The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters

Most of us are aware that we have more than one personality.  In fact the older you get the more aware of it you become, and the more you accept it.  Part of me is calm, logical and assesses facts and evidence before coming to a decision.  Another part is on a permanent emotional roller coaster always ready to get excited about, well, more or less anything.


This duality is reflected in our brain's make up.   Logical processing goes on the prefrontal cortex, a thin sliver at the front of the head. The more powerful, more primitive and more emotional parts of the brain are further back.  The connection between these two systems is a bit loose.  So in a sense we really do have two brains that work in different ways, and which sometimes work at cross purposes or even in outright opposition to each other.

Steven Peters has come up with a rather neat metaphor that explains how our brains work.  The logical pre-frontal cortex is our human side, while the more emotional primitive brain is our chimp.    The chimp is adapted to living, and surviving, in the jungle.  It is alert for short term dangers but doesn't really think things through and certainly doesn't prepare for the future.  Chimps are five times stronger than humans, so your chimp will always win a battle with your human.

The basic premise of the book is that you need to learn to manage your chimp, and it offers lots of strategies for how you can do this.

It is a neat idea and there is a lot here that is really useful.  Dr Peters is a clinical psychiatrist so he draws on his experience for examples of how to apply his ideas.   I have a feeling I would have found this book a lot more useful thirty years ago than I do now.  I have already worked out a lot of this stuff myself.  But the metaphor is a really good one, and I soon started finding myself using it to analyse situations and problems that I have to deal with.

There is another metaphor proposed by this book based on planets that might be helpful for some people but which I didn't personally find resonated me.  I also found some of the stories a bit too generic and some of the points were a bit laboured.  I think this book could be cut in length by about 20% with no loss of value.

But the basic idea is well worth spending some time with, especially if you are short of self control and often find yourself acting in ways that you know aren't taking you in the direction you want to be going.   There is a good chance the way to overcome this is to learn to manage your inner chimp. And  this book is a great place to start to learn how to do that.