評(píng)論
打印
The unconscious mind
潛意識(shí)
Hidden depths
藏匿在深處
Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behaviour. By Leonard Mlodinow.
《潛意識(shí)：你的潛意識(shí)如何支配你的行為》；倫納德 蒙洛迪諾著；
ASK someone to name a famous psychologist, and chances are they will pick Sigmund Freud (pictured), the bearded Austrian academic who came up with the idea of psychoanalysis.
說(shuō)起著名的心理學(xué)家，人們可能會(huì)想到西格蒙德 弗洛伊德（如圖），這位滿臉大胡子的奧地利學(xué)者提出了精神分析的概念。
His ideas about the unconscious—a sort of shadowy basement of the mind that is inaccessible to rational thought, but which nevertheless influences people's behaviour—are part of popular folklore.
他關(guān)于潛意識(shí)的概念成了眾相傳說(shuō)的一部分，頗受歡迎。他認(rèn)為潛意識(shí)隱藏在意識(shí)底部，難以達(dá)到理性思維，雖則如此，但它卻影響著人們的行為。
Although it remained popular at dinner parties, the idea of the unconscious fell out of favour among 20th-century psychologists, thanks to the rise of more scientific approaches to psychology.
盡管人們?cè)谕硌缟弦廊荒脻撘庾R(shí)的概念來(lái)消遣，但由于更加科學(xué)的心理學(xué)方法的興起，二十世紀(jì)的心理學(xué)家已不再青睞它。
These focused purely on studying behaviour and refrained from theorising about the inner workings of the mind.
這些方法純粹集中研究人們的行為，避免了將思維的內(nèi)部運(yùn)作理論化。
In his latest book, “Subliminal”, Leonard Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist who has been developing a nice sideline in popular science writing,
理論物理學(xué)家倫納德?蒙洛迪諾兼職科普寫作，一直寫得很好。
shows how the idea of the unconscious has become respectable again over the past couple of decades.
在自己的最新著作《潛意識(shí)》一書中，他論證了過(guò)去幾十年來(lái)潛意識(shí)的概念如何再度受到人們的尊敬。
This development has been helped by rigorous experimental evidence of the effects of the subconscious and, especially, by real-time brain-scanning technology that allows researchers to examine what is going on in their subjects' heads.
這種發(fā)展得益于對(duì)潛意識(shí)效應(yīng)的嚴(yán)格實(shí)驗(yàn)證據(jù)，特別是得益于實(shí)時(shí)大腦掃描技術(shù)，該技術(shù)讓研究人員能夠仔細(xì)觀察研究對(duì)象的頭部究竟怎么了。
That experimental evidence suggests that, as Freud suspected, conscious reasoning makes up a comparatively small part of the activity in our brains, with most of the work taking place where we can't tap into it.
該實(shí)驗(yàn)證據(jù)表明，正如弗洛伊德所懷疑的，相對(duì)說(shuō)來(lái)有意識(shí)的推理只占據(jù)了我們大腦活動(dòng)的一小部分，而大部分的思維活動(dòng)發(fā)生在我們無(wú)法深入了解的區(qū)域。
However, unlike Freud's unconscious (a hot, claustrophobic place full of repressed memories and inappropriate sexual fantasies about one's parents) the modern unconscious is a place of super-fast data processing,
然而，弗洛伊德的潛意識(shí)指活動(dòng)強(qiáng)烈的幽閉區(qū)域，充滿了壓抑的記憶和對(duì)自己父母不適當(dāng)?shù)男曰孟耄煌谶@點(diǎn)的是，現(xiàn)代潛意識(shí)指一種能進(jìn)行超快速的數(shù)據(jù)處理、
useful survival mechanisms and rules of thumb about the world that have been honed by millions of years of evolution.
有著實(shí)用的生存機(jī)制以及對(duì)世界的經(jīng)驗(yàn)法則的區(qū)域，它們都經(jīng)歷了數(shù)百萬(wàn)年進(jìn)化的磨礪。
It is the unconscious, for instance, that stitches together data on colour, shape, movement and perspective to create the sight enjoyed by the conscious part of the mind.
