The utter simplicity of this book is deceptive. The ideas go very deep and are shattering in their implications. Yet they are proffered like cookies with afternoon tea.

Mary Catherine Bateson presents learning as something directly related to the capacity to enjoy life; learning as an activity pursued throughout life, having only a tenuous connection with school as such. The quotes below give you a flavor of the depth of her reflections and of the pithyness of her expression.

"Increasingly, we will cease to focus on learning as preliminary and see it threaded through other layers of experience, offering one of life's great pleasures."

"The capacity to enjoy, to value one experience over another, is the precondition of the capacity to learn."

"Looking, listening and learning offer the modern equivalent of moving through life as a pilgrimage."

"It is hard to think of learning more fundamental to the shape of society than learning whether to trust or distrust others."

"Human beings construct meaning as spiders make webs."

"The solution is to take responsibility for the choice of metaphors, to savor them and ponder their suggestions, above all to live with many and take no one metaphor as absolute."

"School casts a shadow on all subsequent learning. Trying to understand learning by studying schooling is rather like trying to understand sexuality by studying bordellos."

"Not only don't we know what we know, we don't know what we teach."

"Most of the learning of a lifetime, including much of what is learned in school, never shows up in a curriculum."

This book deserves more than five stars. It is an effective and eloquent statement of how to create personal growth through lifelong learning. The writing style of the book exemplifies the author's thesis in an effective and satisfying way.

Try this experiment. Ask someone to concentrate on everything that is red in the room for 60 seconds. Then ask the person to close her or his eyes. Then ask the person to tell you everything in the room that is yellow. He or she will struggle.

Focus helps us to see what we focus on, but causes us to miss most of the rest. Focus comes from our cultural preferences, our sense of attractiveness, and our expectations. Professor Bateson effectively shows us how to unfocus so that our peripheral vision becomes our primary way of sensing the visual and mental worlds around us.

Peripheral vision has several advantages. It can capture more than one event at the same time. It also covers a wider field of range. And biologically, we know that our eyes perceive images better at the periphery than at the center (thus, why the reading lenses in bifocals are at the bottom of the glasses).

Mentally, the same thing happens. A further advantage is that we are more likely to liberate the processes of the unconscious mind by considering things more obliquely. Walking away from issues to let them stew is a good example.

The book gently leads the reader into this perception through a series of examples that spiral and recur onto one another, until Professor Bateson's examples become our own. These experiences begin with her taking her young daughter to a ritual slaughtering of a sheep in Iran, connect to her high school years as a gentile in Israel, touch on her research in the rural parts of the Philippines, and run through her two months at an artists' colony in New Hampshire.

Professor Bateson (and we, as her invited guests) become outsiders in these circumstances, but with a guide to help us see the alternative perceptions of the same events. Then, she follows a winding path (like the spiral of a Nautilus shell) back into the center of what all this means.

Continuing to consider sight, she also helps us to see that we are blind when we have only one perspective. Yet it is difficult to overcome that pespective on our own, so we are likely to remain blind. The cure: experience events as people from other cultures do in a nonjudgmental way. This is a sort of psychological "monkey see, monkey do" type of learning, and I agree that the jolt of this fresh vision should work.

My main concern after reading this book is how I can hope to become such an acute observer without being a trained anthropologist born into a family of two genius parents. I suppose I'll just have to work at it harder. Certainly, I came away with the concept that I need to immerse myself in other cultures rather than just live like an American when I travel around. In the same way that half of my reading each year is outside of my fields of expertise, it sounds like I need to get a high percentage of my life experiences in environments dominated by people with different assumptions and perceptions than my own. Hmmmm. Sounds like fun!

Now that I've got the basic concept, I do wish she had provided a few more guideposts for the individual learner. The ones she does provide are very helpful, addressing sex-based, religion-based, geography-based, and culture-based differences. I wonder what other ones there are.

