Customer Reviews

Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr. Berman, is, I believe, a truly masterful writer and historian. His writing is not only accessible to a middling intelligence such as myself, but brings one's knowledge and understanding of the history of the West to a more sophisticated, subtle level. His examination of human beings' current dread of what he terms the Void, and how this relates to the root cause of human suffering, addictions and even mass genocide is wide in scope and amazingly detailed and precise. What many scholars will find most unique about this book is the way Berman inserts his own persona into the telling, (as he must to avoid hypocrisy to his theme!) and his proposal that history is, finally, not ever truly objective, nor should it be. His book provides a prototype and exploration of the possibilities of a type of history which is essential, that of somatic, or bodily experience. The depth to which Berman pursues the root cause of human tribulation is exceeded only in Eastern philosophy: thus my only criticism is that his command of this area of knowledge were more complete. If only Berman and Ken Wilbur could collaborate on a book!

It is interesting that what all the Amazon reviews to date have ignored or missed is Berman's deep foundation in a psychoanalytically informed understanding of ontogenesis (especially the very earliest developmental era). Berman, though no psychoanalyst, does know a good deal of the literature (Winnicott, Balint, Kohut, Klein, Barrett) but not quite enough about the clinical aspects of the discipline itself. (For example, he seems unaware of Paul Gray's work, an approach I see as a crucial addendum to the psychodynamic literature that Berman does know about.) He has much to say, and reading him carefully, slowly (a la Nietzsche's "slow reader"), thoughtfully, and via a series of circling converging passes through the work will repay the effort. I've scanned his "Wandering God," intend to study it, and it seems a more mature summing up of his position.

Incidentally, in this book I recommend especially chapter 1, a thorough introduction to ontogenesis, and chapter 10, a highly interesting and comprehensive analysis of two classes of creativity.

Although he has much to say (about Western insanity--for example, about the "psychotherapeutic use" of pets [p. 90]--a minor but telling example!), I think he's off the mark and misleads his readers by predicating his analyses on the mind-head vs body-experience polarity. I don't think the very important split to which he refers is well characterized in that way. (It so happens this split is a topic that interests me greatly---my new book [The unboundaried self] which should be out in 2-3 months focuses on this issue in a somewhat different way.)

Nevertheless, I think his work is just about the best in the vast subject area he has selected; there is approximately a decade between each of the three trilogy books, and his maturational path and progress are evident. All three works merit reading, as I have indicated, as does his "The twilight of American culture" which seems very much on the mark. He writes from a cultural historian's perspective about much of what I've written about from my renegate psychoanalyst's orientation.

In this densely-researched work, Berman explores the world's major paradigm shifts from the criterion of heresey. Beginning with the heresey of Jesus Christ and culminating with that of the Third Reich of Nazi, Germany, Berman questions the underpinnings of the status quo civilization.

"Coming to Our Senses," like Berman's first work, "The Reenchantment of the World", reconciles the somatic relationships fundamental to the human condition with those that define the accepted realities of modern science.

"Coming to Our Senses" should be required reading for those interested in the histories of science and morality in the western world, how they could change, and why.

About once or, (if you are very fortunate), twice in a lifetime you discover true love. The same rare infrequency applies to great books that have the implicate energy to invade our paradigms.

Morris Berman's "Coming to Our Senses" hits you in the gut, pure and simple. Like the path of love, it takes you on a journey filled with joy, familiar whisperings, strange and beguiling propositions, self-revelation and hidden oubliettes.

What is this book about? Well, it's about your body, and how your "you" is a temporal repository of all that can be known. It is about how our "body-selves" contain the organic architecture of virtually everything we see and sense each day, including "history", political structures, philosophic insights, ego-identification, family relations, human interaction, and more.

And it deserves to be read by anyone inhabiting this mortal coil.

Unlike many "New Age" and "Self-Help" books, CTOS will not take you on a blissful sojourn through meadows filled with the trill of Larks. Instead, it will probably challenge every safe and comforting assumption you have about yourself, your identity, and the nature of the human world.

For that reason alone, this work will either be remembered as a brilliant marker, or relegated to the ash-bin of history. You will agree with the former or the latter depending on how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go to chase Berman.

I can't say I agree with the glowing reviews otherwise posted here. It would be a one-star for me but I've added the extra just from the lurking suspicion that maybe I just didn't "get it". I'm willing to admit as much but only suggest you consider if you mightn't end up in the same boat...

I know Berman to be a writer who presents powerful ideas in an engagingly eclectic fashion from reading his "Twilight of American Culture" - see my review here at Amazon - but I found this book to be incomprehensible and unfocused.

In "Twilight..." he ties a clean structure (essentially 'tell em what you're gonna tell 'em - then tell 'em - then tell 'em what you just said) to his eclectic collection of sources and exemplary material - it works. In "Coming to Our Senses..." he does not do that. I'm still not sure what his central theme was (except from reading reviews here, for instance). His ecclecticism overwhelms.

I came to this book extremely enthusiastically after reading "Twilight...". SO it was not through lack of motivation that I just put it down, finally. I will still take a look at his other books in this earlier trilogy - but with caution.

First I have to say this book is fantastic. Wonderfully written with a huge slew of great "ideas" (sorry!) to chew on.

Basically he's saying most humans at present (and for a longer historical period), especially western or technocratic society people, are filling our "nomen" (psychic emptiness) with TV and religion and drugs and whatnot, because we are "ungrounded" not integrated with our physical bodies and senses.

