Read Online 50 Psychology Classics by Tom Butler-Bowdon - Free Book Online

seeing something, that is, see its opposite, and you may be surprised at the ideas it may liberate.
    Finding the dominant idea—not an easy skill to master, but extremely valuable in seeing what really matters in a book, presentation, conversation, and so on.
    Brainstorming—not lateral thinking itself, but provides a setting for that kind of thinking to emerge.
    Suspended judgment—deciding to entertain an idea just long enough to see if it might work, even if it is not attractive on the surface.
    One of de Bono’s key points is that lateral thinkers do not feel they have to be “right” all the time, only effective. They know that the need to be right prevents new ideas forming, because it is quite possible to be wrong at some stages in an idea cycle but still finish with great outcomes. What matters most is generating enough ideas so that some may be wrong, but others turn out right.
The glorious obvious
    De Bono remarks, “It is characteristic of insight solutions and new ideas that they should be obvious after they have been found.”
    Brilliant yet obvious ideas lie hidden in our minds, just waiting to be fished out. What stops us from retrieving them is the clichéd way we think, always sticking to familiar labels, classifications, and pigeonholes—what de Bono describes as the “arrogance of established patterns.”
    To get different results, we need to put information together differently. What makes an idea original is not necessarily the concept itself, but the fact that most other people, thinking along conventional lines, were not led to it themselves.
    We have the cult of genius, glorifying famous figures like Einstein, only because most people are not taught to think in better ways. For those who practice lateral thinking all the time, the flow of original ideas never stops.
Final comments
    Though de Bono’s books are the progenitors of many of the sensationally written “mind power” titles available today,
Lateral Thinking
itself has a dry style. Unlike many of the seminar gurus who followed him, de Bono has degrees in psychology and medicine, so there is more rigor in his approach.
    If you have never got much out of de Bono before, the chances are you are already a lateral thinker. But everyone can become a better thinker, and his books are a good place to begin.
    People take jibes at de Bono’s invention of words like “po” to simplify his teachings, but he has probably done more than anyone to get us thinking about thinking itself. This is an important mission, because among the many things that make the world progress, new and better ideas are always at the heart of them.
Edward de Bono
    Born in 1933 in Malta, the son of a professor of medicine and a magazine journalist, de Bono was educated at St. Edward’s College and gained a medical degree at the Royal University of Malta at the age of 21. He won a Rhodes Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with an MA in psychology and physiology and a DPhil in medicine. He completed his doctorate at Cambridge and has had appointments at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, London, and Harvard. He became a full-time author in 1976
.
    De Bono has worked with many major corporations, government organizations, teachers, and schoolchildren, and is a well-known public speaker. He has written over 60 books, including
The Mechanism of Mind
(1969),
Po: Beyond Yes and No
(1973),
The Greatest Thinkers
(1976),
Six Thinking Hats
(1986),
I Am Right, You Are Wrong
(1990),
How to Be More Interesting
(1997), and
How to Have a Beautiful Mind
(2004)
.

1969
The Psychology of Self-Esteem
    â€œThere is no value-judgment more important to man—no factor more decisive in his psychological development and motivation—than the estimate he passes on himself.”
    â€œHappiness or joy is the emotional state that proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. Suffering is the emotional