I have been catching up on my reading. Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain that Changes Itself (Penguin, 427pp. ($18)), was published in 2007, now some twelve years ago. This publication occurred towards the beginning of the era of neuro-hype that now… Read More ›
fMRI
Review: “No Visible Bruises” Refers to Strangulation
The title of Rachel Louise Snyder’s eye-opening, powerful, page-turner of a book, No Visible Bruises, refers to strangulation [No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019: 309 pp, $28(US)]. Some… Read More ›
Review: Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness by Anne Harrington
In spite of the many patients who have been helped to lead emotionally stable, more productive lives thanks to two generations of psychopharmacological medicines, psychiatry is facing an ongoing challenge of its foundation and legitimacy. That is the take-away in… Read More ›
Narrative versus Neuroscientism
Review: Alex Rosenberg’s How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories(The MIT Press, 289 pp., $27.95US). Henry Ford said: “History is bunk.” The privileged, the victors, those with an ax to grind, and those with the… Read More ›
Three books on empathy: The good, the bad, and the ugly
The first empathy book reviewed here is very good indeed. William Miller’s Listening Well: The Art of Empathic Understanding (Wipf and Stock, 114pp, ($18US)) is a short book. Admirably concise. My short review is that, as I am author of… Read More ›
A Critical Review of a Philosophy of Empathy
You don’t need a philosopher to tell you what empathy is; you need a philosopher to help you distinguish the hype and the over-intellectualization from a rigorous and critical empathy. Every parent, teacher, health care worker, business person with customers,… Read More ›
Review: The Empathy Effect by Helen Riess
The force of empathy is strong with Helen Riess, MD, and her team. In The Empathy Effect: 7 Neuroscience-based Keys for Transforming the Way We Live, Love, Work, and Connect Across Differences(with Liz Neporent, Forward by Alan Alda (Sounds True… Read More ›
Review of Decety’s Empathy: From Bench to Bedside: Decety’s Archiecture of Empathy Gets it Just Right
Empathy: From Bench to Bedside, edited by Jean Decety. Cambrdige, MA: The MIT Press, 2012. Short Review: Two thumbs Up. Longer Review: The thematic unity to this wide-ranging and diverse anthology on empathy is available in thinking of empathy as… Read More ›