A User’s Guide to the Brain
by John Ratey
Little, Brown, £12.99, ISBN 0316854069
The author of this 400+ pages book is clinical professor at Harvard Medical School. He presents an extensive review of the present knowledge of the working of the human brain. The subject is very complex, and the amount of information supplied is immense, but the author really has made an effort to make it very digestible, much more than most other books on this subject, by very richly documenting it with case stories of patients.
Short chapters on specific aspects of the working of the brain are coupled with neurological and psychological functions and pathology such as: perception, autism, tinnitus, learning difficulties, attention disorders, emotion, tics, compulsive obsessive disorders, memory and also love. Many of those functions are made more understandable by using metaphors and very often some very good advice is given to understand, overcome or prevent some disorders. All this with a lot of warm humanity and common sense.
He takes very firm stands against the Freudian school and the recovered memory crowd and definitely is not an adherent of the mind-body dualism theory and documents these views very well. The new fad of overrating the EQ (emotional intelligence) is also brought to more discreet proportions. His analysis of the “social brain” and the use of this concept in therapy is admirable. His therapeutic approach also has the merit of taking away much of the guilt that other therapeutic systems sometimes induce.
For the health professional, for whom it is intended, this book does not provide many ready made answers but it certainly has the merit of making one think and reconsider some therapeutic approaches. A small draw back for those who would like to deepen the subject is that all references are not to articles in journals but to other books.
For the layperson it will be tough but very instructive reading, or rather study, but the determined ones will enjoy it.