So the implication is that if we could get somatically grounded again then we'd throw away the cars and the bars and the wars and make sweet love all day. As a long-time tai chi and martial arts devotee, I can relate to this body-grounding stuff. Sounds great, where do I sign up?

Only thing I wonder about in this analysis (maybe overthinking it with my head of course) is that throwing out all that delusory bathwater in favor of 'the body' and 'the senses' as somehow non-illusory and privileged - is that justified? I don't mean throwing out all the other junk, that's fine, but for all I know, even "the body" and "nature" and "the senses" -all that stuff Berman likes - might ALSO be self-generated delusion as well, just woven at a more fundamental level to prop up an even more profound nomen.

I'm saying I agree with his puncturing all that other junk, but maybe "the body" too is just another brick in the wall. In the Matrix, the people jacked in believed they were experiencing full somatic integration, but it was all just more mind games. Maybe that's us too.

Morris Berman begins his exploration of the "hidden history" of the West with a discussion of the nemo, a word he borrows from John Fowles' The Aristos which connotes the sense of non-existence at the core of the existential condition. The experience of this nemo, according to Berman, results from a developmental split between the felt sense of embodiment (somatic awareness) and the mental self image that comes from how others see us (specular awareness). Berman uses the history of mirrors and the human relationship to animals to demonstrate how this split has led historically to a de-valuation of somatic, embodied experience, a consequent preference for "cognitively top-heavy" abstraction, and various attempts to heal the breach between the two.

The core of the book is an exploration of four different periods in Western history---the origins of Christianity and Gnosticism, the Cathar/Albigensian heresy in Southern France, the rise of modern science from the practice of alchemy, and the modern phenomenon of Nazism. Berman investigates how these periods relate to the suppression of the body in favor of the abstracted intellect and to the return of that suppressed somatic experience in different forms (e.g,. Gnostic mysticism, romantic love, scientific abstraction, and Nazi mass murder).

Finally, Berman looks at our prospects for the future. Since the abstraction/experience split and our attempts to smooth it over are still going strong in modern Western societies, Berman fears the potential for a resurgence of fascism. (Given the tenor of the 21st century so far, it would seem that his fears are well founded.) Instead of advocating another mystical or political attempt to heal over the split and to fill in the nemo, Berman discusses the possibility of a "gesture of balance"---learning to accept the split and the feeling of the nemo without being compelled to fill it in or smooth it over. This radical acceptance of the gap might be the key to "resolving" the gap altogether.

In short, this is a book that demands serious attention from students of history, politics, religion, philosophy, psychology, and also for those dedicated to pursuing a spiritual path.

Morris Berman makes accessible the fusion of phenomenology, existentialism, and somatology which has been developing over the 20th Century. My own guides to this synthesis, which refuses to let the dual embodied first/third-person viewpoint remain outside intellectual consideration, are Paul Shepard (whose books have been reissued), Berman (whose earlier titles have been reissued), and Thomas Hanna. Berman's trilogy (The Reenchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, and Wandering God) may be the most explicit statement of his own formulation of the fusion, but his other cultural critiques such as Twilight of American Culture, written from the same dual first/third-person perspective, also provide insights into his formulation. If you find Coming to Our Senses skull-shattering, don't give up -- extend your reach to his other books. And perhaps read a smaller bit of Berman at a time. Slowly, in small bites. Like the biscuit labeled "eat me" in Alice -- it will take you wonderful places.

This guy is brilliant! I'm now moving onto the third book, Wandering God, and he's the man. He makes all my Lewis Mumford reading more relevant. If you want to understand the epistemology of various paradigms that are the precursors to the very changes in perception different peoples go through during the shift of epochs then you've got to read this guy. I'm in a very academic communications department and in my first year I had my profs talking about my papers and I owe it to Berman's analyses of the varying technic's introductions through the epochs and their accompanying shifts in sociological ordering from a shift in how and what we perceive. This guy is da bomb of today's scholars. He blows Bateson, Erickson, Foucault, Eco, you name 'em away. He gets down to the base epistemological ordering of our world like no one else. I don't know what I'll do when I'm done all five of his books by the end of 2004.
If Wandering God follows on the heels of Songlines, which also blew open my epistemological understanding of humanity, then I can't wait to tackle it. My mind goes off with this stuff. If you're a clever mind with delusions that your cleverness can lead to enlightenment than your ego will love the challenge that this scholarly work puts to Cartesian grid thinking academia. But the real point is to return to 5 senses (and more) spontaneous dancing with the environment and re-evolve our perceiving to realize the dance that is the dreaming of reality. This means stop abstracting so much and start feeling the wind on your neck as the caress of a lover. This I think is the only way we will collectively steer this ship clear of hell.

Berman will go down in history. Kudos to a timely genius on par with McLuhan. (Oops, did I just definitively give this away as a Canadian communications student's review?<grin>)

Read it. You will literally hear your skull bones crack form expansion. This book is, metaphorically speaking, a drop in the breaking wave of history that we are all in these days... The central idea is something that will bear infinite repetition before it finally settles in the public mind: human life is an experience, not an idea. As such, an individual's experience is infinetely more valuable to understand than the accompanying external circumstances...The described view is not new by any stretch, but the presentation is awesomely fresh, which makes the book worth any "educated" human's while.
However, for a book which talks at such lengths and with such persuasion about the virtues of experience... the aim of this lovely title as you read it should be to kick you into exploration, not guide you into meditation...For someone able to write this sort of book, such horrible lack of intellectual rigor should be punishable by community service.