Paracelsus on unconscious, epilepsy and mania.

John Weyer on devil and witch.

Felix Plater on insane, he divides the mental diseases into imbecilitas, consternatio, alienatio and defatigatio.

Thomas Sydenham on hysteria, and treatment with phlebotomy, purging, iron preparations, milk diets and horse riding.

Thomas Willis on dementia paralytica and myasthenia gravis. Hysteria is a disease of brain but not uterus.

Robert Burton on The Anatomy of Melencholy.

George Ernst Stahl on animism. He divided mental illness into sympathetic (due to disease of organ) and pathetic (functional with no organ basis).

Giovanni Battista Morgagni on autopsy of mentally ill patients.

Albrecht von Haller, Robert Whytt, Luigi Galvani on nerves.

Pierre Cabanis on physiological psycology, thought is the function of brain.

Erasmus Darwin on Darwin chair to treat mental illness.

Franz Joseph Gall on cerebral localization.

Philippe Pinel on moral treatment and classification of mental disorders. Cause of mental illness is due to heredity, faulty education, irregular way of life, spasmodic passions, oppressive passions and gay passions. He divided mental illness into mania, melancholia, dementia and idiocy. He did statistical investigation of mental illness.

Jean Esquirol on hallucination and delusion.

Jacques Joseph Moreau de Tours on degeneration theory, marijuana and madness.

Benedict Augustin Morel on degeneration theory. Degeneration are deviations from the normal human type, which are transmissible by heredity and which deteriorate progressively towards extinction.

August Hirsch romantic stage of mental illness.

Johann Christian August Heinroth on disease of soul.

Christian Friederich Nasse, Johann Baptist Friedreich, Maximilian Jacobi on somaticism of mental illness.

Carl Friedrich Flemming, Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Roller  and Heinrich Philipp August Damerow on holistic approach of mental illness.

Wilhelm Griesinger as mechanist, he believed in integration of the mentally ill into society, and proposed that short-term hospitalization be combined with close cooperation of natural support systems.

Theodor Meynert on cerebral anatomy, developed theories in regards to correlations between neuroanatomical and mental processes.

Korbinian Brodmann on his definition of the cerebral cortex into 52 distinct regions from their cytoarchitectonic characteristics.

Hugo Karl Liepmann on apraxia, remembered for his pioneer work involving cerebral localization of function.

Carl Werniche and Paul Broca on aphasia.

Eduard Hitzig on the interaction between electric current and the brain.

Bernhard von Gudden on mapping and describing the paths, connections, origins/termini and neuroanatomical centers of cranial and optic nerve networks.

Carl Friedrich Otto westphal on agoraphobia, homosexual, Westphal-Piltz syndrome, Erb-Westphal symptom and Edinger-Westphal nucleus.

Franz Nissl, Alois Alzheimer, Emil Kraepelin on neuropathological basis of mental illness. Kraepelin is specifically credited with the classification of what was previously considered to be a unitary concept of psychosis, into two distinct forms: manic depression and dementia praecox (schizophrenia).

Eugen Bleuler on schizophrenia.

Ernst Kretschmer developed a differential diagnosis between schizophrenia and manic depression and classification system that can be seen as one of the earliest exponents of a constitutional  approach.

Hermann Rorschach for inkblot test.

Adolf Meyer believed that mental illness results from personality dysfunction, rather than brain pathology. He designated a psychobiological approach to psychiatric patients that embraced researching and noting all biological, psychological, and social factors relevant to a case.

Hans Berger is the first to record human electroencephalograms.

Jean-Martin Charcot, Joseph Babinski, Franz Mesmer, Hippolyte Bernheim, Ambroise-Auguste Liebeault, on hypnosis and hysteria.

Pierre Janet, He was one of the first people to draw a connection between events in the subject’s past life and his or her present day trauma, and coined the words ‘dissociation’ and ‘subconscious’.

Sigmund Freud, Eugen Bleuler, Carl Jung, Sándor Ferenczi, Alfred Adler on psychoanalysis.

Clifford Whittingham Beers is the founder of the American mental hygiene movement.

Ivan Pavlov on reflex research and psychiatric model in dogs.

Julius wagner-Jauregg on treatment of mental disease by inducing a fever.

Jacob Klaesi known for the introduction of the Sleep Treatment.

Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev known for noting the role of the hippocampus in memory, his study of reflexes.

Ludvig Puusepp, Egas Moniz, on introducing the controversial psychosurgical procedure leucotomy.