For those who are interested in what multiculturalism should mean, there is a fine discussion of the roles of multicultural experience that emphasizes the potential for learning rather than merely creating self-confidence. I also liked that she doesn't believe the term is a good one, and does some definitional work on the subject.

The book comes from her personal perspective in many places, and you may not agree with her. Rather than having that repulse you, I suggest that you go with the spirit of the book and try to fit inside her perspective and see what you can learn from it.

After enjoying this wonderful book, I suggest that you plan a vacation where you can experience first-hand a culture much different than your own or one that you have experienced before. Perhaps you should do what Henry James suggested, and simply travel to an uncertain destination until you can go no more and stop there. Then live as the people there live. And use Professor Bateson's example to see and think as the people there do. Then, come back to your own culture and see it in two ways now. Then add a third perspective, and so on. Eventually, the overlap of these perspectives will provide you with a new focus on the core of what is important and real.

Overcome your own blinders to truly see all the potential around and within you!

Once again Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, writes a book that makes the reader look at people, cultures, and society through a different set of glasses. In this book, Bateson is looking at cultural norms of countries such as the Philippines and Iran as they compare to US culture whether it be on the issues of life, death, courtship, or parental roles. Bateson provides a thoughtful framework for engaging the reader in realizing that one culture/perspective is not the only way but we can expand our thoughts/feelings through opening our eyes to differences.

This is a great introduction to the ideas of Gregory Bateson, one of the most important thinkers of our times. He is able to bridge the gap between our ideas about a materialistic world and concepts of mind. He said that Western science did not explain mind, it explained mind away.

Anyone who feels that there is more to life than logic and science, but who doesn't feel comfortable with every new age quack idea, should read this book. Bateson's thesis is that aesthetics, beauty, and the sacred are as valid as ways of knowing as logic and science are, and he can back that up with real ideas about the real world.

Gregory Bateson is well known, among those with the perseverance to wrestle through his very compact prose, for his highly original synthesis of cybernetics, biology, anthropology and -- above all -- epistemology. Near the end of his one book written with a general audience in mind (Mind and Nature), he mentions his intention to continue his explorations into the realms of the sacred and the aesthetic. By the time of his death in 1980 he had written several drafts and discussed the project in depth with his daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, an investigator of great insight in her own right and a better writer than Gregory's devotion to formal rigor allowed him to be. This book is the end result of that collaboration, which Mary completed in 1986. Those familiar with Gregory's work will find some of his familiar themes explored in somewhat more accessible terms, along with some unexpected new ideas. As with his earlier works, Bateson often has to redefine some familiar words, and introduce new usages for others, which makes reading him a struggle, but a rewarding struggle in the long run. Those familiar with Mary Catherine's work will not be disappointed either. Her summarizing chapter which pulls together the various strands of the book and of her father's thought is a masterpiece of synthesis in its own right. And this book, which is above all about *relationships* at every level from the cellular to the cultural to the religious, is a fascinating record of the very human relationship between father and daughter. Like all of the elder Bateson's work, this one will take some time to digest. How much have I learned from it about "the epistemology of the sacred"? I expect it will take years to find out, and that I'll be revisiting this book many times while its implications work themselves out. As G.B. said, Life is a game whose purpose is discovering the rules. This volume is a voyage of discovery.

Mary Catherine Bateson has written another account of her experiences as teacher and learner. Her earlier work with Johnnetta Cole led to a seminar at Spelman of intergenerational women. Although the age, background and socioeconomic status of the participants were vastly different, it comes as little surprise if you know Bateson, that the common themes of self-actualization, faith and truthfulness to self shone through. What is most remarkable is the trust Bateson establishes which enables both students and elders to share so much of their lives so candidly. Interspersed with reflections on their lives, are their thoughts on women from the course readings. If you can't get to George Mason and take a seminar with Bateson, this might just be the next best thing!

This book is an excellent read. Very accessible and full of insight. It is subtle in its observations and friendly in its tone. The people you meet and their stories are fascinating and the generational dialogue is worthwhile - anyone who seeks to understand how relationships and lives are changing will enjoy this. Bravo to Ms. Bateson!

