Book Description

Most human issues have two sides, with many shades of gray in between. As examples, think of closeness in relationships versus independent self-sufficiency, working for the future versus living in the present, kindness to others versus taking care of ourselves, and so forth. When people fixate on one side of a two-sided issue and move to an extreme, or swing like a pendulum between two poles of these spectrums, their thinking and behavior become unbalanced and ineffective, resulting in frustration, conflict and, sometimes, worse. What does this apply to? A remarkably wide range of issues that occur on different scales, from individual psychology to relationships to politics. On all these levels, black-and-white thinking is a poor guide for living in a world involving many shades of gray. The opposite of polarization is balance. The idea that optimal human functioning involves a moderate balance between two opposite extremes has roots in both ancient philosophy and modern psychology. The search for balanced moderation, with its dialectical capability for integrating opposite forms of truth, has never been more important than in our polarized age. Finding Goldilocks is a pioneering effort to help us understand, envision, and live in that zone. Polarized, black-and-white thinking results in maladaptive extremes of emotion and behavior. This type of thinking is at the root of a wide range of mental health problems, with Borderline Personality Disorder as the most severe example and depression, anxiety, perfectionism, and aggression as more common examples. Black-and-white thinking causes polarization and conflict in many relationships, especially in couples and parent-child relationships. This type of cognition can also be found at the root of the angry, bitter polarization afflicting politics in the United States and many other countries at the present time. The same basic psychological patterns and principles seem to spiral up through a variety of levels, from the micro to the macro. This ebook addresses polarization on all these scales. vIt also brings a wide variety of conceptual tools to bear on these issues. While the central idea can be traced to Aristotle, Buddha, and Confucius, Finding Goldilocks draws on cognitive, clinical, social, and political psychology, neurobiology, cybernetics, and evolutionary theory. The author also draws on his extensive experience as a psychotherapist to illuminate the problem of polarization in its many manifestations. Finding Goldilocks includes careful instruction in procedures that readers can use to analyze and plan solutions for personal problems and difficulties experienced by loved ones. These techniques involve creative use of diagrams, which enable us to use visual reasoning and supplements our usual reliance on words. Most of this material was published previously in an ebook for therapists called Psychotherapeutic Diagrams and is adapted here for non-therapists. Finding Goldilocks is a psychology book designed to help you understand other people, a self-help book designed to help you help yourself, and a proposal for cleansing politics of the shrill half-truths and reciprocal distortions that have crowded out reasonable discussion and debate. There is a deep throughline that links all these purposes of the ebook.