Kurt Schneider on schizophrenia.

Karl Theodor Jaspers on biographical method, he believed that psychiatrists should diagnose symptoms (particularly of psychosis) by their form rather than by their content.

Aubrey Louis on melancholia and obsessional illness.

Michael Shepherd, on altering the course of psychiatric care in Britain and development of epidemiological psychiatry.

Seymour S. Kety is credited with making modern psychiatry a rigorous and heuristic branch of medicine by applying basic science to the study of human behavior in health and disease.

“How to be a Good Reader” or “Kindness to Authors”—something of that sort might serve to provide a subtitle for these various discussions of various authors, for my plan is to deal lovingly, in loving and lingering detail, with several European Masterpieces. A hundred years ago, Flaubert in a letter to his mistress made the following remark: Commel’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq a six livres: “What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.”

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

Another question: Can we expect to glean information about places and times from a novel? Can anybody be so naive as to think he or she can learn anything about the past from those buxom best-sellers that are hawked around by book clubs under the heading of historical novels? But what about the masterpieces? Can we rely on Jane Austen’s picture of landowning England with baronets and landscaped grounds when all she knew was a clergyman’s parlor? And Bleak House, that fantastic romance within a fantastic London, can we call it a study of London a hundred years ago? Certainly not. And the same holds for other such novels in this series. The truth is that great novels are great fairy tales—and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales.

Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says “go!” allowing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined in its very atoms, not merely in its visible and superficial parts. The writer is the first man to mop it and to form the natural objects it contains. Those berries there are edible. That speckled creature that bolted across my path might be tamed. That lake between those trees will be called Lake Opal or, more artistically, Dishwater Lake. That mist is a mountain—and that mountain must be conquered. Up a trackless slope climbs the master artist, and at the top, on a windy ridge, whom do you think he meets? The panting and happy reader, and there they spontaneously embrace and are linked forever if the book lasts forever.

One evening at a remote provincial college through which I happened to be jogging on a protracted lecture tour, I suggested a little quiz—ten definitions of a reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader. I have mislaid the list, but as far as I remember the definitions went something like this. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader:

1. The reader should belong to a book club.
2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.
3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.
4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.
5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.
6. The reader should be a budding author.
7. The reader should have imagination.
8. The reader should have memory.
9. The reader should have a dictionary.
10. The reader should have some artistic sense.

The students leaned heavily on emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historical angle. Of course, as you have guessed, the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–which sense I propose to develop in myself and in others whenever I have the chance.

Incidentally, I use the word reader very loosely. Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.

Now, this being so, we should ponder the question how does the mind work when the sullen reader is confronted by the sunny book. First, the sullen mood melts away, and for better or worse the reader enters into the spirit of the game. The effort to begin a book, especially if it is praised by people whom the young reader secretly deems to be too old-fashioned or too serious, this effort is often difficult to make; but once it is made, rewards are various and abundant. Since the master artist used his imagination in creating his book, it is natural and fair that the consumer of a book should use his imagination too.

There are, however, at least two varieties of imagination in the reader’s case. So let us see which one of the two is the right one to use in reading a book. First, there is the comparatively lowly kind which turns for support to the simple emotions and is of a definitely personal nature. (There are various subvarieties here, in this first section of emotional reading.) A situation in a book is intensely felt because it reminds us of something that happened to us or to someone we know or knew. Or, again, a reader treasures a book mainly because it evokes a country, a landscape, a mode of living which he nostalgically recalls as part of his own past. Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do, he identifies himself with a character in the book. This lowly variety is not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use.

So what is the authentic instrument to be used by the reader? It is impersonal imagination and artistic delight. What should be established, I think, is an artistic harmonious balance between the reader’s mind and the author’s mind. We ought to remain a little aloof and take pleasure in this aloofness while at the same time we keenly enjoy—passionately enjoy, enjoy with tears and shivers—the inner weave of a given masterpiece. To be quite objective in these matters is of course impossible. Everything that is worthwhile is to some extent subjective. For instance, you sitting there may be merely my dream, and I may be your nightmare. But what I mean is that the reader must know when and where to curb his imagination and this he does by trying to get clear the specific world the author places at his disposal. We must see things and hear things, we must visualize the rooms, the clothes, the manners of an author’s people. The color of Fanny Price’s eyes in Mansfield Park and the furnishing of her cold little room are important.