例如，把顏色、形狀、運(yùn)動(dòng)狀態(tài)以及遠(yuǎn)景等數(shù)據(jù)組合在一起產(chǎn)生視覺，讓思維有意識(shí)的部分來(lái)享受，這種行為是下意識(shí)的。
Experiments on people with certain specific forms of brain damage, which remove the ability to perform some of these tasks, can reveal something about what is going on underneath.
患有某些特定形式腦損傷的人失去了執(zhí)行這些任務(wù)的能力，對(duì)他們所進(jìn)行的實(shí)驗(yàn)可以揭示骨子里是怎么回事。
People with “blindsight” can respond to some visual stimuli even when they are not conscious of being able to see. Asked to walk down an obstacle-strewn corridor,
即使患有“盲視”的人看不懂，但他們也可以對(duì)某些視覺刺激產(chǎn)生回應(yīng)。當(dāng)被要求走過(guò)布滿障礙的走廊時(shí)，
they will dodge and weave and arrive at their destination unharmed because some residual data is still making its way into their brains—although at a level that is beneath the notice of their conscious minds.
他們會(huì)迂回地躲開障礙，安然無(wú)恙地抵達(dá)目的地，因?yàn)橐恍堄嗟臄?shù)據(jù)仍然有自己的途徑進(jìn)入他們的大腦，不過(guò)進(jìn)入的程度無(wú)法引起他們思維有意識(shí)部分的注意。
The modern view of the unconscious mind may be more benign than Freud's, but it can still generate unwelcome impulses.
潛意識(shí)的現(xiàn)代觀點(diǎn)可能比弗洛伊德的觀點(diǎn)更良性，但潛意識(shí)仍然可以產(chǎn)生不受歡迎的沖動(dòng)。
Psychologists theorise that the well-documented tendency of humans to categorise almost every piece of information they come across is a survival mechanism that evolved to aid quick decision making.
心理學(xué)家推論，人類把遇到的幾乎每條信息都進(jìn)行分類并存檔完好，這種傾向是一種生存機(jī)制，它的進(jìn)化有助于快速作出決策。
Yet it may also lie behind the tendency for human beings to group people into races, genders, creeds and the like, and then to apply certain characteristics—unjustifiably—to every member of that group.
然而，它也可能是人類把人按種族、性別、信仰等分群的原因，接著再據(jù)此按某些特征對(duì)該群的每個(gè)成員進(jìn)行不理性地歸類。
The insights offered by modern science into the workings of the human mind are fascinating in their own right.
現(xiàn)代科學(xué)為人類思維運(yùn)作提供的見解引人入勝，憑的是這些見解自身的力量。
But they also suggest that plenty of conventional wisdom about how humans behave may need rethinking. Mr Mlodinow notes that economic models, for instance,
但同時(shí)它們也表明，大量有關(guān)人類行為的傳統(tǒng)智慧可能需要反思。例如，蒙洛迪諾指出，
are built “on the assumption that people make decisions…by consciously weighing the relevant factors”, whereas the psychological research suggests that, most of the time, they do no such thing.
經(jīng)濟(jì)合算的模式建立在“人們自覺地衡量相關(guān)因素再?zèng)Q定......這一假設(shè)之上”，而心理學(xué)研究表明，大多時(shí)侯他們不做這樣的事。
Instead, they act on the basis of simple, unconscious rules that can sometimes produce completely irrational results.
相反，他們的行為簡(jiǎn)單地受潛意識(shí)所支配，有時(shí)這些支配可以產(chǎn)生完全不理性的結(jié)果。
Mr Mlodinow's chapters on courts and the law are disturbing, in particular on how unreliable eyewitness evidence can be.
蒙洛迪諾關(guān)于法庭和法律的章節(jié)令人不安，特別是關(guān)于目擊者的證據(jù)有多么不可靠的章節(jié)更是如此。這點(diǎn)在別的書中也被廣泛地引證過(guò)。
This has been widely documented elsewhere. But there is good news in the book, as well: people informed of the biases and pitfalls of their unconscious brains are better at using their conscious minds to overrule them.
但書中也有好消息，了解大腦潛意識(shí)存在偏見和誤區(qū)的人更擅長(zhǎng)利用他們的自覺意識(shí)來(lái)對(duì)潛意識(shí)施加影響。
