You're Smarter Than You Think: How to Develop Your Practical Intelligence for Success in Living

If a book can teach common sense, this one is as likely to do so as any. Epstein, a University of Massachusetts psychologist, and Brodsky, a senior research associate at the Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, suggest that many ``smart'' people don't learn practical lessons from experience, and recommend ways to develop ``experiential intelligence.'' Using a readers' quiz and human vignettes, the authors show how the experiential mind can subvert rational thinking, but also can supply wisdom. They describe the ``language'' of the experiental mind--action-oriented, attached to emotion and operating via images--and propose, contra Freud, that such influences are greater than the mind's unconscious. Epstein and Brodsky trace the role of constructive thinking in achievers, discuss its function in love and emotions, and offer guidance to parents on how to influence their children's thinking. Finally, they explain how readers can analyze their own interpretations of events, and train their experiental minds through cognitive self-therapy and meditation. (Mar.)