The Growth Of The Mind: And The Endangered Origins Of Intelligence

One of America's most prominent psychiatrists reveals the missing link between neuroscience and the qualities that make us fully human, arguing that new child-rearing patterns and impersonal technologies may interrupt the natural development of children.

This compelling book reveals the six fundamental levels that form the architecture of our minds. The growth of these levels, four of which are deeper even than the unconscious, depends on a series of critical but subtle emotional transactions between an infant and a devoted caregiver. In mapping these interactions, Dr. Greenspan formulates the elusive building blocks of creative and analytic thinking and provides an exciting missing link between recent discoveries in neuroscience and the qualities that make us most fully human. He also sounds a warning: these mind-building experiences are being eroded in child-rearing and educational practices. He offers specific solutions to restoring them in families, daycare, schools and in social policy.