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Self-Congruity provides a comprehensive understanding of the self-concept, integrating the many references to it in the psychological literature. Using his previous findings, the author considers cognitive-versus-affective phenomena, and intrapersonal, interpersonal, situational, and analytic modes. He then applies his integrated theory to the problem of change in self-concept and behavior. ... Read more

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This is the engaging story of a moment of transformation in the human sciences, a detailed account of a remarkable group of people who met regularly from 1946 to 1953 to explore the possibility of using scientific ideas that had emerged in the war years (cybernetics, information theory, computer theory) as a basis for interdisciplinary alliances. The Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, as they came to be called, included such luminaries as Norbert Wiener, John von Neumann, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, Kurt Lewin, F. S. C. Northrop, Molly Harrower, and Lawrence Kubie, who thought and argued together about such topics as insanity, vision, circular causality, language, the brain as a digital machine, and how to make wise decisions.Heims, who met and talked with many of the participants, portrays them not only as thinkers but as human beings. His account examines how the conduct and content of research are shaped by the society in which it occurs and how the spirit of the times, in this case a mixture of postwar confidence and cold-war paranoia, affected the thinking of the cybernetics group. He uses the meetings to explore the strong influence elite groups can have in establishing connections and agendas for research and provides a firsthand took at the emergence of paradigms that were to become central to the new fields of artificial intelligence and cognitive science.In his joint biography of John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, Heims offered a challenging interpretation of the development of recent American science and technology. Here, in this group portrait of an important generation of American intellectuals, Heims extends that interpretation to a broader canvas, in the process paying special attention to the two iconoclastic figures, Warren McCulloch and Gregory Bateson, whose ideas on the nature of the mind/brain and on holism are enjoying renewal today.Steve J. Heims, once a research physicist, has devoted his attention to the history of twentieth century science for the past two decades. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

good on the nature of mental problems
I know more about many of the names in this book in 2010 than I did when I read it in 2009. Currently looking for recognition of elite thinking, I found a comment by Lettvin on the gleeful hubris with which Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts attempted to describe logical operations in the brain for a higher function that required an unutterably complicated system. (p. 233). I wish I knew that was what I wanted the first time I read this book.

Those who would like to see the background which allowed Michel Foucault to emerge as an expert in the way civilized society attempts to deal with people who are considered mad by people who no longer function well together would benefit from the context in which professionals who had competing responsibilites could observe each other trying the same aspects of psychotic multiplicity on each other again and again without finding the kind of resolution any sane society would insist upon. Foucault gets quoted and mentioned as a frame of reference suitable in 1991 for understanding issues raised in Macy conferences and subsequent papers by the outstanding participants. ... Read more

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This book deals with automatic responses such as pain,fear, anxiety, the symptoms of primary mental disorders, dreams,repression, hypnosis, laughter, tears, response to stage and screenplays, structural responses such as cerebral lateralization, and soforth. The reason why all those phenomena are studied together isthat, according to the theory presented in this book, all suchautomatic responses have adaptive, self-protective functions thatcontribute to the realization of survival, and that most of them seekto protect not only all sorts of interests and the physical health ofthe person but also, and primarily, his or her mental health. Inreality, this statement about the general function of automaticresponses is almost a tautology, because they all are created byevolution, and evolution is directed to realize adaptation, success,and survival; moreover, proper mental functioning is necessary forrealizing survival. Therefore the real problem is to understand theparticular self-protective functions of particular automatisms and howthey discharge those functions, not that they have suchfunctions. Despite this fact, for example, the symptoms of primarymental disorders are considered by the authors of the DSM and byeveryone else as harmful manifestations of unknown dysfunctions, andtheir self-protective functions are totally ignored. It is shown inthis book that the harmfulness of symptoms is due to their sideeffects.

Mental disorders, dreams, and other automatic responses areinsufficiently, or even not at all, understood, because (1) mentalprocesses cannot be observed and are even unconscious to a greatextent, (2) the experimental causation of mental disorders isethically unfeasible, and (3) psychologists do not try to constructtheories because they do not know how to do it and are alsodiscouraged by the fact that Freud's theories turned out to beunscientific.

Newton explained the method that he used in constructing his theory ofmechanics thus: "Propositions [that constitute the basic principles oftheories] are deduced from the phenomena and made general throughinduction." He integrated such "propositions" with empirical andsemi-empirical knowledge to explain and predict many mechanicalphenomena and thus proved that his propositions were correct. This isthe method used in this book to construct a theory of automaticresponses and to test it.

A theory is empirically proved to be correct, or viable, by itsusefulness in explaining, predicting, and controlling the phenomena inits field of validity. In this book, (a) the functions of severalautomatisms that are either discovered through research or areconsidered normal components of everyday behavior are explained on thebasis of the theory, (b) the meanings and functions of about 500symptoms and 200 dreams are likewise explained in detail, (c) the lifeexperiences of those who produced them are predicted in general terms,(d) the particulars of those experiences are exposed, (e) the causalrelations between those experiences and the resulting automatisms areexplained, and (f) many examples of eliminating the symptoms and theirharmful side consequences are presented, which constitute successfulcases of psychotherapy. All these detailed explanations, predictions,and controls of particular phenomena constitute more than 2000empirical proofs of the theory about the general function ofautomatisms. No other theory in the history of science has been putforth with so many empirical proofs. Future generations will havedifficulty in understanding why the functions of automatic responseshave not been understood earlier. ... Read more