New Book by Ellen Langer

This pretty cool. Dr. Ellen Langer has a new book out. She is very well-known in academic social psychology (and, recently, even in the popular press) for doing some incredibly intriguing experimental work in an area that is (I think) terribly important: the role of our thoughts, biases, beliefs, and expectations in how we function, how we live our lives, and how we experience our reality. And, to put this into an extremely practical framework, she studies and writes about the ways that we can engage in the work of using our own minds to change our lives and the way we experience them. And I hasten to add: None of this is New Age "woo," either; it's all solid science.

I haven't read the book yet, but here are a couple of review blurbs by psychologists I admire and respect:

“Ellen Langer offers us brilliant insights into subtleties that hold us back in life, and shows the way to shining new possibilities. Counterclockwise will change the way you see and think.”
— Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., author Emotional Intelligence

“Ellen Langer has used her extensive research and scholarship to write a book that will be indispensable to anyone confronting illness or old age (in other words, to everyone). She shows that many seemingly unavoidable damages to our body can be reversed or ameliorated by the conscious application of the mind. The book can be used as a manual against despair... it is a seminal work in what the author calls “the psychology of possibility” — a perspective on the unexplored riches of human nature.”
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Perhaps even more interesting: apparently there is a movie being made from, or about, this book. Amazing. How many psychology books get made into a movie?

I'm going to get a copy of the book soon, will read it, and post some comments here. The book is called: Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.