A comprehensive state-of-the-art overview into the mechanisms of Emotions, the Psychoneuroses and brain's operations impairing efficient behavior. Easy to understand and with a minimum of professional jargon.
Reviews:
"… The conclusions seem to me well founded".
Dr. Reinhard Wandtner, Senior Book reviewer, Der Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany.
"… I was fascinated by the ideas".
Giles Foden, deputy literary editor , The Guardian.
"… This work is exceptional. It truly is".
Nick Owchar, Deputy Book Editor, Los Angeles Times.
This book introduces a work that is a major contribution to the field. It portrays the meaning of the various emotions and the origins of the psychoneuroses and inefficient behavior in general, accounting for a wide range of neurotic symptoms.
The conditions where coordination of limbic circuits with higher cortical control is impaired are described as leading to Systematically Inefficient Behavior and to the Psychoneuroses - contingent on the properties of the original particular emotion subject to functional failure.
An account of basic properties of the emotional system is presented, shown as integrated into higher brain functions. The brain’s limbic system is portrayed as having developed in mammals, thus functionally extending beyond the ancient reptilian brain. It is aimed at providing relatively flexible yet specific survival-adaptive answers, evolving in evolution, for problem-situations posed to the organism by the environment. Contrary to the Reptilian brain evoked into a rigid sequence of responses by specific stimuli, the limbic system forms, rather, dispositions for activity, comprising a sort of recommendations to act in a specific direction, which can be applied in diverse ways.
Schematically, every particular emotion comprises of three basic components in sequence:
1) A tuning and sensitivity to specific environmental features and objects that activate this emotion.
2) Representations at the limbic system level, experienced as the emotive tone of the emotion, that is, the tendency or disposition to act towards the above object.
3) The motor activity comprising the performance component of the emotion.
For example, the emotion of hatred is triggered where an organism is being hurt or blocked by other organisms. A sense of hatred is experienced at the emotive tone level. The activity level leads towards efforts to destroy or hurt, that is, towards neutralizing or weakening the object that triggered the emotion. The emotion of love is evoked towards another organism being a major source of gratification and of strengthening:
“Love means approving the existence of the other organism, and trying to verify and substantiate its existence through the senses, especially the sense of touch (It leads to hugging, clinging to the object, caressing, etc.). Love also leads to directing attention toward the object of love, which becomes for the individual virtually the “center of the world” (e.g., Romeo’s feeling that Juliet is the sun for him), or a major source of gratification” (See the section "The inhibited emotion of Love").
“The emotion of suffering leads to change-seeking of either environment or behavior”, and the emotion of happiness – “triggered when being gratified in major aspects – leads to adhering to or persistence towards either the object of gratification or the behavior that is gratifying, or the gratifying environment”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael Sharon is a research Psychologist and a Journalist. He attained extensive experience in research in areas of Neurophysiology , Neuropsychology, Cognition; on mechanisms of attention, environmental Stress, Divided Attention and complex performance, and inventive thinking, in Tel Aviv University Medical School (At a research institute) and in Haifa University, Psychology Department. He is a commentator encompassing issues in social criticism, economy and culture.
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