Volume 32, Number 4 · March 14, 1985
The New Brain
By Israel Rosenfield
The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry
by Nancy C. Andreasen MD, Ph.D.
Harper and Row, 278 pp., $17.95
Brain, Mind, and Behavior
by Floyd E. Bloom, by Arlyne Lazerson, by Laura Hofstadter
W.H. Freeman, 323 pp., $23.95
The Amazing Brain
by Robert Ornstein, by Richard F. Thompson, illustrated by David Macaulay
Houghton Mifflin, 213 pp., $16.95
The Brain
by Richard M. Restak MD
Bantam, 373 pp., $24.95
The Brain
a documentary series produced by WNET/Thirteen (New York)
In 1895 Freud wrote his last work on the physiology of the nervous system. For the rest of his life he paid little attention to developments in neurobiology, a neglect characteristic of most modern therapists and psychologists. But recent work in the neurosciences has begun to challenge the separation of psychology from neurobiology. Mentally crippling diseases such as depression and schizophrenia (the latter considered by Freud beyond the reach of psychoanalysis) can now, in varying degrees, be relieved or controlled. Their physiological mechanisms, as well as those of other diseases, are beginning to be discerned. And the neuroanatomy and chemistry of moods and emotions are no longer complete mysteries. The observations of psychology and psychoanalysis are becoming part of a larger body of knowledge whose central questions concern the mechanisms and functions of the human brain.
Review, 5930 words
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