The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

In the meantime, the book confirms what years as a manager in large corporations has lead me to suspect - a healthy work culture affects the business in tangible ways! Still reading...


A good overview   January 9, 2006
Amy Hilliard (VA, United States)
34 out of 37 found this review helpful

When The Developing Mind was published in 1999, the ideas the author Dr. Daniel Siegel presented were relatively new. In the book he proposes that the mind develops at the interface of neurophysiological processes and interpersonal relationships. Dr. Siegel examined experimental research from several areas to support his assertions. He discusses research and concepts from areas such as neurobiology, clinical psychology, developmental psychology, and cognitive psychology. This is an undertaking that is more difficult than it may seem to someone who has never had to read a lot of journal articles. I'm glad that he did it for me so I could enjoy the fruits of his labor. Although other authors and researchers have generated new books and research on the topics investigated in this book, it is still a good overview of the connection between mind, body, and experience, and a great jumping off point for further reading in these areas. The rest of my review describes and/or analyzes the content of each chapter.

Chapter One is an overview of the connection between mind, brain, and experience so you understand Dr. Siegel's ideas and how he connects the dots in later chapters. I liked his suggestion of using a model of the brain (your fist) to represent the different parts of the brain so someone not familiar with them can learn about them and how they function. Plus, you don't realy neeed to know too much about the brain to understand Dr. Siegel's argument and claims. He focuses more on describing patterns of activation in the brain than matching up the structures in the brain with cognitive functioning. Dr. Siegel also spends time in this chapter on the old nature-nurture debate. He asserts that it takes both your genetic material/body and experience to show physical and behavioral characteristics. I think he does a good job supporting that claim by what he says in the rest of the book.

In Chapter Two the author discusses memory. This is the only chapter with which I have some problems. I think more research could have been presented and a better explanation given to clarify concepts. These problems could lead to confusion in those who may not know memory research and disappointment in those that do. Dr. Siegel starts with a general definition of memory and helpful and non-helpful assumptions people make about it. He defines memory as "the binding together of various aspects of neuronal activation patterns." That could be defining just about any brain process, but he does try to refine the concept more. He discusses explicit and implicit memory, and how they are formed. However, here we encounter a problem. Dr. Siegel tells us that mental models are "the basic components of implicit memory." However, he does not mention them when he discusses the formation of explicit memory. According to cognitive psychology research, the area in which most research on mental models has been conducted, mental representations are developed in the formation of both. In fact, they are more fully developed in explicit memories. Now why did I switch between the term mental representation and mental model? After this chapter Dr Siegel switches to the term mental representation in the rest of the book. It doesn't really matter-they both essentially mean the same- but he never gives as good definition of either one. Then, because of how he organized the sections in this chapter, Dr. Siegel makes it seem that the difference between implicit and explicit memory is due to age and sense of self. He asserted that the main qualitative difference in memory between infants and toddlers are that toddlers have the capacity for the the feeling of remembrance. This may be true, but it is true irrespective of implicit versus explicit memory. Implicit memory is when you remember things to which you were not consciously attending, which is why ones mental representation is usually not as well developed as someone who has an explicit memory of the same event. Therefore, it would make sense that a toddler remembers more than an infant because he or she has a better (if limited) attention span and knows what to do with it (to a certain degree). However, the implicit-explicit dichotomy does not adequately explain the feeling of remembering.

Why might Dr. Siegel have created this false dichotomy? Perhaps to support his implication that mental representations (implicit memory) are so basic to human thought processes that even infants create them. However, it is more likely that he set up this dichotomy to present a cognitive explanation for the neurological research comparing infant and toddler memories. The feeling of remembrance is a qualitative difference between infants and toddlers, but without a better definition you could just as easily describe it as resulting from implicit (nonconscious) and explicit (conscious) attention. Therefore, another explanation for the source of the feeling of remembering is necessary. I also would like better and more explicit definitions of mental models/representations and explicit and implicit memory. Dr. Siegel discusses mental models more in depth in the chapter titled Representations, but still does not provide an adequate definition. Furthermore, not directly citing cognitive psychology research seems an oversight because the concept of mental models/ representations is so important to Dr. Siegel's ideas throughout the book. However, I feel that most of his assertions about mental representations, states of mind, and the processes that shape them are valid despite my problems with this chapter.

Chapter Three is about attachment. The author states that attachment "is an inborn system in the brain that evolves in ways that influence and organize motivational, emotional, and memory processes with respect to significant care-giving figures." Attachment is based on "the parental sensitivity and responsivity to the child's signals, which allow for collaborative parent-child communication." He presents seminal work in attachment theory, but also adds the idea of using mental models to explain how attachment is formed. He primarily supports his ideas with research conducted using the Adult Attachment Interview. He proposes that it is not loss or trauma, but unresolved loss and trauma that lead to disorganized response patterns and poor attachment. However, these response patterns can be change if the situation is resolved in some manner. Dr. Siegel discusses attachment because of how crucial emotion is to patterns of activations in the brain. He states that the brain responds to experience with the establishment of connections among neurons, and that emotions can affect the connections.

The topic of Chapter Four is emotion. Dr. Siegel defines a state of mind as "the clustering of a profile of activation within the brain's neural network." He states that the appraisal of stimuli and the creation of meaning are central functions of the mind, and that they occur with the arousal process of emotion. To support that assertion Dr. Siegel discusses approaches to emotion, how to categorize them, the difference between affect and mood, the convergence of social processing and emotion, nonconscious and conscious emotion, emotion as a value system for the appraisal of meaning, and emotional communication to name a few sections.

Chapters Five - Nine are the meat of the new concepts that Dr. Siegel presents. Chapters Five and Six flesh out Dr. Siegel's ideas about mental presentations and states of mind. He discusses information processing and the construction of reality. He describes different types of representations and representational processes, attachment, emotion, gender, experience, and how they influence each other to create states of mind, like ways of knowing and sense of self and reality. Dr. Siegel asserts that "states of mind allow the brain to achieve cohesion in functioning." He defines a state of mind as "the total pattern of neuronal activations in the brain at a particular moment in time." The ways in which individuals assemble particular neuronal activations within themselves or in interaction with other people determine the nature of their subjective experience of reality. In the rest of the book Dr. Siegel describes self-regulation, interpersonal connection, and integration. He shows how emotion is an integral part of these processes, and these processes are an integral part of a person's sense of self.

Overall, I think that the author was successful at pulling research from different areas and conecting the dots to show the mind-body-experence connection. I think that the explanations he gives are not always as cut and dried as he presents, but Dr. Siegel did a good job of covering new ground. I'd like to see an update in a few years.


Used as a Text Book   February 26, 2006
Joy Fox (Aurora, Colorado)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

I am a psychology graduate student and this book was used as a text book in my program for a developmental class. I must say that at first I was a little concerned over the professor's choice of material, but after I started digesting this material, I realized how brillant this book is. I have never seen anyone try to explain how brain structures create consciousness. Dr. Siegel utilizes neurobiology in a most profound way. This is a top notch book, and one I am not selling back at the end of the term.