We all have different temperaments, and I can tell you right now that the best temperament for a reader to have, or to develop, is a combination of the artistic and the scientific one. The enthusiastic artist alone is apt to be too subjective in his attitude towards a book, and so a scientific coolness of judgment will temper the intuitive heat. If, however, a would-be reader is utterly devoid of passion and patience—of an artist’s passion and a scientist’s patience—he will hardly enjoy great literature.

Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead.

Going back for a moment to our wolf-crying woodland little woolly fellow, we may put it this way: the magic of art was in the shadow of the wolf that he deliberately invented, his dream of the wolf; then the story of his tricks made a good story. When he perished at last, the story told about him acquired a good lesson in the dark around the campfire. But he was the little magician. He was the inventor.

There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three—storyteller, teacher, enchanter—but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the pleasure of traveling in some remote region in space or time. A slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the teacher in the writer. Propagandist, moralist, prophet—this is the rising sequence. We may go to the teacher not only for moral education but also for direct knowledge, for simple facts. Alas, I have known people whose purpose in reading the French and Russian novelists was to learn something about life in gay Paree or in sad Russia. Finally, and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, and it is here that we come to the really exciting part when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or poems.

The three facets of the great writer—magic, story, lesson—are prone to blend in one impression of unified and unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought. There are masterpieces of dry, limpid, organized thought which provoke in us an artistic quiver quite as strongly as a novel like Mansfield Park does or as any rich flow of Dickensian sensual imagery. It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass. (@1948)

安娜卡列琳娜里说：幸福的家庭大多相似，不幸的方式则各有不同。我想在这里打的比方是，理解的结果大多相似──两个人一点头，相视一笑，然后接下去说别的；而误解的结果则有很多可能──有的人误解之后会走得很远，会认为自己被藐视了之类的，生出讨厌对方的感觉出来。我不是特别敏感的人，可是很多时候分明我的思路跟对方不在一个轨道之上，明确地知道，至少在当时，完全是没有让对方理解我的意思的可能性存在了。虽然我告诉自己不能放弃努力，不过那也只能等后来再慢慢找机会。我可受不了当时因为这个误解的存在跟对方纠缠下去个没完。。

学生来上课，他们大多是因为这是一门必修课，不得不来学的，最要紧的是弄个尽可能好的分数回去。我却从来不认为我教课的目的是灌输什么知识，至少不是在我的课上！学生问我一个问题，我告诉他们我的理解思路，可是我自己也有可能不是对的。在统计这种很多时候很含糊的学科上尤其如此，什么是对什么是错，绝对取决于你做这个研究的目的。我憎恶有的老师那种唯自己是上帝的态度，于是自己说什么也不肯这样子做。可是在学生看来，可能我这种“不确定性”会给他们带来困扰：究竟考试的时候你要让我怎么写才能拿满分哪？我的答案是：如果你说的有道理，你就得好分数。不管什么答案，你必须让我清楚你为什么这么写、这么想。他们有很多人觉得我超烦，为什么会了答案还不够，还要给什么解释（explanation），我不管，能解释才说明你知道自己为什么给出这个答案，不然就有可能是敷衍了事，有了答案而不懂答案从哪里来，那跟不知道答案是一回事。

我跟学生之间根本的不同，其实是对于数学这种学科的理解。对我而言，如果我要给一个数学题找出一个答案，那是因为我经过自己的思索，经历下意识或者有意识的逻辑推理，确乎得出了这个结论。而学生被过去的老师交道下来的结果，很多时候不在乎过程而在乎弄出一个答案来交差──他们的高中考试大部分是选择题那种标准化考试，更是加深了这种概念。任何理解的不同，都在于哲学。象我这么理解数学，甚至任何知识的人也许只是少数。作为一个少数派意见，我知道自己是对的（这也可能是出于自大），因为我很清楚自己为什么这么做、这么想。──也就是说，按照我自己的标准，我是对的。可是在我的体系里，完全容忍两个截然相反的意见同时正确。这个不光做理科的，甚至很多做文科的都不会接受吧。──好吧，我说的是在教育的过程里如此，而非在现实中，好不？

