States of Mind: ESP and Altered States of Consciousness by Adrian Parker (review)

246 Books studies that accompany the text. He produced thesecolor studies by projecting colored lights onto surfaces and then duplicating the resulting perceptual effects with paint. The result, in some cases, is in an illusion of illumination. In doing these studies, he used some interesting techniques involving filters,colored lights and pigments. Unfortunately, he spends only a few pages describing his methods and leaves the reader wanting more details. Color Percepfionin Arfwould have been a more valuable book if Birren had dispensed with the perceptual theory and substituted for it a more detailed description of what he knows about how to depict illumination with paint. Bodily Communication. Michael Argyle. Methuen, London, 1975.403pp.. illus.Paper, f3.90.Expressioni nMovementandthe Arts: A Philosophical Enquiry. David Best. Lepus Books, London, 1974. 203 pp. f3.10. Reviewed by John G. Harries* The first book is a scholarly and readable general account of the phenomena of non-verbal communication (NVC). It is not aimed soley at othei professionals in the field of social psychology,indeed, it is a theme of the book that the importance of non-verbal communication in social behaviour should be more widely known, so that people may understand more fully what is going on about them and become better at coping with it. It is maintained that our understanding of social behaviour is often inadequate because it is based on an incorrect model of humans; behaviour is not primarily based on the exchange of verbal propositions, but this is not realised so long as most nonverbal communication is unconscious. It is suggested that one reason for the use of NVC by humans lies in the lack of verbal coding in some areas; that non-verbal signals are more powerful than the usually less direct impact of words; and that they are less well controlled and therefore more genuine. On the other hand, they can be used in avoiding too explicitexpression of social relationships where this might be too disturbing. Non-verbal communication is employed by both animals and humans, but humans incorporate the basic signals into far more complex social acts, depending upon the nature of the cultural situation and its rules. In humans, non-verbal signals may have meanings that depend on verbal conceptual structures, as in games and rituals. Arguments are brought to support the possibility of the existence of universal rules governing nonverbal communication, corresponding to linguistic universals; but it is also shown that there are spheres where language is less influential, including the expression of emotions and of the subjectiveexperiencesof life. Readers are reminded that Susanne Langer distinguished two kinds of communication, one based on logic and language, the other designed to express and articulate feelings through non-verbal symbolism. David Best in the second book too cites Langer in this connection, in his refreshingapproach to the notoriously tangled question of expression in the arts and, especially, in dance. Rejecting the traditional dichotomy of form and content, Best points out that even Langer, who maintained that form and import were inseparable, did not resolve this dualism, because she still treated the two as indivisible entities. In presenting his own interpretation, the author does some admirable clearing-up of the confusions caused by conceiving ‘meaning’as some entity that a word or an expressivemovement stands for and that can be fixed in a definition. Convincing arguments are set out to show that expressivemovements do not ‘stand for’ anything; they are criteria of the emotions expressed; there is no other way of expressingthese particular emotions and there is no gap between the movement and the emotion. The validity of the argument is not confined to the art of dance. Thetwo books, the onea wide-rangingsurveyof most formsof non-verbal communication and the other a philosophical enquiry into a specificfield,have common ground in finding that objective treatment of NVC phenomena is possible and that this objectivity depends ultimately upon taking into account cultural and socialconventions. The two do much to demonstrate that an education in non-verbal communication, which is lessdependent than hitherto upon narrow verbal concepts, can lead to richer communication and to more sensible, more sensitive and more skilled dealings with NVC phenomena both in everyday...