The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres

This book is not simply a sterile collection of ideas about the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It is a superbly-paced, well thought out text, one that leads the reader not only to an understanding of how the halves of the brain may work, but to an idea of how the skills possessed within these parts of the brain might work together to produce the 'right' mind for a given situation. I loved the last sentence of this book-it puts it all together in a way that is just right. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the subject.

Ornstein's early writings on right brain/left brain differences led to a veritable explosion of research and writing on the subject. In this book he's written an excellent summary of the current state of our understanding: although it's clear that the halves of the brain have different areas of specialization, he emphasizes strongly that they need to work together to enable us to function fully as human beings. He's bemused (and sometimes annoyed) at the popular tendency to romanticize the right brain as the seat of creativity and denigrate the left brain as an unimaginative literalist; the facts show that both halves are involved in such complex human activities as listening to music and understanding jokes. His summary of the 19th-century debates on brain functioning was very useful and informative. And his conclusion that psychology needs to pay more attention to the various ways human beings have pursued spiritual development over the millennia is, I think, a very timely reminder: psychology has tended to dismiss this behavior as "superstition," but, as other writers have pointed out (e.g., Epstein's "Thoughts Without a Thinker"), it has as much to do with developing the full power of your mind as with addressing something "out there." Ornstein writes clearly and humorously, and the book packs an amazing amount of knowledge into its rather brief length.

One of Robert Ornstein's great gifts is his ability to presentcomplicated historical and scientific material in a concise, lucid andentertaining fashion that lay readers like myself can understand and enjoy. THE RIGHT MIND embodies a daring shift in his paradigm for brain function from the 1970's, regarding the two hemispheres as complementary rather than dichotomous,the right providing the scaffolding and the left the building blocks. I was as startled and amazed when I read this book as I was when I read Ornstein's THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS.

It is rare for a researcher to admit he has changed his mind. This makes "The Right Mind" of unusual interest. Robert Ornstein, known since the '60s for his pioneering research on the two hemispheres of the brain, comes up with some great new ideas, beginning with his meditation (in Chapter 10) on his eyeglasses, that I found very stimulating. I read the book all the way through (rare for me). I recommend it unreservedly. - Dick Bolles, Author, What Color Is Your Parachute?

In the 1970's knowledge of the different functioning of the two sides of the cerebral cortex spurred considerable new reasearch, as well as an industry of "how to" books, seminars, and a new "language" for talking about the function of the mind. In "Right Mind" Dr. Ornstein summarizes events of the last 20 years relating to the expansion and exploitation of this knowledge and examines what remains of the promise and the deception arising from the beliefs that the differentiation in the cortex would lead to a new understanding of man. The concept of educating the respective sides of the brain is discussed in some detail, and Dr. Ornstein's conclusions are not always in accord with those who have made certain assumptions about what that training needs to be, (or even if it is training at all!).