How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior written by Leonard Mlodinlow discusses a unique perspective on the human brain. Many don’t realize how our unconscious drives we are not aware of motivate our behavior in our everyday lives. For example, an individual’s need to eat, have sex, or seek out love are all examples of our unconscious mind depicting our behavior from an evolutionary stand point. Often times many people get so caught up in the busyness of life they don’t take the time to think about their behavior and the reasoning behind it. This book provides an answer to that question. Minlow’s book dives deep into the unconscious state of the brain and the impact it has on our lives.
How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior discusses the many psychologists who attempted to seek out a reasoning for our behavior. From the 1800’s to modern day psychology, this book talks about the different theories behind behavior as well as background knowledge on the history of this research. While at first this bored me, I later found it helpful to learn about the foundation of research before continuing my reading. It helped me with my overall understanding of essentially why our thoughts control our behavior. It also defines what an unconscious state of mind truly consists of and how humans are unaware of what processes happen in the brain. I found this to be very interesting learning about which parts of the brain control or emotions, memory, learning, etc.
This book also analyzes the psychodynamic aspect of psychology as well as therapy. The psychodynamic theory consists of essentially our unconscious psychological processes (for example, fears) that relate back to our early life. This approach was first introduced by Sigmund Freud, one of the world most influential yet controversial psychologists. Mlodinlow often discusses Freud’s work and its’ impact on the psychodynamic approach of psychology and treatment. As for psychodynamic therapy, this therapy focuses in on how our childhood or past experiences influence or current behavior and how we can become more self aware in order to better ourselves.
Mlodinow also discusses the use of subliminal messages used in everyday society and the effect that can have on ones brain and their actions. I found this espescially interesting because it was the first time I had ever heard of this concept and Mlodinow emphasizes the effects. It heavily focuses in on the brain’s perceptions of cognitions (thoughts) and labels of emotions leading to our perceptions of events and experiences that happen to us.
I overall found this book to be very very interesting and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in psychology or is looking to explore the reasoning behind their behavior. I would caution that it can be very boring in the beginning when Mlodinlow discusses the early history of psychology but it is very essential for understanding the rest of the text. This book can also be very helpful in exploring one’s own reasoning behind their behavior. 