new book – ‘The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness’
Written on September 1, 2009
The Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Body Sense (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology) by Alan Fogel (W.W. Norton, 2009)
Product description from the publisher:
The practice and science of feeling our movements, sensations, and emotions. Embodied self-awareness is the practice and science of our ability to feel our movements, sensations, and emotions. As infants, before we can speak or conceptualize, we learn to move toward what makes us feel good and away from what makes us feel bad. Our ability to continue to develop and cultivate awareness of such body-based feelings and understanding is essential for learning how to successfully navigate in the physical and social world, as well as for avoiding injury and stress. The book explains the neurological basis of embodied self-awareness, how to enhance self-awareness, and how to regain it after injury or trauma.
See also: Author’s blog, Body Sense, at Psychology Today
Filed in: consciousness,meditation,new books.
Our perception of how mentally sharp we are has more to do with how we’re feeling emotionally than how our cognitive functions are actually working.
In other words when someone says, ‘I think my memory has become much worse recently’, research suggests that this tells us almost nothing about how their memory is working, but reliably indicates that their mood has been low.
It’s quite amazing to think that we have such poor insight into the functioning of our own minds that we ‘mistake’ low mood for a bad memory, poor concentration or impaired problem solving.
It seems that our ability to have accurate self awareness into our own mental functioning is not very trustworthy.