 |
|
 |
|
 |
TELOS/net Book Review |
    |
The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by
Joseph LeDoux, Center for Neural Science, Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996. 384pp. |
| It is not very often that the lay person--or even
the practicing therapist--is given more than a glimpse of the intellectual underpinnings
of the most recent research in an area like neuroscience. It is even rarer when
such material is provided in a way that allows it to be applied directly to disciplines
that can use the resultant increased understanding. But this is what’s provided in
Joseph LeDoux’s recently published The Emotional Brain. This book probably
sets a new standard for quality and readability for popular technical books. And for the
practicing therapist who’s been out of touch with the state-of-the-art in neurology
and biopsychology for several years and wants to get "caught up," LeDoux’s
Bibliography is a virtual gold mine. LeDoux’s research on how the brain produces emotions in response to unconscious and conscious perceptions formed much of the scientific basis for Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence. Goleman focused on the contribution of subcortical responses of the amygdala on "emotional hijackings" that he viewed responsible for many of the bad decisions and maladaptive or violent impulses that plague many people throughout their lives. He found in LeDoux’s work a hypothesis for why people make choices that are not logical or helpful and that subvert even the most intellectually disciplined humans. The development of "Emotional Intelligence" would involve training or therapy to inhibit these powerful reactions. And much of Goleman’s book is devoted to proposals for cultivating the development of this new form of intelligence in the raising of children and in living more consciously and purposely in everyday adult life. To summarize briefly, LeDoux’s research indicates that the amygdala--a small structure in the so-called "limbic system"(a "system" LeDoux discounts, by the way)--is the seat of emotional arousal in all mammals, including man. He has actually discovered circuits in the brains of rats and primates that allows these mammals to "hear" warning sounds and "see" dangerous sights before the forebrain (long thought to be necessary for such perceptions) has the slightest idea of what’s going on. This early warning system is adaptive for mammals existing in the wild that need to be aroused for survival reasons as fast as possible. But the existence of such circuits in a complex human brain in a complex human world, together with a damaging human presupposition that everything about this world is obvious to the senses, is a dangerous mix. When the human brain is "highjacked" by emotions rooted in survival instincts and the attendant feelings that it thinks it understands, the result is reactivity that can contribute to murder, child abuse, wife and husband beating, divorce, alcoholism and drug abuse, depression, unnecessary anxiety, post traumatic stress, stuttering (in the opinion of this reviewer, anyway), the entire range of reactive disorders and behaviors that are at the root of much human suffering and many societal problems. One can see similar techniques at work in spiritual growth practices like the Diamond Approach, which advocates suspending judgment or cognitive interpretation of feelings while experiencing them in a calm and direct manner. (A common result of such suspension is a dissolution of reactivity and the emergence of a strong sense of the myriad human qualities and capabilities.) A vital aspect of emotional work of this sort is the presence of an objective observer trained in mirroring back the person’s actual emotional state. As LeDoux paraphrases Donald Hebb (the father of Biopsychology) at one point: "outside observers are far more accurate at judging a person’s true emotional state than is the person himself." "When I say I’m angry, I may be, but I might also be wrong. I might really be afraid or jealous or some combination of all of these." LeDoux devotes a considerable amount of his book to discussing previous theories of emotion, including William James’s theory that emotions are responses to feedback from the body, Cannon’s theory that emotions are due to "fight or flight" responses, and the behaviorist belief that emotions are simply reasons people provide for acting in certain ways. His discussion of the changing tides of thought and research in 20th century psychology is first rate By far the bulk of the book is devoted to a detailed, blow-by-blow description of LeDoux’s research discoveries and their relation to prior art. This is fascinating for a student of popular neurology, but probably rather intimidating for most lay readers. This emphasis could explain why The Emotional Brain failed to break through into the popular consciousness after its release in late 1996. And this failure is really unfortunate. A reasonably astute reader will learn as much or more by carefully reading and studying this book as he/she would in an undergraduate introductory biopsychology course. The value of such knowledge and understanding is inestimable, particularly considering the huge number of articles in the popular press that require such knowledge to fully interpret and evaluate. |
|
| Eight major themes about the nature of emotions | LeDoux’s book focuses on eight major themes
about the nature of emotions that are worth reviewing here because they carry the most
