Essential reading for anyone who has wondered why people do, feel, and think what they do. Paul Bloom is that rarest of experts—able to tell a story, make it practical, and yet faithfully capture the complexity and nuance of the latest research. I loved Psych!” — Angela Duckworth, author of New York Times bestseller Grit
“In Psych, Paul Bloom explains the deep and lasting insights from the science of the mind, sifting them from the superficial and the unreproducible. And he does it with the tough mind and gentle style that make all his books such a pleasure to read.” — Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of Rationality
“Paul Bloom is the perfect guide to a topic we all need to understand better: how our minds work. Psych is a fascinating deep dive into the mysteries of human psychology. It is also a perfect testament to why understanding the puzzles of the mind can be so damn fun.” — Laurie Santos, Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast
“Psych will thrill readers young and old with fundamental truths about our very nature. A devoted teacher and gifted author on wide-ranging issues in moral psychology, Bloom has written a compelling story that synthesizes and integrates so much about humans’ brains, minds, and behavior. This is a masterful, brilliantly composed book that leaves readers wanting to learn more about what makes us human and why that matters.” — Peter Salovey, president of Yale University and Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology
“The story of the human mind as told by psychology’s best storyteller. From the neuron to the neighborhood and all points between, Paul Bloom takes us on a fantastic journey—and delivers another gem of a book." — Daniel Gilbert, Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and author of New York Times bestseller Stumbling on Happiness
“For anyone with even a glancing interest in how our hearts and minds work—or a more in-depth one, for that matter—Paul Bloom’s Psych is perhaps the wittiest, most captivating overview of the field of psychology to date. Bloom is edifying without being pedantic, profound without being pretentious (or, let’s face it, exhausting), and authoritative while still maintaining an admirable sense of humility. Plus: his eye for the just-right anecdote or bit of fanciful trivia is impeccable. Who wouldn’t want to learn about failed hamburger campaigns, novel ways to smoke out spies, or pigs that learn to do the fox trot?” — Jennifer Senior, author of New York Times bestseller All Joy and No Fun and winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing
“Bloom offers an engaging, comprehensive, accessible introduction to the field of psychology…[Psych is an] enlightening combination of scholarly engagement and popular appeal…[Bloom] displays an impressive familiarity with the principles and key research, while writing in an enthusiastic, at times almost playful, style that's designed to engage general readers.” — Shelf Awareness
"Fascinating." — AARP
"An extraordinary book that absolutely delivers on its sweeping ambitions. Every chapter here – on topics ranging from Freud to the mysteries of consciousness, from intergroup conflict to the meaning of life – feels like having the mind's complexities untangled by a witty, eloquent and deeply knowledgeable friend." — Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks
★ 2022-11-08
The veteran teacher of a popular psychology course writes a book on what he taught, and it’s delightful.
Bloom, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale and author of Against Empathy and The Sweet Spot, begins with a series of compelling questions: Are we rational? What makes us happy? What do feelings accomplish? What did Freud get right? He then follows with a series of lucid stand-alone chapters that can be read in any order. He warns readers not to expect pop psychology’s emphasis on man’s “transcendent or spiritual nature.” Modern psychology is materialist (the mind as a physical entity), evolutionary (shaped by natural selection), and causal (driven by the forces of genes, culture, and experience). The author illustrates his points by discussing consciousness. Although no one fully understands it, many philosophers see consciousness as a biological phenomenon akin to digestion. Computers simulate thought processes by storing, processing, and manipulating information. They do this with dazzling speed, but it’s only a simulation, not the real thing. Talking about uploading “consciousness” into a computer is meaningless; “your consciousness is the product of your physical brain; lose the brain, lose the consciousness.” An early chapter on Freud will jolt most readers with news that he remains a major figure of university study—in the English department. Psychology students may never hear his name. Many of his ideas seem wacky; he provided little proof, and most have failed to survive the passage of time. Bloom adds that a major exception is Freud’s notion of an unconscious mind at war with itself—unnerving evidence that we are not in full control of our lives. Consistently engaging, Bloom checks all the boxes with sections on the other great men (Descartes, Skinner, Piaget) and important subjects, including language, learning, perception, and memory. Humans possess amazing abilities in this area, but our eagerness to believe nonsense is off the charts.
Illuminating reading for anyone interested in the human brain.
