Jane G. Goldberg, "Wired for Why: How We Think, Feel, and Make Meaning" (2025)

Oct 31, 2025

Dr. Jane G. Goldberg, a practicing psychoanalyst and holistic health practitioner, dives deep into the intricate relationship between our brains and our experiences. She challenges the reliability of memory, suggesting it’s an illusion rather than a faithful record. Goldberg explores cultural trends in emotional numbing and the creative potential of spontaneous mind-wandering. She also discusses the surprising success of 'B' students over 'A' students and the merging of psychoanalysis with holistic health practices, driven by her own personal trauma.

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INSIGHT

Language, Metaphor, And Curiosity

Language and metaphor enable abstract thought and make human minds unique compared to other species.
Goldberg argues curiosity (asking why) is wired into our brains and is central to psychoanalytic inquiry.

ANECDOTE

Flotation Rooms Reveal Self-Stimulating Brain

Goldberg describes using flotation rooms to study brain activity without external stimulation and reports vivid mentation and 'cosmic' experiences.
She notes the brain self-stimulates and produces rich inner experiences when sensory input is minimized.

ADVICE

Use Free Association To Discover Insight

Do practice free association or allow your mind to wander to access deeper unconscious material and creativity.
Goldberg compares this to analysis where not paying attention leads to insight and introspection.

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WIRED FOR WHY: How We Think, Feel and Make Meaning. (Self-Published 2025) spans eighteen chapters exploring everything from how we manage to stay alive against all odds, to why language separates us from other species, to whether death might be a metaphor. It's a journey through neuroscience, psychoanalysis, history, and philosophy that challenges readers to reconsider their most basic assumptions about human experience.

In WIRED FOR WHY, Dr. Jane Goldberg dismantles fundamental assumptions about human consciousness, memory, and experience. Humans have no "now"—we're perpetually living in the past as our brains lag behind reality, processing what has already happened. Memory, Goldberg argues, is an illusion, an unreliable collection of patterns distributed throughout our bodies rather than faithful recordings of our lives. This challenges everything we believe about identity and selfhood. The book explores how beer created civilization, why coffee shaped the Industrial Revolution, why "B" students often outperform "A" students, and why the brain is the only entity on Earth that named itself—a fact that reveals something profound about human self-awareness.

Beyond neuroscience, Goldberg tackles pressing cultural questions: why one in six Americans takes psychiatric medication and children Google "how to completely kill all my emotions." She argues we're medicating away normal human experiences at great cost to our emotional intelligence. Against our productivity-obsessed culture, she makes the counterintuitive case that spacing out and daydreaming fuel creativity, that intelligence is fundamentally a team sport requiring connection rather than isolation, and that our minds and bodies continuously eavesdrop on each other in ways we barely understand. The book doesn't offer simple life hacks but instead provides a more honest reckoning with what it means to live inside brains that lie to us, confabulate truth, and imagine reality on a non-stop basis—and suggests we need humility, openness to being wrong, and peace with our beautifully flawed human nature.

Christopher Russell is a psychoanalyst working with individuals and groups. He is a member of the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies; a licensure qualifying institute in New York. CMPS is also the New York campus for the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; the only accredited, independent graduate school of psychoanalysis in the country.

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