Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What it Teaches Us [Hardcover]

Psychologists have been studying the unconscious and the effects of the subliminal for well over a century. Look at Freud: he used the interpretation of the subliminal and the unconscious to understand his patients or (to look at it another way) he used his interpretation of their unconscious to attribute and project his own issues onto his patients - and, boy, Freud had some issues!

As with a lot of psychology there are believers, cynics and nay-sayers. The more recent submissions on the art of the subliminal tend towards the "it doesn't have an effect" end of the scale and maybe subliminal advertising doesn't have an effect on its own, but it cannot be denied that our perception of the subliminal certainly has an effect on how we perceive things.

Our author is a proponent of the "new" neuroscience ... once again with the "new".

Don't get me wrong after more than half my life time working in the field of psychology and I like to read other peoples ideas - I've found that it stops my own thinking becoming stale - so I have read a lot of texts, reports, publications and the like and I have come across most, if not all, of the ideas in this book. However, throughout my career, when ever a "theory" comes to the fore it also comes under investigation and debate. Yet debate and disagreement of any aspect of this author's work is met with attack rather than thought out argument.

Of course the one thing that all these tests (or should that be "testers") forget in their desire to pin our actions down to certain impulses in specific areas of the brain is the "human" factor. People are more than a simple grouping of impulses, and this is where the book really fails.

I did laugh when I saw the subtitles of some of the chapters. We may be learning more about the author than he had thought. Chapter 9: "The nature of emotions ... why the prospect of falling hundreds of feet onto large boulders has the same effect as a flirtatious smile and a black silk nightgown".

Chapter 10 "How our ego defends its honor [sic] ... why schedules are overly optimistic and failed CEOs feel they deserve golden parachutes" - personally I'm getting sick of "banker bashing". It seems that every time a commentator wants to justify their point of view they bash a banker or two. They know it is an impossible situation as to argue against them means to stick-up for a banker and so they use them as a sort of human shield.

On the good side the book, though it can be dry at times, is quite readable, but there is nothing new here; it is simply the regurgitation of old studies and the perceived results. As with most (if not all) text books it is the authors personal view of the subject and does not represent the standard (at present). There is more work to be done before it will be an accepted standard.

"Subliminal" is easily readable but it follows on the heels of at least two better books ("Thinking Fast And Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and "Who's In Charge" by Michael Gazzaniga) that cover much the same ground.

"Subliminal" treats of the "new science of the unconscious." Mlodinow lays out the now accepted view of the human brain as being made up of a "collection of many modules that work in parallel, with complex interactions, most of which operate outside of our consciousness." Our conscious mind is therefore only one of several systems at work and our sense that it is "in charge" is simply an illusion. Most of our decisions, judgments and actions happen before our conscious mind has processed the relevant information. While the conscious mind can override our unconscious modules under some circumstances, its principal role is more that of a narrator than a controller.

Mlodinow makes much of the new technologies, especially fMRI, that enable study of the brain. Nonetheless, most of his data is drawn eclectically from the vast canon of psychology experiments of the type that involves student volunteers performing trivial tasks in artificial conditions. Many of these examples, I had come across before.

Mlodinow allocates much of his book to demonstrating how the workings of our unconscious brain modules drive (often to a biased outcome) everyday decisions that we tend to attribute to our conscious minds. Here, he tends to stray into much traveled territory. The role of our unconscious in making product selections and the consequent "hidden persuader" power of marketing is hardly new news having been pioneered by Ernst Dichter in the 1940's. He warns of how unconscious biases sway job interviews - I attended a company seminar warning about that in the nineties. He cites the Nixon-Kennedy Television debate as proof that we are unconsciously influenced by visual and aural perceptions, something which most of us would put in the category of Basil Fawlty's "the bleeding obvious," (and of course, scientific rigor would also require the elimination of other possible explanations such as different demographics among TV and radio audiences). The unreliability of eye witness accounts has been well documented before, and so on....

Subliminal is by no means a dreadful book, but general readers interested in understanding our minds would do better to begin with Kahneman or Gazzaniga. The first is more magisterial and comprehensive and the second more thought provoking.

This is a fascinating book to read. It is well written and lucidly argued - even if you don't necessarily agree with all of Leonard Mlodinow's argumentation. In fact, that's what makes this type of book all the more enjoyable. It challenges some of your own preconceptions of the mind and poses questions which you may not have given due consideration to in the past. Unfortunatley it is also the type of book that will attract some 'Luddite' reviews where the content is immediately rejected because it does not conform to a reader's view of the world. The author is particulalry good at citing examples that illustrate his argument building. Regardless of your willingness to accept everything in the book you will end up with a more informed understanding of how the mind works. Leonard Mlodinow makes the point that much of the knowledge he refers to about the relationship between the conscious and unconcious minds has only emerged over the last ten years or so. This makes it an exciting field to read about. Overall: elegantly written and highly recommended.