听到来自他人的相反的意见，我其实也是同样的标准。罗唆说这么多，其实想说的是纳博科夫。

俄国作家我读的不多，唯一比较投缘比较爱看的是老陀，基本上把他的长篇短篇都看了个遍，有的还好多遍。一般来说，我发现他的卡拉玛佐夫兄弟最容易被讨论，不过因为我对宗教理解太少，一般比较避免想那篇，更多的是喜欢罪与罚，白痴，那两个更“广义”的作品。我还不太关心托尔斯泰，也老因为跟人争论老陀和老托两个谁更牛的事情。──不管什么人，在这两个作家里必然倾向其中一位，曾经想这是牵扯到个人背景和天生情趣上的什么不可更变因素。还有一个比较通俗无稽的解释，就是这两人的作品都喜欢长篇大论，让人好不容易看完了之后，不得不觉得自己付出那么大的努力好歹总该得到些回报才好，于是就跑去坚持（自己侥幸看完了的）这个作家才是最牛的了。嘿嘿，这个逻辑对我自己倒是有用，因为到现在我没有从头到尾看完过任何一本老托的作品。出于某种神秘的原因，我能忍受老陀那些长篇大论的思考，却受不了老托冒出来的那些“阅读障碍物”。

呵呵，回到不太无稽的说法，其实老托的人文关怀比较跨越国界和思考界限，而老陀更“革命”性。这至少应该是老陀在中国读者中被介绍得更多的背景性原因。

所以当我看见纳博科夫这个我觉得跟神一样的文学评论家把老托说到天上，把老陀说到地下的时候，我是多么的不解，震惊，一时感到不能接受。我也许可以一笑置之，不过做不到。我也可以认为纳博科夫的趣味跟我大相径庭，因此可以直接被我忽视掉──差点是想这么做的，但还是有点不舍得。后来这个问题就在我脑子里盘旋，一直纠结着，听之任之。我不想因为自己特别喜欢的作家被纳博科夫否定得那么彻底，就因此否定纳博科夫的评论，这是因为我一直觉得存在那种“两个截然相反意见同时正确”的可能性，而更值得关注的应该是，那意见背后的理由是什么？这个问题很不好得到回答，当然是因为我看书太少的缘故。

一直觉得Strong Opinions这本书改变了我很多。──看它的时候在美国已经呆了几年。我一直没想好怎么对待跟别人之间文化上的隔阂。去学人家那套，不愿。完全照自己意思来，不可行。可以这么说吧，从纳博科夫身上，我找到一种坚持自己内心的声音的不卑不亢的行为准则。我是中国人，但不是说我必须把中国说得坏来讨好你，或者必须装成爱中国到为它说好话的程度来凸现自己的人格。应该是本来怎样，还是怎样。

这个事情为什么跟纳博科夫有关呢？──你看他从俄国去欧洲，从欧洲去美国，多年又漂泊又不在乎自己漂泊，又看不起苏联政府也对美国人的文化沙漠很是藐视。他是个很自我中心的人，不是因为他自大、自信、自傲，更因为他的生活习惯注定了，他就是这样的人。对任何事情都有自己鲜明而清晰的观点，压根也不因为周围环境的不同就让自己换个说法。他夸一个艺术家或者一件事，不是因为夸奖能给自己来到好处，只是因为自己由衷地这么觉得。大部分人为什么做不到这样呢？我想很多人，其实没有那么鲜明的、黑白分明的观点吧。正因为如此，纳博科夫是很容易被人误解成一个自大狂的。可是我从内心深深地理解他那种有意见就非说出来不可的直性子，只因为我自己也是如此呀。

昨天blog写过，纳博科夫几十年前关于蝴蝶的一个猜想，最近被科学家用基因测序证明出来了。这个事情非常的激动人心呀！真想看到如果他在世，那个手舞足蹈的劲头儿。。

*****

刚才跑去找Strong Opinions，怎么也找不到。楼上楼下跑了三遍，把别的书都给收拾了一遍，只不见这本的踪影。难道被我上次搬家处理掉了？唉，真要命。书这种东西该处理的时候必须处理，可挡不住回来后悔：要翻的时候，它已经没了。

