Rating: 
Summary: Finally one for Western Science!
Review: This book is not only intriguing for advancing neuroscience but enormously necessary for a cultural correction. The research findings that attempt to isolate fear do little to substantiate psychotherapy, or a talking cure for treatment of generic mental illness. Le Doux points out among other things, that what we think about our'true' emotions, is generally inaccurate. Indeed, our feelings are generally understood by others better than by ourselves. There is NO verbal process that will release, inhibit or otherwise subordinate underlying fear and/or trauma. The unconscious memories of these are coded in symbols, not linguistically. The retrieval of `buried memories' as a means to catharsis is most often, impossible, as stress hormones prevented the original memory from being formulated. In short, those memories of trauma are not `repressed' they don't exist. The author spends a great deal of time on the small amygdala as somewhat of a central switch operator for setting the fear response mechanism into play as a reflex and also as information into the conscious mind. He enlightens us as to the flexibility of the brain, the alternate systems and the somewhat disturbing concept that painful memories are never forgotten, they are life long. He challenges Psychometrics, i.e. what we know as psych. testing as being glaringly inadequate means to measure brain functioning mainly because of their complete reliance on words. Words are not the language of the greatest power areas of our neural systems.
The first part of the book, is proof positive that LeDoux is an excellent scientist. He is methodical, detailed, and not on the same attention level as the rest of us. However, his research, and the research of others that support his thesis, is riveting. I definitely recommend this book for the revolutionary challenge it presents to the dominant, crude systems of mental health treatment, as well as to any lay persons with an interest in this material.
The history of medicine could be a horror movie, and I have always believed that future generations will place us therapy people in a category with the barbers who did blood letting. Now I know it.
LeDoux is doing fantastic work and can, along with other pioneers and 'teachers' reinform and reinvent approaches and manners of intervening when human suffering overcomes a life.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh What a Clunker!
Review: This book is so badly written that many readers, including those who are college graduates and used to reading academic texts, don't seem to know what it actually says. Let me give a simple example:I have recently read two books, one by a researcher into REM sleep and one by a General Practitioner, who both cite "The Emotional Brain" in support of their comments on the "limbic system". One of the previous reviewers on this page does the same. And all three of them talk about the limbic system as being the source of our emotions. But check out what LeDoux himself has to say on the subject: "Either the limbic system exists or it does not. Since there are no independent criteria for telling us where it is, I have to say it does not exist." (page 101) And later, on the same page: "The limbic system term, even when used in a shorthand structural sense, is imprecise and has unwarranted functional (emotional) implications. It should be discarded." This deconstruction of the "limbic system" myth actually takes up several pages, so how come people so obviously misrepresent LeDoux's view? To be blunt, this book is vastly oversize and underpowered. Most of the first half of the book is dedicated to trying to steamroller the reader into accepting the notion that the human brain is simply an evolutionary advance over the brains of "lesser" creatures. But not because the book has anything useful to say about evolution. In fact it several times falls into the trap of talking about evolution as though it were a teleological process, as in: "... a few choices that evolution has had the wisdom to connect up ..." (page 69) Evolution has had "the wisdom" - oops! I don't think so. No, the reason behind the propaganda is that LeDoux's research has been mainly conducted on rats, and most of the other research he cites has been done on other non-human creatures, from flies to dolphins. The amount of research carried out on real live humans has been hardly enough to fill a tin cup. Hence the need to try to convince us that, because we are evolutionarily linked to the real test subjects in this book, what's true for them is *probably* true for us humans, too. So, as late as the end of Chapter 6, we find this comment: "We clearly need to go beyond evolution in order to understand emotion, but we should get past it by understanding its contribution rather than ignoring it. I think we have now done that, at least for the emotion of fear..." (page 178) 178 pages, of a 303 page book, just to demonstrate the role of evolution? And even then the text hardly rises above the ultra-trivial "explanation": However things are, they are that way because they conferred the greatest advantage in the struggle for survival. Gee, willikers. How's THAT for 178 pages of rocket science! Worse still, this EC (evolutionary correctness) approach actually undermines the usefulness of the book. In the first place because it imposes the questionable assumption that ALL emotions are intended to arouse us: "When we are in the throes of emotion, it is because something important, perhaps life threatening, is occurring ..." (page 300) Oh well, bang go "satisfaction" and "sadness" as emotions!
Secondly because it reduces sections of the book to pure nonsense. For example: "It's hard to believe that after all these years we actually still don't have a clear and definitive understanding of the role of body states in emotions." (page 295) Got that? NO, repeat NO clear and definitive understanding. But move ahead just one sentence and we read: "Emotional systems evolved as ways of matching bodily responses with the demands being made by the environment..." Oh, so we do know after all?
No - this is yet ANOTHER of LeDoux's GUESSES. Because when it comes right down to it, if you read this book carefully and critically you are going to notice that's really what it's all about - some research massively padded about with guesses. At the beginning of the book, around the time that he's demolishing the notion of the limbic system, LeDoux tells us that he will demonstrate how the amygdala and associated brain functions control the emotion of fear, and how this ties up with the rest of the emotions. He thinks! Well, we get a fair amount of information about the amygdala - though hardly conclusive. This is tied to other emotions, which LeDoux *suggests* have their own functionality, not necessarily involving the amygdala, by the simple process of fudging. From page 282 onwards the functionality of fear is simply spoken about as though it were an all-purpose description of how emotions are generated, typified by a list of "bare essentials" which are described as "what's dispensable and indispensable for the emotion fear." It starts off with three elements that relate to fear, but ends with three totally non-specific elements (pages 296-299). So having started out by saying that different emotions use different functionality, we end up with fear and ??????? And there's more.
