cover image The Biology of Emotions

The Biology of Emotions

Jean-Didier Vincent, Jean-Didier Vincent. Blackwell Publishers, $21.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-631-16073-1

In French biologist Vincent's reckoning, our noble minds are awash in a veritable witches' brew of humors (bodily secretions and fluids). He posits a hormonal brain functioning alongside, and constantly modifying, our computer-like neuronal brain. Pleasure, pain, sex, desire, hunger and thirst are among the fundamental drives in Vincent's unfashionable system, which avoids mechanistically reducing the brain to a telephone switchboard or a supercomputer. He writes with elegance, a tart sense of humor and a fondness for thought-provoking wordplay, all resourcefully carried over in a fluent translation. Presenting the human brain as simultaneously the orchestrator of its own passion, and passionate victim, Vincent sketches a model of mental/emotional life that preserves free will and human dignity. Illustrations. (Oct.)