不光是书。什么都是这样，没有的时候很缺乏。有的时候很无关紧要。

*****
2009.11.

当opinions过于strong的时候。。。

副标题：我是怎么得罪老板夫人的

那天吃火鸡的时候突然提起七武士，我尚在搜肠刮肚找怎么说”黑泽明“的英文，旁边一个女孩道，”我也许喝多了，但你们莫不是在说黑泽明吧？“并且她立刻提起黑泽明自己在关于罗生门的一个访谈里说到电影罗生门着重写了一个”旁观者“的视角，有关于日本人自己看日本战后（罗生门拍摄完成于1950年）的意思。我一听大惊失色：这是遇到行家了。当下瞥开关于Magnificent Seven到底好不好的原话题，（因为老板夫人提到Magnificent Seven是个好片，我一句话立刻出口，“不至于吧。”对方脸上有点红红白白，而我就发现自己那个莽撞发表过于鲜明意见的老毛病，又犯了。。。）积极地开始讨论关于罗生门原著小说来自哪里的问题。当提到Dream的时候我不由得说，这个电影不大好哇，昆廷都说了年纪大了不要拍电影，意思就是不想走黑泽明的老路。那个女孩（不好意思难得遇到个聊天的我连人家名字都没记住）说那么八月狂想曲呢，总还不如dream，我顺口道”八月狂想曲那个更是不值一提“，被对方抓住了”not even worth mentioning“的小辫子说我mean，当下我很不好意思再度开始为自己说话太冲而感到郁闷，不由得抱歉半天，被她大度笑之。言多必失，现在说话越来越冲，好像是时候好生反省一下了。

我比较网站列出的图片，认为那么多统计方法白用啦。结果很简单（而且近乎于老掉重弹），就是男人不光看女人的长相（一个简单的1到10的打分），更看重这个女人所传达的信息（是否想找人交往，是否有神秘感，是否刻意营造神秘感，是否对自己的女性魅力有信心–as opposed to 只是对自己的长相感觉满意）。。。等等。简单地说，一个7分的女孩，当然敌不过一个7分的女人。

简单的说，这个电影就象胡戈（什么，你没听说过胡戈？！）做的那些搞笑片一样，只不过把”极度无厘头搞笑“替换成”极度学术求知“就成了。当然了，具体怎样，请大家自己多移半步去看了自行判断吧。

这个电影最吸引我的地方是它换个角度看问题的角度—-虽然了，就我所知，这个角度在美国中产阶级年轻人里面不算特别的，反倒基本可称得上是主流，至少也是个类主流吧。事实上美国的精英主义早就决定了，这个国家跟人们日常生活里最常看见的那些人很不一样，很不一样。George Carlin在那不是嚷嚷好多年了吗，“这个国家控制在一小撮人手里！一小撮！”

作为一个semi-academic，我对影片表达的相当严肃的学术精神感到钦佩。当然了，任何一种理论说出来，都难免因为成为一个“理论”而给与他人攻击的极大理由，并且多半还与此同时提供了方法。一般来说，只要那句绝对强大的爱丽丝一句“Why Not”就足够了。于是对这些耶稣来自天狼星，财富等于债务，等等的理论，我一边好奇地笑着合不拢嘴，一边准备把这些理论扫到思想里的一个小角落里去，等到有心情的时候（天知道）再给拎出来，晒晒太阳。

作为一个给此片所写的“伪广告”文，我想至少介绍一个证据，给大家看看这位Peter Joseph有多严肃的学术：他给电影写了几百页的“观片手册”—-就象很多人在给讲座的时候发个handout似的—-只是这个手册一下居然有220页。做得相当用心！

也不难在网络上找到关于Zeitgeist的评论文章。最打头的大概是这篇Alan Feuer写在NY Times上的“他们看见了未来，于是就厌恶现在”：从这个标题里，你不难想象Alan对这个Zeitgeist至少不是欢呼着拥抱上去那种态度吧。。。不过呢，那篇文章其实更多是关于一个叫做Venus Project的东东。那是由一个老头Jacqure Fesco所鼓吹的，叫做Zeitgeist Movement或者Venus Project的乌托邦大计，目的是要建立“resource based economy”（资源经济），作为“monetary based economy”（金钱经济）的对立。

我没有花时间细究这一老一小两个人是怎么把自己拿这么个Venus Project给捆绑在了一起。原因有可能有很多，不光可能是出于情趣上的无限相投，更有可能是来自经济共同体的互利—-他们建立的那个Zeitgeist Movement，象任何一个”运动“一样，立刻在美国这个无脑（俗称”no brainer“）人士的超级供应大国搜罗到了高达数十万（一年前的数据）的从众。而在我看来，这个组合无疑是把Joseph原本追求的那种学术严密精神给摧毁了，让他自己从一个对世界充满好奇和愤怒的小青年，转变成了一个贩卖空想和理论的“乌托邦人士”。或许过不多久，他就会象自己影片里所讽刺的那些人那样，拎个话筒到大街上去招呼民众给自己投票了吧。

