Table Of ContentTHE INTUITIVE EDGE
Understanding and Developing Intuition .
Philip Goldberg
JEREMY P. TARCHER, INC.
Los Angeles
Distributed by Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Goldberg, Philip, 1944-
The intuitive edge.
Bibliography: p. 227 Includes index.
I. Intuition I. Title.
BD181.G64 1983 12E3 83-9161
ISBN 0-87477-232-X
ISBN 0-87477-344—X (ppbk.)
Copyright © 1983 by Philip Goldberg
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval
system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing by the publisher.
Requests for such permissions should be addressed to:
Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
9110 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Illustration by Thom Dower
Manufactured in the United States of America S 10 9 8 7 6 5 4
First Edition
Contents
Foreword 8
Preface 10
1. The Emergence of Intuition 15
2. What It Is: Definitions and Distinctions 31
3. The Many Faces of Intuition 45
4. The Intuitive Experience 63
5. Who Is Intuitive? 87
6. Right Brain, Wrong Theory 115
7. The Intuitive Mind 135
8. Getting Ready for Intuition 155
9. Turning Off to Tune In 173
10. Forgo It, or Go for It? 195
11. Making the World Safe for Intuition 213
References 227 Index 238
Foreword
Intuition is an essential topic whose time has come. And The Intuitive Edge
is must reading for anyone who wants to live on that most delightful edge of
more creativity, joy, wisdom, and inner peace.
The creative function of intuition, as Philip Goldberg defines it in this
informative and useful book, stretches our capacities by introducing options,
alternatives, and possibilities. Accurate intuition also enables us to gain vital
insight into ourselves and our environments, to evaluate choices, and to predict
the future. It is, as Goldberg says, "a subtle guide to daily living" In short,
intuition brings with it happiness, wonder, and harmony. The Intuitive Edge can
help us discover the greatest therapist of all—the one that resides within.
Having worked with many thousands of clients, I no longer see my role as
that of "shrink," but that of "stretch." Rather than endlessly trying to shrink
problems with tranquilizers or a psychotherapeutic panacea, I am interested in
stretching a person's capacities—physically, emotionally, socially, and
spiritually. Through self-expansion and meaningful challenges, problems can be
turned into opportunities for growth.
The word psychiatry comes from psyche, which refers to the spirit of a
person, and iatros, which means to heal or make whole. Hence, psychiatry
involves making the spirit whole. An essential tool in achieving that goal is to
develop each individual's "intuitive edge." Trusting oneself—the ability to hear
and utilize one's inner intuitive voice—is a key to self-improvement and a richer
life, enabling one to convert problems into challenges and opportunities.
I sometimes humorously tell clients that the mind is the source of all mental
illness. In a sense, we need to get "out of our minds" to overcome our
preoccupation with problems and limitations. Trusting our intuition can cure us
of "psychosclerosis," a hardening of the mind and spirit that stems from
overdependence on rationality and analysis. With good intuition we can
transcend our ordinary state of mind and become more deeply and completely
ourselves. For this reason, The Intuitive Edge serves as a guide to becoming more
spontaneous, independent, unconventional, and free.
Philip Goldberg provides acute insight into the nature of intuition, a valuable
guide to the varieties of intuitive experience, and practical exercises to create
favorable conditions for intuition to occur. An agitated, tense mind is too "noisy"
for intuition to operate effectively. Techniques of meditation, yoga, breathing,
muscle relaxation, and guided visualization are described to help create a more
receptive and fertile mind. The book also provides other useful tips for
improving your intuitive powers: for example, how to suspend judgment and
listen to the inner voice, how to be flexible and playful in your thinking, how to
brainstorm with freestyle writing. I have found these and other techniques
essential in my roles of psychiatrist, author, husband, and father.
The Intuitive Edge is the very best book on the subject I've ever read. It is must
reading for anyone interested in being more innovative and enterprising—the
scientist, artist, student, administrator, or entrepreneur. More, it is for any reader
seeking improvement in his or her personal or professional life. Intuition plays a
central role, for example, in choosing the right mate. Goldberg has integrated
theory and practice in a well-written, clear, and imaginative way. I recommend
this book highly to anyone interested in personal growth.
Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D.
Author of Making Peace with Your Parents
Preface
My interest in intuition and in the broader question of "How do we know what
we know?" began in the 1960s, when I was a student questioning everything in
sight. I had informally accumulated a great deal of information from a wide
variety of sources when, in 1977, the idea to write a book on the subject came to
me unbidden while I was riding a bicycle and trying to decide which of two
apartments to move into that fall. Thus this book is an example of its own
subject matter. The justification for following through on the intuitive idea was
my conviction that the subject was not only interesting but of vital practical
importance: what we know determines how we think, decide, and act. It does not
seem unreasonable to assert that the quality of life is directly proportional to how
well we go about knowing. In writing this book I was always conscious of its
two threads, the theoretical and the practical, and very much aware that many
readers are interested primarily in one or the other. The two themes are actually
closely intertwined, both in this book and in reality. The more we know about
intuition, the better equipped we are to use our own; the better our intuition, the
more we are in a position to understand it. Those readers who want specifically
to improve their own intuition will find that Chapters 8, 9, and 10 have a how-to
orientation built on the more theoretical information in earlier chapters. The
descriptive and theoretical material is also useful if applied to oneself. A stylistic
explanation is in order. Like all contemporary writers, I had to decide what to do
about the pronouns him, his, and he, which, when used to refer to both men and
women, are considered offensive by many.
