Reviews of Books on Memory

Daniel L. Schacter's (2001) The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers, argues that memory has a significant task in remembering the totality of our past. However, due to the nature of this task, memory is often guilty of committing sins in changing the past or misrepresenting it. Of the seven sins of memory listed by Schacter (2001), three are sins of omission in which we fail to remember something and the other four are sins of commission, or errors in which we distort memories. Schacter's (2001) book appealed to me as I believe we all rely on memory without often considering its ability to fail us in providing accurate information. Acting on such information can lead to poor social and professional outcomes. While transience, absentmindedness and blocking are sins of omission to which we all fall prey, sins of commission like misattribution, bias, persistence and suggestibility can be minimized through purposeful effort and practice, (Schacter, 2001). I enjoyed this book for its detailed information on how memory often fails us due to the enormity of its tasks. However, I would have enjoyed the book more if the author would have provided a section discussing strategies to avoid making such errors. Likewise, there is little explanation about what causes memory to commit such "sins" in the first place. Otherwise, the book shows memory to be a fairly sturdy, efficient and adaptive human quality.

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ause I have often experience feelings of low self-esteem, I acquired Dr. Maxwell Maltz' (1989) Psycho-Cybernetics, in which the doctor maintains that self-image is autonomous. His main contention is that how we see ourselves in our mind's image and what we believe about this image is directly related to what we can and cannot do and who we can and cannot become. This is true in terms of whether we seek weight loss, wealth, or a happy relationship. Self-image, however, cannot be changed by positive thinking, will power or other conscious efforts according to Maltz (1989). Instead, we must somehow learn to "reset" the mental image we have of ourselves in order to bring that image to fruition. We must reset those images from negative ones associated with failure to positive ones associated with success. Maltz (1989) maintains that when we change our self-image in our mind, we will begin to arrive at a mental image that is exists in our thinking. Maltz (1989) also argues we are in total control of the images and beliefs we have in our head of ourselves. I enjoyed this book a great deal because I firmly believe Maltz' views are valid and that the image we have of ourselves taken together with beliefs about ourselves are the two

Category: Psychology - R