I read Mary Catherine Bateson's book COMPOSING A LIFE when it was first issued some years ago. I had read her mother's biography BLACKBERRY WINTER, and I wanted to know more about the child raised by the woman who wrote COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA. Bateson's mother was married three times -- twice to anthropologists, including Gregory Bateson, Mary Catherine's father and Margaret Mead's third husband.

I was pleasantly surprised by Mary Catherine's strong individual personality and the inspirational tone of her book. Bateson definitely escaped her parents shadow. Having famous parents who study other people's children doesn't mean your life will be perfect or easy. Mary Catherine had to find her own way and compose her own life. Finding her way meant "stepping outside the box" or realizing that she could make choices at any point. She did not have to conform to society's notion of the phases of life (maybe her mother's study of "coming of age" had some effect on her novel thinking?).

Bateson's book helped me to think about my own life differently. I found the courage to go back to school at age 28 (I was a high school dropout with three small children), earn a B.A., M.A. and complete all the coursework for a PhD. Today, I am a a subject matter expert for one of the Federal Government's leading statistical agencies. At age 28, I had no idea how far I could go, or that I even wanted to go there. Mary Catherine Bateson was one of those pioneering women who helped me realize it is possible to change your life.

I was quite pleased to have accidentally stumbled onto this book in a search to find materials focused on the concept of "corporate anthopology". Like Ayn Rand's ability to model her concepts of epistemology in her fictional novels, Mary Catherine exemplifies the work of a cultural anthropologist by sharing her personal observations of her own life and the lives of others. I was so sparked by the "personal jewels" I was unable to uncover for my own use that I can't wait to follow on to read her next book, which I've just ordered online...

"Composing a Life" is a critically reflecting book on the lives of five women and the challenges they are faced with during their life roles.

Mary Catherine Bateson has woven together several cross-functional areas of study including psychology, anthropology,multi-national studies, and behavioral sciences to explain the societal, ethnic, and economical pressures that women feel in the varying (and ambiguous) roles in their life.

This is not a male-bashing book yet one that carefully explains the external and internal forces of women as they wear several hats as professionals, mothers, girlfriends, wives, lovers, and friends. Just as music can rapidly change in tempo or keys, so can the lives of women and the expectation of immediate adjustment and acclamation.

A five-star book. Easy to read and great to reflect upon and journal your thoughts as they springboard from this introspective book.

Readers of this book will have sharply diverging reactions to it, and I myself am of two minds. At her worst, Jean Houston can come across like a precocious and hyperactive college kid: flip, full of herself, flaunting exuberance, self-promoting, greedy for catharsis, disorderly ideas sprouting everywhere like psychedelic mushrooms. On the other hand, at her best, she's brilliant, scholarly, profoundly creative, wise, kind, and funny. On the balance, happily, I found the latter set of characteristics predominant here, although the less attractive side of her nature will be readily apparent to anyone unsympathetic to her style and her philosophy. This is an autobiography of sorts, although one in a style that only Jean Houston could conceive: utterly non-linear. What she actually gives us is series of anecdotes from all stages of her life, interspersed chaotically with a fireworks display of philosophical musing, human potential pep talks, New Age proselytizing, scientific speculation, and lectures on her original brand of mystical anthropology. Interestingly, she's the daughter of neither a scholar nor a mystic, but of an itinerant Hollywood gag writer, whom she loved dearly and who ran the family like an overbearing-but-lovable gypsy king. Numerous accounts of his lautish stunts pepper his daughter's book and bring comic relief. He was a direct descendent of Sam Houston, the flamboyant Texan general and politician, laying down a genetic strain that seems not at all improbable once you begin getting a sense of what Jean Houston is about. Of her retiring Sicilian-American mother, we learn very little. Dr. Houston's central animating idea, like that of her teacher and colleague Joseph Campbell, is that certain myths are universal among all peoples and all times, including our own, and they are the main drivers of psychological and spiritual essence of human existence. Exploring ourselves in light of these myths is key to fulfilling life - hence the book's title. Jean Houston takes this idea much further than Campbell did, and makes it the centerpiece of the teaching, lecturing, and mystical psychotherapy which has become both her life's calling and her business. This is compelling material and she presents it with eloquence and passion, despite the interference which her manic style at times brings to the narrative. I recommend "A Mythic Life", although it's not for everyone, and readers should be prepared for what they're getting.

