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The Uses of Delusion is about aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals. Psychologist Stuart Vyse explores how delusional thinking may play a role in love and relationships, illness and loss, and personality and behavior, concluding with suggestions for when reason should rule, and when intuition and emotion should be allowed to take over.
List of contents
- Chapter 1: Ridiculous Reason
- Chapter 2: A Bright Future in Sales
- Chapter 3: I Feel Fine
- Chapter 4: Things Unseen
- Chapter 5: Soulmates
- Chapter 6: The Living Dead
- Chapter 7: Bedtime Stories
- Chapter 8: The Gangster Within
- Chapter 9: The Mind's Best Trick
- Chapter 10: Odysseus in Rags
About the author
Stuart Vyse, PhD, is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College. Vyse's book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association. He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the "Behavior & Belief" column, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Summary
A fascinating examination of delusional thinking and how it might benefit health, relationships, and wellbeing.
Although reason and rationality are our friends in almost all contexts, in some cases people are better off putting reason aside. In a number of very important situations, we benefit by not seeing the world as it is, and by not behaving like logic-driven machines. Sometimes we know we aren't making sense, and yet we are compelled to act against reason; in other cases, our delusions are so much a part of normal human experience that we are unaware of them. As intelligent as we are, much of what has helped humans succeed as a species is not our prodigious brain power but something much more basic.
The Uses of Delusion is about aspects of human nature that are not altogether rational but, nonetheless, help us achieve our social and personal goals. Psychologist Stuart Vyse presents a lively, accessible exploration of the psychological concepts behind "useful delusions", fleshing out how delusional thinking may play a role in love and relationships, illness and loss, and personality and behavior. Along the way Vyse draws on the work of William James, Daniel Kahneman, and Joan Didion - who wrote about her compelling belief that her husband, though deceased, would soon return to her. Throughout, Vyse strives to answer the question: why would some of our most illogical beliefs be as helpful as they are? The concluding chapter offers an explanation grounded in natural selection - the ability to fool ourselves, Vyse argues, has actually helped us to survive. In the final pages of The Uses of Delusion, Vyse offers suggestions for determining when reason should rule and when intuition and emotion should be allowed to take over.
Additional text
Those of us who have devoted our careers to promoting science, reason, and rationality rarely consider the times and circumstances when it is rational to be irrational, reasonable to be unreasonable, and even use science to determine when it is appropriate to be unscientific in our lives. In The Uses of Delusion our nation's foremost expert on superstition and magical thinking turns his rational eye to revealing the context of this apparently paradoxical behavior. I actually felt a sense of relief in understanding why I need not berate myself for the many times I have caught myself being unreasonable, irrational, and unscientific in my life, because as Stuart Vyse shows in this important contribution to the science of rationality, there are times when it pays to be irrational.