记得一个月前看到过一篇文章（出处记不清了）说到现在的人比以前要急躁得多，迫不及待就要看到结果，不能忍受看长文章，这些都是过份倚靠电脑的结果。我从自己身上就得到了很多论证。好比现在成天看互联网上的文章，甚至大部分时候只看摘要，对资讯的索取无度，却对细节分析无视。New Yorker上长一些的文章一天也看不到一篇，而实际上知识的精华都在长篇里面，需要人花时间，精心去品味。不仅如此，我还发现难得有一些自己的思绪都是在开车的时候，细想来，如果不开车，就是在看电脑或者手机，自己思考的空间被压缩到几乎不存在的地步。即便是开车那种难得悠闲，也总是比我用打电话或者听新闻的方式渡过了，还是一个“信息依赖症”。

我拿自己跟别人比较，也得出了同样的结论。上学期我一直听一位老教授的课，他坚持课前手写课案，拿去教室跟学生讲解的时候当作提示纲要。这不说明他直到课前才开始想怎么教课───他亲口告诉我，他会一直反复把教课这件事放在心里，考虑到课前最后一分钟。期末数学系party上他给大家讲他自己身上发生的故事。有天早上他来上班的路上，在storrow drive上，突然被警车叫停。警察过来的时候他问，“长官，请问什么事情？”警察说，“你知道自己开什么速度么？”他答，“不清楚哇。刚才我脑子里在想今天教课的时候要证明的一个定理，没注意速度。”警察说，“。。。什么定理？”他说，“矩阵对角化定理。”警察说，“。。。听上去有点耳熟。”然后两人相视一笑，他就得了个警告。警察告诉他，他刚才超速二十多英里，如果是罚单那至少要两百多块。

值得一提的是，这位教授几乎很少用presentation slides来教课，全部用黑板，从左到右，清楚规划，一边写一边一字一字地念出所写内容，以便学生不用抬头看黑板就可以做出整齐的笔记。他的这个本事，跟我已经有天地之隔了。刚开始我用presentation slides教课的时候，目的是害怕自己黑板字写得不好，经常令学生发晕，后来就渐渐成了过分依赖，利用翻slides的方式迅速过题。如此虽然有利于教得更快，却绝对不至于能教得好，原因很简单，我自己越过越快，学生压根跟不上，特别是那些有做笔记的好习惯的好学生，他们连抄下slides内容的时间都没有。不知不觉中，我其实在以这些所谓的“科技手段”把教课过程过度简化，只看结果不注重内容的精细。在这样的反思下，也许下学期我会做点不一样的事情吧。

其实是很浅显易懂的小册子，只是晚上睡觉前翻翻，一个星期就看完了。这本书出名的原因是有一些“耸人听闻”的见地，最挑战美国大众神经的是找到所谓堕胎合法跟犯罪率降低之间的关联。我个人觉得最有意思的部分倒是后半本关于家庭教育（parenting）讨论是所使用的方法，这对于一个完全经济外行的我来说，真是既符合逻辑又很新奇。这本书还有一个很有意思的“卖点”，就是作者（在芝加哥大学任教的Steve）有个黑人朋友跟芝加哥黑帮有过关联，因此提供了不少关于黑帮组织内部的第一手资料。光凭这些内容能在一本经济学类书籍里出现，就能让人看出Steve Levitt这个以做“非常规”经济学话题而出名的人有多么的非常规了。

如果你到现在没有看过这本书，那我强烈推荐你去看看。据说中文翻译不大靠得住，英文版对我这个严重英文阅读障碍的人来说也非常通俗易懂，所以。。。

这里是内容纲要：（来自维基）
▪ Chapter 1: Discovering cheating as applied to teachers and sumo wrestlers (See below)
▪ Chapter 2: Information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents
▪ Chapter 3: The economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers
▪ Chapter 4: The controversial role legalized abortion may have played in reducing crime. (Levitt explored this topic in an earlier paper entitled “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.”)
▪ Chapter 5: The negligible effects of good parenting on education
▪ Chapter 6: The socioeconomic patterns of naming children

第一章，说关于教师为了提高表面上的教学质量（teaching effectiveness）给学生漏题或者直接改分是怎么被抓住的。这章介绍了贯穿全书始终的一个经济学基本概念：有动机（incentive），才有结果（pay off）。

第二章，黑手党，以及房地产销售内幕。

第三章：贩毒的经济学。在我个人看来这章的思路和方法能帮助人们理解“老鼠会”为何会存在，并且不会在人类社会里消失。

第四章：最争议性（controversial）的堕胎和降低犯罪率之间的关联。

第五章：家庭教育的优越性真能很大程度上影响小孩的教育水平吗？此章的论点是：未必。

第六章：从给小孩起名看社会经济学。关于此事我后来在freakonimics上看到一篇后续文章，说有个小女孩被起名叫Marijuana Pepsi，因为这个极度可笑的名字渡过异常努力的一生，现在是主持电视节目的成功人士。