Through sharing fascinating details of her entire life and family, as well as people she has known and worked with, such as Margaret Mead, Jean Houston demonstrates vividly how we can all be more fully awake to our lives and the myths we all live by, whether we consciously know them or not. Reading her stimulates the reader to want more of her writings, which are plentiful and available.She also has a website worth pursing, at Jean Houston.org. An enjoyable read.

Jean Houston is a gifted writer and speaker. In this book, Jean reminds us that our myths have power within them. They reveal our soul and ways we manifest ourselves into daily living. In so doing, our divine and human qualities merge into a sacred human path. -- Samuel Oliver, author of, WHAT THE DYING TEACH US: LESSON ON LIVING.

Take all the buzzwords in fashion in psychology and philosophy: classification, genotype, flexibility, somatic, discrete, threshold, characteristics, analytic... mix everything together and you get this book.
In other words there's not an ounce of meaning in those 700 pages, it's all worthless. No case studies, no examples, long phrases full of self importance written by someone who thinks he's an authority in everything from zen to medecine to evolution theory to archeology. Not only does he prove he doesn't understand anything, you'll laugh yourself silly reading any paragraph of the book at random.

If you have to read this for an assignment, you'd better change major and give it to your worst enemy for toilet paper. That's how low I think of this. And to think that a tree was felled for this. Ha !

Reading "Steps" helped save me from the unremitting horrors of divorce court; I'd probably be on a death row somewheres if not for this & some peripherally associated material. I am very pleased to see that it's in print again.

From those meticulous metalogues to those essays on the Theory of Logical Types, Bateson can mesmerize, if you're prepared for it. "Steps" is to science & reason what Frost's "West Running Brook" is to poetry: an intense meditation, soliloquy & dialogue. It's worth your while.

After my paperback copy of SEM decayed from several readings, I was more than a little disappointed to see that it had gone out of print. I'm glad that its finally back.

Absolutely, Bateson is a "sloppy thinker," just as Picasso was a "sloppy painter" by the standards of Vermeer and Rembrandt. And really a comparison to artists - not formal theorists - is the metric by which Bateson should be judged.

Why is it that Bateson attracts such loyalty? Because his writing illustrates a *process* of thinking, rather than a specific indisputable conclusion. Those who expend the time and effort to read Bateson - and in particular SEM - are rewarded with the certainty that the thinking process is as interesting as any possible conclusion. And it is somewhat more than "clever" that in the SEM dialogues, Bateson uses the very structure and form of his writings to illustrate the content he's explaining.

Indeed it is precisely that uncertainty which vexes "formal" theorists (such as the reviewer below). Bateson - as a systems thinker - was always more interested in process and context than in defining any literal end result. After all, what possible "proof" could be offered that dolphins are second-order thinkers because they can learn about learning?. How on earth could proof be gained that icons and verbalizations are mediated by dreaming?

I would offer this question to Bateson's critics: if his thinking is so irredeemably sloppy, what then is his lasting appeal? Why does he - among all the philosophers and scientists of the 20th century - continue to have such a loyal following? Name a single cybernetician or epistomologist who is commonly cited in contemporary philosphical thinking.

Answer: there are none. So the bigger question is not why Bateson is popular, but why systems thinking (of which Bateson was a practitioner) is so absent from American academia. That fact is an indictment of something, but is certainly is not Gregory Bateson.