Paul Bloom
Translators: Nieves Cumbreras and Pablo Müller
Publisher: Deusto
Original publication year: 2023
Human beings have been looking at the stars for centuries. Searching for answers beyond the known universe and trying to decipher if there is life beyond our planet. Trying to understand the incomprehensible. Always looking outside. But what about what happens inside us, behind closed doors? How our brain works is a mystery almost as big as what happens far from our sky.
The functioning of our brain is a mystery almost as big as what happens far from our sky
The big difference is that, if we talk about our gray matter, there are many studies done over the centuries that have tried to shed light on the mechanism of that wrinkled body that weighs only one and a half kilos. There are hundreds of theories, and Psico has no problem contradicting many of them, which, by the way, are widely accepted by the medical community.
What makes us human
How can we go from the electrical impulses emitted by neurons to intelligence and conscious experience? What happens to emotions such as disgust, shame or empathy and what are they for? Is the statement that Sigmund Freud made about human beings true when treating us as a group of beings plagued by forbidden sexual desires? Questions, questions and more questions to which this book tries to give a convincing answer.
Paul Bloom, an eminence in the area of psychology, carries out in the pages of this work an analysis of the functioning of that sentient flesh machine (Bloom’s own words) that causes us to be who we are. He also reviews its evolution, its history. But he does all this in an understandable way. There is no need to face this book with a raised eyebrow. Here we are not going to be overwhelmed with incomprehensible scientific concepts nor are we going to complete a master’s degree in neurology.
Understanding the complex
Bloom, who in his day-to-day life focuses on the study of the cognitive development of children, the study of pleasure, morality, religion and psychology in fiction and art, knows very well that if he writes about something so complex like the brain, you better make yourself understood. Because this welter of difficult terms and concepts alone would serve to confuse us even more. But in Psycho, that doesn’t happen.
This book serves to learn the history of the human mind and to know how and why these complex processes take place and make them easy to understand.
There will be no one who faces this work who will not end up understanding the functioning of a neuron and how electrical impulses pass through the dendrites. It’s just a small example, but it’s loaded with meaning. Because right now, reading this text, your neurons are passing an enormous amount of impulses between them to assimilate it.
And in the end, this book is about just that: knowing the history of the human mind and knowing how and why these complex processes take place and making them easy to understand. Quite a triumph for Paul Bloom.
This is one of the best ways to understand how psychology can provide us with practical knowledge about transcendental issues: from knowing what is best for us to achieve a satisfactory life, to why something so common and so difficult to overcome occurs such as depression.
We never know too much about ourselves. What is it that makes us humans. With Psico we are a little closer to fully understanding it.
2024-02-06 06:09:48
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