Name: The Emotional Brain
ISBN: 9780684836591

Joseph Ledoux

Examines emotions and psychological disorders from a biological perspective, analyzing what emotions are, how they operate in the brain, and how they influence everyday lives

The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

The Emotional Brain

Gavin

Maybe a bit dated, but thoughtful and historical enough to pull through. 

His big contention’s that conscious feelings are red herrings: most emotional activity is demonstrably unconscious (though not in a Freudian way). So we should see emotions as products of several separate bodily-response systems: “the word ‘emotion’ does not refer to any thing the mind or brain really has or does”. 

Getting there takes a lot of careful conceptual work, debunking old artefacts (“the limbic system”), probing the line between cognition and emotion, evolved emotional setups and enculturated expressions of them. Rather than reporting his theories as settled, he lets us in to the history, experimental setups, and argue for his theory choices. He’s well-versed in the philosophy (he cites Rorty!), is a master of fear (research), and I feel smarter coming out of it.

The Emotional Brain The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

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