Michael Jawer has done an excellent job of gathering an enormous collection of research evidence confirming links between the brain, the body and emotions. Students and academics who are starting out to explore these links may find many gems of interest in this book. For instance, Jawer's list of 36 emotions exceeds most of the lists of emotions I have seen. To some extent this is due to his looser definition of emotions than is used by many researchers in this field. Jawer includes cognitive constructs to which many apply the term 'feelings,' even though they are more in the realm of thoughts (e.g. desperation, longing and resignation). Nevertheless, this is a useful addition to our awareness. His discussions on how stress can be traumatizing to mind and body also have much to offer the reader.
I was pleased to pick up a few gems of awareness myself, such as:
...the term "biophilia," coined by Harvard University biologist Edward O. Wilson... alludes...to "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life. Examples of biophilia include:
...The appeal of house pets and companion animals
...Our interest in gardening and keeping plants in our homes and offices
...The value of taking a stroll in the woods or getting more vigorous exercise outside...
Accumulating evidence suggests that, when we indulge our biophilia, we derive tangible benefit. (p. 445-6)
And I love the term I'd never encountered before, 'empathosphere,' coined by Michael Fox "to describe 'a universal realm of feeling that can transcend both space and time.' " (p. 414)
However, while Jawer has researched emotions through this literature, his understandings appear to be based on intellectual sortings of the dry masses of research evidence, missing the leavening that comes from life experience acquired from dealing with live challenges in a clinical practice - which provides a more solid basis for evaluating and interpreting the evidence.
For instance, Jawer writes,
...I do not consider depression - a subject much talked about these days - to be an emotion. Depression is a condition, the result of emotions unexpressed. In that sense, it is an anti-emotion, an example of what can befall someone when powerful feelings are disowned, bottled up, or dissociated. In many cases - perhaps all - there is also a genetic component, a latent disposition. But none of that alters my assessment that depression does not - indeed cannot - qualify as an emotion. (p. 24)
While these observations may be true for some people who experience depression, my impression from clinical experience and extensive readings on depression is that these sorts of cases which are the focus of Jawer are a small minority by far. Depression, in my personal and professional experience, is a distinct emotion that earns it a firm place on my list of emotions. Anyone who has gone through grief or other losses or suffers from bipolar depression could likewise testify to the reality of depression as an emotion in and of itself.
I also differ with Jawer/s discussions of intuition, a major focus of his book. For example, Jawer stops at the point of feelings in his discussion of an empathosphere that represents a resonation between living beings. My experiences and understandings of empathosphere include a collective consciousness that is facilitated by telepathy, clairsentience, and knowledge that transcends space and time.
Jawer has invested much of this book in support of his theory of 'thick boundary' vs 'thin-boundary' people. Thick boundary types of people are more likely to be insensitive to subtle perceptions and thin boundary people more sensitive to them. This might prove to be a helpful distinction in some situations. Interestingly, research in parapsychology has acknowledged the differences between believers and non-believers in psychic and transpersonal phenomena with the differences in their response to the question, "Do you believe in psychic phenomena or not?" Substantial research has strongly suggested that non-believers (affectionately labeled 'goats') possess these sensitivities as much as believers (labeled 'sheep') do, but the goats appear to use them in alignment with their belief systems. On tests of psychic abilities, the skeptics perform so consistently below chance levels that their results are highly significant. Meta-analyses of studies in which the sheep/goat effect were examined (Lawrence, 1993) demonstrated significance with odds against chance greater than 1 trillion to 1 (p < 10 x 10-8).
Jawer cites some of the research evidence from parapsychology journals and books, and reviews research on phenomena such as the out of body experience (OBE) and near death experience (NDE), but limits his theorizing to physiological, neurological and psychological explanations for these, and does his best to explain away any theories involving transcendent realities - which theories Jawer does not consider directly in any detail. Here, too, there is well-substantiated research confirming the existence of telepathy, clairsentience, and knowledge that transcends space and time (Benor, internet reference). Jawer proposes a variety of theories based on emotions and brain dysfunctions, suggesting such phenomena need not be explained as real extensions of our consciousness beyond our physical and emotional selves.
For instance, when it comes to apparitions (ghosts), he suggests that the electrical "vortex of energy in the body, when combined with issues of preoccupations held in the brain, can generate the phenomena we know of as ghosts, poltergeists, and similar haunts" (p. 131); or that infrasound may generate fears that are translated into imaginary sightings of apparitions (p. 404-5).
Jawer does not cite evidence contradicting his theories about these transpersonal realms of experience, such as that of Luis Vargas and colleagues, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1989, showing that two out of three people who lose someone close to them experience bereavement apparitions. They either see, hear or 'sense the presence' of these people who are no longer in the physical world - in very real and palpable ways. The communications in both directions appear to be deeply meaningful and healing in many cases. Nor does Jawer mention research such as that of Gary Schwartz and colleagues (2002) confirming the validity of psychic and channeled information. Jawer dismisses reincarnation as a theory, suggesting that emotional energy created by psychological trauma might persist in the world (types of energy and how they might persist are not explained), subsequently influencing a fetus during its development in utero. My own review of the apparition, mediumistic (channeled) and reincarnation research includes a spectrum of evidence suggesting survival of the spirit as a real phenomenon and not just the product of physiological processes in the brain or of emotional projections and hallucinations (Benor, 2006).
For Jawer,
Such superstitions...are not far from the truth - but the truth lies in the biochemistry of the brain and the body and in the emotional energy retained in our being. I will state my concept again: the frozen energy of the stress reaction, combined with issues or preoccupations held in the brain, can generate the phenomena we know as ghosts, poltergeists, and similar haunts. (p. 155)
Jawer is impressed with a minor reference from spiritual healing research that lends support to his theory, but overlooks the much more substantial body of spiritual healing research (Benor 2001; 2007) that cannot be explained by his theories that are limited to body, emotions and brain. Jawer makes an observation on the work of Bernard Grad, one of the pioneers of healing research, performed studies showing that healers could hasten wound healing in mice and could enhance the growth of plants. However, Grad's evidence and the hundreds of other studies on spiritual healing - including healing from a distance - are all ignored by Jawer in his discussions. For Jawer, the evidence worth citing is:
...this intriguing observation by researcher Bernard Grad, who has studied people who seem to possess healing ability: "I have conducted experiments in which I obtained extraordinary results with people who made no claim to be healers but who were in states of emotional arousal." [Emphasis mine]. (p. 155-156)
So I would say in summary that the strongest audience for this book will be those who prefer to limit their consciousness of their existence to conventional, Newtonian medical and psychological understandings of the world.
On a personal note, I have to add that this was a difficult review for me to write. My views differ substantially from those of Jawer (and I presume those of Micozzi as well, though his voice is nowhere explicitly evident in the book). I experience the world very clearly as inseparably imbued with the presence of something transcendent that is beyond words. I can only begin to touch on the fringes of its essence when I start to put it into words, and hopelessly distort it when doing so. I feel I am a part of that vast essence, which includes everything beyond my physical self. I am a part of IT and IT is a part of me. This is not the place to expand upon my views much further, but I feel I must share at least a hint, a pointer for anyone with open mind and heart and inner gnowing - to at least explore this consciousness of what Larry Dossey calls 'non-local reality.' Jawer fails to go there.
I strongly believe that not going there is a major part of the reason the world is in the mess it is in, and headed for suicidal self-destruction.
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