simply brain activity to mind as energy and information flow to mind as embodied and relational with emergent properties. It shows how exciting possibilities can unfold for us "simply" by changing our minds. This interdisciplinary book elucidates the power of mind and delineates delicately the personal, interpersonal and societal implications of creating a creative and a healthy mind."

Ellen J. Langer

"A leading scientist's visionary journey, a creative and compelling exploration of mind itself."

Jack Kornfield

09/15/2016
Psychiatrist and prolific author Siegel (psychiatry, Univ. of California, Los Angeles Medical Sch.; Brainstorm) elucidates personhood and human relationships from the standpoint of neuroscience, discussing consciousness, cognition, and community from ancient philosophy to the latest in brain science. Among ten chapters are those on subjectivity, time, identity, and "ease and dis-ease." Siegel is thoughtful and stimulating: language "interconnects, illuminates and imprisons all at once, and we need to be and remain aware, as best we can, of this linkage, liberation and limitation words create in our lives." There are several helpful diagrams and illustrations. Mind is both embodied and relational: inner and inter. Topics include "energy and information flow," self-organization, and spirituality. Concluding chapters address consciousness, cognition, community, "plural self," and identity. Siegel distinguishes Newtonian and quantum mechanics: the latter lets us "view the world as filled not with absolutes, but possibilities and probabilities." The text is mostly accessible, sometimes overwrought. VERDICT This is a welcome overview of a field in flux, a progress report on the science and philosophy of who we are.—E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC

Library Journal

2016-09-22
A clinical professor of psychology serves up the soft, squishy side of neuroscience.If you are a hard-drilling student of brain science, the mind is the ghost in the machine, some matter for Cartesian pondering, with a healthy dose of the uncertainty principle thrown in for good measure: for how can the thing doing the measuring be measured itself? Siegel (Psychiatry/UCLA School of Medicine; Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, 2014, etc.) is not that steely scholar. Instead, this treatise on the mind is a sometimes-elegant (skull and skin are not limiting boundaries of energy and information flow) but often seemingly nonrigorous look at what Woody Allen called his second favorite organ. Mind, by Siegels account, is indeed energy and information flow; it is embodied, inasmuch as it exists inside the brain, but it is also disembodied, inasmuch as it extends beyond the individual. Brain activity is energy flow, but somehow that energy flow yields a world of mental representations, of subjective mental experience. Subjective is a key word in the authors account, for, as he writes, he has long sought a way to connect empirical insights with emotional knowledge. This interest in the emotional, in the inner view of mental life, is largely what separates Siegel from the likes of Antonio Damasio, but allowing for off-putting neologisms such as MWeshorthand for our integrated identity, the linkage of a differentiated me with a differentiated weit is a side that has not received enough scholarly attention. These emotional aspects, manifested in matters such as grief, would seem to be real enough, though much neuroscience questions the reality of subjective experience; Siegel nods to that by noting, we can honor the universal reality that perception is a constructed skill. In other words, its more Pema Chodron than Petri dish. If you embrace the notion that humankind ought to embrace more kindness, a natural outcome of integration, then this is your book.

Kirkus Reviews