Book report: "Battling the Inner Dummy"

I wanted to like this layman's guide to psychological structure, subtitled "The Craziness of Apparently Normal People." Its foundational premise -- that most of the big psychological/mental challenges of life come from the primitive emotional center of the brain outshouting the newer (evolutionarily speaking) rational part -- is quite similar to my basic take on the matter.

What's more, for somewhat selfish reasons, I wholeheartedly support the idea of educated laymen trying to present psychological concepts to a mass audience, where PhD's and titles shouldn't matter as much as the ability to accurately synthesize, condense and translate academic information.


But to be honest, I had trouble getting through author David Weiner's freewheeling update on Freudian thought and beyond. (In fact, I've temporarily dropped it in favor of a book on a subject of more urgent interest -- rats. Don't ask.) His structural gimmick of a reanimated Freud reshaping his concepts with the help of modern marketing is irritating but easily enough avoided by skipping alternate chapters.


The real problem is the title and the premise behind it. "Inner Dummy" is Weiner's elaboration on Freud's idea of the id, expanded to cover the entire limbic system, the primitive part of the brain that governs emotional responses and remains better suited to the hunting and gathering lifestyle in which it developed.

Now I'm no huge fan of the limbic system, but I think it's a mistake to insult it by devaluing its intelligence. For starters, emotional drives are powerful stuff, and you really don't want to get them angry at you. I see the goal more as making friends between the limbic system and that big ol' prefrontal cortex. Get them to know and respect each other, so they can have productive conversations. The cortex gently and respectfully refutes the lizard brain's misunderstandings. The lizard brain points out information the rational mind may gloss over.


Because emotion is a kind of intelligence. It certainly isn't a complete source of intelligence, but it does provide all sorts of valuable clues about stuff in the environment that may be too subtle, troubling or whatever for the rational mind to recognize. Call that side of your mental life "dummy," and you risk shutting yourself off from valuable information. Not to mention the experience of feeling...well, alive,