顺便介绍一下两个作者。Steven Levitt是哈佛、MIT毕业生在芝加哥大学任教，经济达人。而Stephen Dubner是NY Times资深写手。这种组合的书，一般都很有看头，既能保证知识养分还能兼顾阅读趣味。（这里希望大家推荐类似组合的书。我想收集个书单。）

他们的freakonomics如此成功，以至于很快就出了续集：superfreaknomics。书一出来我立刻在Amazon看到无数坏评，所以一直也没去看。不过这也不大要紧，因为他们在NY Times上的博客涉及到好多偏偏正正的话题，包括有好些就是写进书里的。

从blog里你会发现，这个两人组合已经扩展到一小撮，搜罗了更多经济学人和专栏写手进去。在2010年年中他们还开始了自己的freakonomics podcast，据说在iTunes的2010年终评选里上榜排得第一不过我去iTunes搜索了一下没看见，可能已经算旧闻了吧。我相信他们的人气足以替他们赢得相当一拨读者。不过我个人听的podcast太多，倒不是觉得freakonomics的这一个有多么强大的竞争力。见仁见智吧。

整体来说，Freakonomics团队通过一本书的畅销，让自己借助这个信息爆炸的时代，成功开创了一系列后序产品。我对他们接下去要做的事要走的路有很强的拭目以待的心理。这对很多对资讯事业有野心的人应该有不少启发。

SHYNESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE SURVEY

Please answer the following questions as honestly as possible.

1) Do you consider yourself to be a shy person?

_*_ yes __ no

2) If yes, have you always been shy (were shy previously and still are)?

_*_ yes __ no

3) If no to question 1, was there ever a prior time in your life when you were shy?

__ yes __ no

If no, then you are finished with this survey. Thanks. If you have answered “yes” to any of the above, please continue.

4. How often do you experience (have experienced) these feelings of shyness? (Circle your choice)

1 = every day  *

2 = almost everyday

3 = often, nearly every other day

4 = once or twice a week

5 = occasionally, less than once a week

6 = rarely, once a month or less

5. Compared to your peers (of similar age, sex, and background), how shy are you?

1 = much more shy *

2 = more shy

3 = about as shy

4 = less shy

5 = much less shy

6. How desirable is it for you to be shy?

1 = very undesirable

2 = undesirable *

3 = neither

4 = desirable

5 = very desirable

7. Is (or was) your shyness ever a personal problem for you?

1 = yes, often

2 = yes, sometimes *

3 = yes, occasionally

4 = rarely

5 = never

8. Types of people who make you feel shy: (Check all that apply)

___ my parents

___ my siblings (brothers and/or sisters)

___ other relatives

___ friends

_*__ strangers

___ foreigners

__*_ authorities (by virtue of their knowledge-intellectual superiors, experts)

___ elderly people (much older than you)

_*__ children (much younger than you)

_*__ persons of the opposite sex, in a group

___ persons of the opposite sex, one-to-one

___ a person of the same sex, in a group

___ a person of the same sex, one-to-one

___ authorities (by virtue of their role-police, teacher, superior at work)

9. What do you believe is the cause of your shyness? (Check all that apply)

_*_ born shy

__ emotional abuse

__ physical abuse

__ overprotected parents

__ faulty/inconsistent parental discipline practices

__ negative emotional experiences(s) during childhood involving peers

__ negative emotional experiences(s) during childhood involving individuals in position of authority (e.g., teachers or coaches)

__ negative emotional experience(s) during adolescence involving peers

__ negative emotional experience(s) during adolescence involving individuals in position of authority (e.g., teachers or coaches)

__ being forced to engage in certain public activities as a child (e.g., dance or musical recitals, organized sports)

__ family disruption (e.g., moving frequently or death of parent)

__ other siblings

__ parents divorcing

__ parent(s) remarrying

__ negative emotional experience(s) during young adult involving peers (e.g., roommates, classmates, co-workers)

_*_ being easily embarrassed

__ negative emotional experience(s) during young adulthood involving individuals in positions of authority (e.g., professors supervisors)