Remember the first half of the book was designed to prove how similar humans and non-humans were? Well, on almost the very last page of the book that all gets blown out of the water when we are told that the human brain is significantly different from all others because, "natural language only exists in the human brain [and] in human the presence of natural language alters the brain significantly. ... Whatever consciousness exists outside of humans is likely to be very different from the kind of consciousness that we have. ... Human consciousness is the way it is because of the way our brain is. Other animals may also be conscious in their own special way due to the way their brains are." (pages 301 and 302) Ah, well. Back to the drawing board!
Rating:
Summary: Oh What a Clunker!
Review: This book is so badly written that many readers, including those who are college graduates and used to reading academic texts, don't seem to know what it actually says. Let me give a simple example: I have recently read two books, one by a researcher into REM sleep and one by a General Practitioner, who both cite "The Emotional Brain" in support of their comments on the "limbic system". One of the previous reviewers on this page does the same. And all three of them talk about the limbic system as being the source of our emotions. But check out what LeDoux himself has to say on the subject: "Either the limbic system exists or it does not. Since there are no independent criteria for telling us where it is, I have to say it does not exist." (page 101) And later, on the same page: "The limbic system term, even when used in a shorthand structural sense, is imprecise and has unwarranted functional (emotional) implications. It should be discarded." This deconstruction of the "limbic system" myth actually takes up several pages, so how come people so obviously misrepresent LeDoux's view? To be blunt, this book is vastly oversize and underpowered. Most of the first half of the book is dedicated to trying to steamroller the reader into accepting the notion that the human brain is simply an evolutionary advance over the brains of "lesser" creatures. But not because the book has anything useful to say about evolution. In fact it several times falls into the trap of talking about evolution as though it were a teleological process, as in: "... a few choices that evolution has had the wisdom to connect up ..." (page 69) Evolution has had "the wisdom" - oops! I don't think so. No, the reason behind the propaganda is that LeDoux's research has been mainly conducted on rats, and most of the other research he cites has been done on other non-human creatures, from flies to dolphins. The amount of research carried out on real live humans has been hardly enough to fill a tin cup. Hence the need to try to convince us that, because we are evolutionarily linked to the real test subjects in this book, what's true for them is *probably* true for us humans, too. So, as late as the end of Chapter 6, we find this comment: "We clearly need to go beyond evolution in order to understand emotion, but we should get past it by understanding its contribution rather than ignoring it. I think we have now done that, at least for the emotion of fear..." (page 178) 178 pages, of a 303 page book, just to demonstrate the role of evolution? And even then the text hardly rises above the ultra-trivial "explanation": However things are, they are that way because they conferred the greatest advantage in the struggle for survival. Gee, willikers. How's THAT for 178 pages of rocket science! Worse still, this EC (evolutionary correctness) approach actually undermines the usefulness of the book. In the first place because it imposes the questionable assumption that ALL emotions are intended to arouse us: "When we are in the throes of emotion, it is because something important, perhaps life threatening, is occurring ..." (page 300) Oh well, bang go "satisfaction" and "sadness" as emotions!
Secondly because it reduces sections of the book to pure nonsense. For example: "It's hard to believe that after all these years we actually still don't have a clear and definitive understanding of the role of body states in emotions." (page 295) Got that? NO, repeat NO clear and definitive understanding. But move ahead just one sentence and we read: "Emotional systems evolved as ways of matching bodily responses with the demands being made by the environment..." Oh, so we do know after all?
No - this is yet ANOTHER of LeDoux's GUESSES. Because when it comes right down to it, if you read this book carefully and critically you are going to notice that's really what it's all about - some research massively padded about with guesses. At the beginning of the book, around the time that he's demolishing the notion of the limbic system, LeDoux tells us that he will demonstrate how the amygdala and associated brain functions control the emotion of fear, and how this ties up with the rest of the emotions. He thinks! Well, we get a fair amount of information about the amygdala - though hardly conclusive. This is tied to other emotions, which LeDoux *suggests* have their own functionality, not necessarily involving the amygdala, by the simple process of fudging. From page 282 onwards the functionality of fear is simply spoken about as though it were an all-purpose description of how emotions are generated, typified by a list of "bare essentials" which are described as "what's dispensable and indispensable for the emotion fear." It starts off with three elements that relate to fear, but ends with three totally non-specific elements (pages 296-299). So having started out by saying that different emotions use different functionality, we end up with fear and ??????? And there's more.
Remember the first half of the book was designed to prove how similar humans and non-humans were? Well, on almost the very last page of the book that all gets blown out of the water when we are told that the human brain is significantly different from all others because, "natural language only exists in the human brain [and] in human the presence of natural language alters the brain significantly. ... Whatever consciousness exists outside of humans is likely to be very different from the kind of consciousness that we have. ... Human consciousness is the way it is because of the way our brain is. Other animals may also be conscious in their own special way due to the way their brains are." (pages 301 and 302) Ah, well. Back to the drawing board!
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book!!
Review: This is a fantasticly well-written, well documented and investigated book on Fear, conditioning and Emotions. The author dwelves on the circuits in mind that allow us to connect our emotions with certain stimulations, especially in what relates to fear. This is a fantastic book, but I have to agree that you must know something about brain anatomy to get the full information from it...!
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