Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology (Hardcover)

by Fredric Schiffer (Author) "She is in despair..." (more)
Key Phrases: troubled hemisphere, more troubled side, visual field glasses, San Francisco, Martin Teicher, Roger Sperry (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Ever since Freud, we've known that we share our mental space with another mind, one that may prove quite a hindrance. It can be like a bad roommate we can't evict, leaving dirty dishes in the sink and playing the stereo too loud, and all we can do is try to adjust its excesses with a few carefully worded notes. Dr. Fredric Schiffer believes that he has located the culprit and learned how to talk to it, and his clinical success with problems like cocaine addiction, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder suggest that he's on to something. Of Two Minds is his report from the front.

A psychiatrist affiliated with Harvard Medical School, Schiffer has studied split-brain research and devised his own experiments to show that stress and anxiety are often felt more strongly in one hemisphere than the other. No simple "left brain good, right brain bad" dichotomy, it seems that those who have been affected by emotional trauma lateralize the effects, perhaps in an effort to maintain more-or-less-normal functioning. One hemisphere or the other gets stuck in the past, says Schiffer, and acts out through the patient's symptoms. His goal is integration of these two minds into a kind of team by using clever manipulation of sensory stimuli and other tools of cognitive science.

Of Two Minds is unusual in its acceptance of both scientific and emotional validity. Alternating reviews of the data with often heart-wrenching transcripts of therapy sessions, it offers a two-pronged assault on what seems to be a dual-natured problem. While it might not solve your "roommate problem" overnight, it may start you on the road to reconciliation. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Taking cues from 19th-century English physician Arthur Wigan (whose seemingly normal friend, it turned out when autopsied, had only a single brain hemisphere), contemporary neuroscience asks whether normal people, who possess both left and right brains, can be said to be literally of two minds. Schiffer, an associate attending psychiatrist at McLean Hospital and a Harvard Medical School psychiatry instructor, believes the answer is a resounding yes, and argues that psychiatric disorders are best understood as the unhappy result of two warring brain halves. Transcripts of psychotherapy sessions Schiffer conducted while his patients wore specially designed goggles that allowed them to see out of only one hemisphere at a time support this sci-fi-sounding thesis, as do some?but by no means all?studies pertaining to hemispheric specialization (shifts in ear temperatures, for example, correlate with shifts in EEGs). Unfortunately, while provocative, the patient transcripts, which form the linchpin of the evidence, are bland and curiously unconvincing, and Schiffer's therapy techniques seemingly await further clinical trials. Readers not yet familiar with the famous studies of so-called "split-brain patients"?epilepsy sufferers whose corpora callosa were severed in an experimental therapy technique in the 1960s?may find Schiffer's review of that material, and his reports from his own work with some of those patients, the most interesting portions of the book.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; 1 edition (September 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684854244
• ISBN-13: 978-0684854243
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #183,820 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Theory You Can Experience Yourself, January 5, 2001

By A Customer

The book describes how you can easily stimulate one side of your brain and how this can affect your mood - and it works. After seeing Doctor Schiffer on 20/20, I tried for myself the simple test he described on TV and explains in the book. In less than a minute after covering all but my extreme left visual field, I was in tears. Trying the other side took away all my stress just as quickly and made me feel self-confident. The results of the two hemisphere theory Schiffer explains in this book worked for me. I've since shared the same test with friends and relatives. Without any previous explanation, they experience the same effects as the book predicts. This book outlines a real, practical and simple way to reduce stress. I highly recommend the book and encourage you to make your own pair of glasses as he describes. Just get a pair of $4 safety goggles and tape the lenses. My wife and I can really open up to each other by following the conversation techniques in the book, while wearing homemade pairs of glasses. I know we must look silly, but it works. My only complaint about Schiffer's book is that he focuses primarily on the theraputic value of his research. It would have been nice if he had explored the other possibilities of his discoveries. At least this book is not just another theoretical work. It has techniques in it that you can try yourself. Whether or not you believe his conclusions, you will experience the effect.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific guide to why we feel troubled, and how to fix it., October 22, 1998

By A Customer

Don't mistake this book for another tedious explanation of what it means to be right-brained or left-brained. This is a wonderful user's manual to our personalities, and specifically to why we get sad or anxious. Schiffer explains clearly and engangingly, at a level I found easy to understand (I'm not in the mental health field), how each of us essentially harbors two people in ourselves, and why we sometimes suffer because of it. Schiffer throws in plenty of convincing research and examples, and lays out a clear approach to identifying our two personalities, showing how one of them tends to cause us problems, and then dealing with it (there's a simple vision trick that can help). It's already helped me understand a lot about myself. Somehow, it's a fun read, too.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author's response to Alexei Lebedev, May 4, 2006

By	Fredric Schiffer (Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Alexei Lebedev wrote a very thoughtful review that I would like to respond to. First, the psychological ideas I present are built upon a large literature on cerebral laterality. In our laboratory at McLean Hospiital we have used placebo controlled studies to rule out the suggestion that very rightly concerns Mr. Lebedev. The glasses have been used also to predict which patients with severe depression will respond to transcranial magnetic stimulation over the left forehead. When I use the glasses in the office the way I describe in the book, then no doubt suggestion has some role, but there I am looking for a therapeutic response and am not conducting an experiment. As I reported, about a third of my patients have no response to the glasses, an other third had a mild response and the last group have rather profound responses along the mature/childish dichotomy. In our laboratory we have found that retesting subjects two times, a year apart, there was a very high correlation between trials. In the book, I describe patients who had the more dramatic responses. In patients who do not have responses, the findings from other patients can still be applied to them and can be very helpful in giving them a better concept of why they are suffering. That Mr. Lebedev did not have a profound response showing the mature/childish dichotomy is not surprising.

Mr. Lebedev's idea of blocking the ear is a good suggestion. I did not know when I wrote the book that Paul Green, Ph.D. had done considerable work using ear plugs to help patients with different conditions, and I have occassionally used them. The ears are not as strongly lateralized to the different hemispheres and the auditory ares are not as large as the visual areas, so auditory stimulation would not be expected to be as strong as visual stimulation. In my experience, I have found the visual stimulation to be much stronger in terms of eliciting different psychological responses.

I do not believe as my book led Mr. Lebedev understand that the visual information goes only to one side. Rather, we now have fMRI evidence showing that the glasses induce a large increase in brain blood flow in the opposite hemisphere. The lateralized glasses stimulate the opposite hemisphere as will contracting muscles on one side. Also I don't believe that the problems are "just in one hemisphere." Rather, from our EEG, evoke potential, and fMRI studies, and the psychological responses observed in placebo controlled studies, I believe that the glasses stimulate different sets of neural patterns that are associated in some way with the different hemispheres and with different psychological perspectives.

So I believe there is much science behind my hypothesis. A number of scientific papers from our laboratory are posted at SchifferMD.com. More importantly, I continue to find these ideas to be extremely helpful in my clinical practice.

Fredric Schiffer, M.D.
Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School