__ lack of social skills

__ lack of self-confidence

__ low self-esteem

__ being easily aroused

_*_ parents are shy

_*_ excessive self-consciousness

__ other explanation(s) not listed above– please explain (use additional space if necessary)

__ do not know what caused your shyness

10. What area(s) of your personal life has your shyness created problems for you?

*__ meeting new people

*__ developing friendships

__ dating

__ establishing intimate relationships

__ other areas of your personal life — please explain (use additional space if necessary)

11. What area(s) of your professional life has your shyness created problems for you?

__ talking with co-workers at work

*__ speaking up in meetings

*__ asking for a promotion and/or raise

*__ socializing with co-workers at lunch or after work

__ socializing with clients

__ socializing during professional meeting

__ expressing your ideas to co-workers or clients

*__ public presentations to co-workers or clients

__ other areas of your professional life–please explain (use additional space if necessary)

12. What area(s) of your educational life has your shyness created problems for you?

*__ speaking up in class

_*_ participating in student organizations/sports

*__ asking for letters of recommendations

__ seeking advice and/or assistance from teachers outside of the classroom

*__ asking questions during class

*__ participating in group discussions/projects

*__ giving a presentation to the class

__ making friends with classmates

__ asking for help from other classmates

__ other areas of your educational life–please explain (use additional space if necessary)

13. Do you think Your shyness can be overcome? (Circle your choice)

1= yes *

2 = no

3 = uncertain

14. Are you willing to seriously work at overcoming it? (Circle your choice)

1 = yes, definitely

2 = yes, perhaps *

3 = not sure

4 = no

15. What actions have you taken to overcome you shyness? (Check all those that apply)

*__tried to go out to meet people (e.g., night clubs, dances, parties, coffee houses, bookstores)

*__ tried to make conversation with individuals I don’t know but would like to

__ read self-help books

__ individual therapy

__ joined a fitness or recreational club or organization (e.g., tennis club)

__ group therapy

__ internet chat rooms and/or discussion groups

__ self-medication (e.g., consumed alcohol and/or illegal drugs)

__ tried to change the way you think about yourself

__ changed your physical appearance

__ attended seminars or workshops on shyness

__ served as a volunteer

__ joined professional organizations related to your job or career

__ signed up with a dating or match-making service

__ joined a religious or spiritual group

__ attended self-esteem workshop or seminar

__ relaxation or biofeedback training

__ taken prescribed medication

__ stress management training

__ others actions not listed above–please explain (use additional space if necessary)

__ no action taken

Tell us more about your shyness. Feel free to use additional sheets to answer these items:

Describe factors you believe have contributed to your shyness.

Describe how your shyness is expressed.

Describe what problems your shyness has created for you in your personal, social, and/or professional life.

Describe what you have tried to do to overcome your shyness.

Describe how you use the internet to deal with your shyness.

What about your shyness would you like to known more about?

What else would you like to say about your shyness?

Since I am a neuroscientist doing research, I am quite curious about why I am so shy and why it’s so hard to overcome…the shyness accompanies me since I was in school, and it went through my adolescence till adulthood. I always feel nervous when speaking in groups, and don’t like to talk while socializing with friends, always a listener…but never a problem if I face one person…I tried to avoid any public show when in school, or even avoid meeting family visitors at home. I still have the problem when talking to superior person or pretty women. The most recent case was when I took USLME step2 CS exam, the special patient during practice commented, “he is so nervous, that I can see from his trembling hands and voices”. But I got better and better with practice and felt more confident later. I plan to be a psychiatrist in the future, but not sure if my shyness could be a fatal weakness for my practice.

I have noticed this problem since childhood, and tried to overcome it by doing the things that I don’t like to do, for example to speak in public, to meet and play with friends, but never really reached a point that could low down my self-esteem…and that’s the reason I chose to do research after graduating from medical school. And till now I am still staying in my comfort zone with an isolated social life, with a few good friends only. I like to help people but don’t like to show off, and people around me always like me, no matter Chinese or European or American, I’m always nice to people and they think I’m sweet, just shy…so I guess my shyness is not serious, not a disorder yet.

I also found that several of my cousins from my father side have the same problem, especially hand trembling is very obvious in my family. So I think it’s basic an inherited thing. There are some differences though, like my brother does show the trembling, but he is not shy, just opposite to my social habit, open and talkative and like socialization with many friends and strangers, he is a good leader too.

The thing I am interested is to find the gene in my family that is responsible for this shyness and using medication to control might be an easy way.

Thank-you for your participation,

Bernardo J. Carducci, Ph.D., Director

Shyness Research Institute

Indiana University Southeast

New Albany, IN 47150