With apologies, and assurances that no sexism is implied, I opted for standard
usage. In a work of this length, the alternatives become so awkward as to detract
from the reader's comprehension and enjoyment.
In his 1968 book, Toward a Contemporary Psychology of Intuition, Malcolm
Westcott ended his introduction by writing, "The last word on intuition is as far
in the future as the first word on intuition is in the past." Fifteen years later, I
must echo the same sentiment. We are dealing with a complex and elusive
subject, one that many great minds have wrestled to a draw and on which there is
much disagreement. Intuition has been a peripheral subject in science, a difficult
one to study even when interest is high. Hence there is not much by way of a
research tradition or accepted body of knowledge. For this book I drew on
philosophers both Eastern and Western, tangentially related science and
scholarship, writers and artists, my own experience, and the reports of people in
all walks of life. Many of the ideas found here, therefore, must be regarded as
conjectural, speculative, and inferential. I hope they will stimulate others to
expand and develop our knowledge of intuition, and that the book will help
others obtain more time and resources for research than I was able to devote.
Truth is within ourselves, it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe
. . . and to know
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
—Robert Browning
The soul of every man does possess the power of learning the truth, and the organ to see it with. . . . Just
as one might have to turn the whole body round in order that the eyes should see the light instead of
darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world until its eye can bear to
contemplate reality.
—Plato
1 The Emergence of Intuition
The really valuable thing is intuition.
—Albert Einstein
Until recently intuition has been treated like an employee who, forced to
retire, keeps going to work because he is indispensable. Attitudes about him
vary: some people don't know he exists, some downgrade his contributions as
trivial, some revere him privately while trying to keep his presence a secret. A
growing minority are exuberant supporters who feel that credit is long overdue
and that such a valuable asset can function even better when recognized and
encouraged. This book is in the latter category, part of the corrective effort to
bring intuition out into the open, to demystify it, to see what it is, how it works,
and what can be done to cultivate its full potential.
In recent years, the subject has emerged from obscurity. Intuition is
increasingly recognized as a natural mental faculty, a key element in discovery,
problem solving, and decision making, a generator of creative ideas, a forecaster,
a revealer of truth. An important ingredient in what we call genius, it is also a
subtle guide to daily living. Those people who always seem to be in the right
place at the right time, and for whom good things happen with uncanny
frequency, are not just lucky; they have an intuitive sense of what to choose and
how to act. We are also coming to realize that intuition is not just
15
a chance phenomenon or a mysterious gift, like jumping ability or perfect pitch.
While individual capacities vary, we are all intuitive, and we can all be more
intuitive, just as we can all learn to jump higher and sing on key.
The emergence of intuition is part of a more global shift in values that has
been chronicled by numerous sharp-eyed observers. The passionate pursuit of
both individual growth and a better world, begun in earnest in the 1960s, has led
to a reevaluation of conventional beliefs, among them the way we use our minds
and the way we approach knowledge. Our decisions and actions spring from
what we know. Therefore, if collective problems remain intractable and the gap
between individual desires and fulfillment remains vast, it is only natural that we
start to wonder if there isn't a better way to go about knowing.
Contributing to the new attitude is a resurgence of respect for the world
within. The behaviorist school of psychology, which dominated the field during
most of this century, had declared irrelevant the deeper realms of mind and
spirit. To believers in orthodox religions and Freudian psychotherapy, those
areas seethed with dark urges and repressed instincts that, depending on the
point of view, should either be kept under cover, liberated, or therapeutically
neutralized. These assumptions are giving way to a more positive, often sublime
vision. The growth of cognitive research, theoretical advances in humanistic and
transpersonal psychologies, provocative brain studies, the remarkable acceptance
of Eastern philosophies and disciplines—such developments have led large
numbers of people to believe that there is untapped power and wisdom within us.
They sense there is a part of ourselves that—although obscured by bad habits
and ignorance—understands who we are and what we need and is programmed
to move us toward the realization of our highest potential. There is a growing
conviction that perhaps we ought to trust the hunches, vague feelings,
premonitions, and inarticulate signals we usually ignore.
These trends are characteristic of a basic contemporary pattern: the desire to
eliminate obstacles that keep us from being what we really are. Where intuition
is concerned, the obstacles are rooted in long-standing epistemological
assumptions, which are perpetuated in the institutions that teach us how to use
our minds. A brief look at those premises will help us understand why we have
not been encouraged to use and develop our intuitive capacities.
THE LEGACY OF SCIENTISM
For over three centuries the prevailing model for gaining knowledge in the
Western world has been what we loosely call science, that robust and precocious
offspring of such giants as Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. Let's use the word
scientism to refer to the ideology, as opposed to the practice, of science, since
the two are rather different. According to scientism, the right way to approach
knowledge is with a rigorous interchange of reason and systematically acquired
experience.
This philosophy developed as a hybrid of rationalism and empiricism.
