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A review by slichto3
Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel
2.0
Mindsight is a disappointing book, but it's possible that you'd enjoy it more with a more accurate mindset. I expected Mindsight to walk me through techniques for having more positive mental health, while teaching me about the workings of the brain along the way. I expected it to dig into scientifically backed ways towards self-improvement. And... that's sort of in there.
The first part of the book describes how the brain works - I learned a lot from that (although I'm not sure that I remember it so well). Along the way, the author introduces the concept of mindsight, which is basically the same as what we now call mindfulness. He starts talking about mindsight as a laudable goal, but, honestly, if I didn't already know some about mindfulness, I wouldn't have really understood what he was talking about.
The second part of the book is all case studies about how the author treated a variety of patients in his psychiatric practice. The bottom line in all of them: meditation helped! So, if I were to give you the full advice that I got from this book, it would be this: meditation can sometimes be helpful for mental health. There are a lot of pages that boil down to this same message, and it's tedious. Further, the book doesn't give very specific techniques for applying meditation: how long should we do it, what are specific ways to do it? It's there a little: focus on your breath, or focus on your body. But there wasn't enough there for me to find it useful.
I wouldn't recommend this book - there are probably better ones that explain and advocate for mindfulness.
The first part of the book describes how the brain works - I learned a lot from that (although I'm not sure that I remember it so well). Along the way, the author introduces the concept of mindsight, which is basically the same as what we now call mindfulness. He starts talking about mindsight as a laudable goal, but, honestly, if I didn't already know some about mindfulness, I wouldn't have really understood what he was talking about.
The second part of the book is all case studies about how the author treated a variety of patients in his psychiatric practice. The bottom line in all of them: meditation helped! So, if I were to give you the full advice that I got from this book, it would be this: meditation can sometimes be helpful for mental health. There are a lot of pages that boil down to this same message, and it's tedious. Further, the book doesn't give very specific techniques for applying meditation: how long should we do it, what are specific ways to do it? It's there a little: focus on your breath, or focus on your body. But there wasn't enough there for me to find it useful.
I wouldn't recommend this book - there are probably better ones that explain and advocate for mindfulness.