Introduction

I confess that I toyed with a number of possible titles for this book: ‘The Janus Effect: Why we say one thing and do another’, which came to me in a highly visual and disturbing dream, which may well be one aspect of the functioning of the conflicted mind, but I didn’t want to constrict consideration to just the conflict between what we say and what we do. I also considered ‘The Light and Shade of the Conflicted Mind’. This title had many attractions because I think that in many ways Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate, is right when he talks about the two ‘systems’ of the human mind (hypothetical concepts, he is keen to point out), System 1 and System 2, the first a good deal more in the shade than the second, quicker in terms of its operation, more automatic, more unconscious, the stuff of habits. But as I started working on the book, I became more and more interested in potential shortcomings of the work on this topic by some of these greats of our subject (well, maybe not Ernest Dichter, but he’s included because of the magnitude of his legacy), although such a judgement is always easier with the benefit of hindsight (and the development of new approaches to the subject). My subtitle thus more or less suggested itself, so I needed something short and simple for the main title.