significant message of his book. 1. The proper level of analysis of a psychological function is "the level at which that function is represented in the brain." In other words "emotion" is a label we give to a physical brain process. 2. The brain systems associated with the generation of emotions are similar in all higher animals. 3. Function of emotional systems in an animal with the capacity for conscious awareness gives rise to conscious emotions--or feelings. 4. The conscious "feelings" we have about emotions are only interpretations of real processes and are not reliable indictors in scientific study. Human interpretations of the causes and meaning of emotions are often totally incorrect. (This theme is identified by LeDoux as "hard to swallow" for many people.) 5. With the emotional feelings and responses as indicators, objectively measurable indicators can be used to study the underlying physical brain mechanisms. 6. Conscious feelings are "states of consciousness" and are, thus, perceptions of underlying brain activity. 7. Emotions are not conscious. They "happen to us." We can’t "will them" to occur. Conversely, emotions can "flood" consciousness. The human brain is wired so that the connections of emotional systems to the cognitive brain circuits are stronger and more numerous than those from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems. 8. Once they occur, emotions become powerful motivators. Mental problems and disorders reflect a breakdown of emotional order. Mental health is primarily achieved through attention to emotional hygiene, not just cognitive processes. The implication of that last point is a profound one and, if LeDoux is right, this implication is capable of being used to transform therapy of all kinds. We can already see this trend at work today, with EMDR in the realm of psychotherapy, the increased popularity of yoga as a spiritual growth path, and the use of therapy techniques like delayed auditory feedback for stuttering. The common characteristics of techniques that address emotional hygiene are that they involve direct physical manipulation or modification of some sort. Such physical therapy affects the physical processes that govern emotional responses in a more direct and accurate way. |
| A "must" for practicing therapists |
That said, I would also say that this book is a "must"
for anyone who is a practicing therapist of any type. Why? LeDoux’s theory of what is
actually occurring in therapy is far-reaching. As his useful speculation in a chapter
called "Where the Wild Things Are" it may be just as applicable to a person with
an anxiety disorder as it is to a person who suffers from chronic secondary stuttering or
a person who can’t get along with his mother in law or who argues with her husband or
a person who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. All of these problems result
from physical, neurological reactivity in the brain, and therapy of all of these
conditions follows the same general course. Of course, specific methods of producing a
therapeutic effect are very different. While LeDoux is careful to explain that the fear that he is studying is only one emotion, he is also quick to point out that fear is not only one of the most important emotions but also one of the easiest to study, because it plays an important role in the laboratory animals that LeDoux uses in his experiments. LeDoux’s book, coming soon after the publication of Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, has made the amygdala (more properly called the amygdaloid nuclei), the hottest brain component of the 90's. As far as I know, it’s the only brain component with its own Web Home Page (which, by the way, can be accessed at http://marlin.utmb.edu/~nkeele). There’s a danger that focus on the amygdala can make the processes LeDoux describes seem more simple and easy-to-understand than they really are. In fact, the amygdala--like all other brain components--is just one of many components of a number of parallel circuits. But LeDoux’s argument for the amygdala as the trigger of early arousal in the brain is compelling and the body of research data that is being compiled is convincing. And LeDoux is more than just a "Lab Rat." Although his writing tends to be technical, it has a high-energy matter-of-factness about it. And the insights here are of the kind that can cause scales to fall away from one’s eyes. An example is LeDoux's conclusion--which is typically laconic, but also typically thought-provoking and forward-thinking: "Where is evolution taking our brain? . . . we are evolution in progress and we can see what sorts of changes might be happening in our brain by looking at trends in brain evolution across related species." "As things now stand, the amygdala has a greater influence on the cortex than the cortex has on the amygdala, allowing emotional arousal to dominate and control thinking. Throughout the mammals, pathways from the amygdala to the cortex overshadow the pathways from the cortex to the amygdala. Although thoughts can easily trigger emotions (by activating the amygdala), we are not very effective at willfully turning off emotions (by deactivating the amygdala.) Telling yourself that you should be be anxious or depressed does not help much." While speculating rather hopefully that humans may one day evolve into creatures with more cortical control, he offers another possibility: a "more harmonious integration of reason and passion," made possible by the balancing of cortical and amygdaloid connections. And he offers us a final thought that is pertinent to the interests of readers of a Web site devoted to human telos: "Oscar Wilde once said, ‘It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.’ But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did understand where our emotions were taking us from moment to moment, day to day, and year to year, and why? If the trends toward cognitive-emotional connectivity in the brain are any indication, our brains may, in fact, be moving in this direction." Reviewed by Darrell M. Dodge, TelosNet (July 1997) |
| Go to Joseph LeDoux’s Web site for additional information: | |
© 1997 TelosNet Updated: March 24, 2008 |
|