Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body

by Elizabeth A. Wilson
Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2004
136 pp., illus. 5 b/w. Trade, $64.95; paper, $18.95
ISBN: 0-8223-3356-2; ISBN: 0-8223-3365-1.

Reviewed by Rob Harle (Australia)

harle@dodo.com.au

This book is about trying to put "humpty dumpty" back together again. Humpty Dumpty is no less than the whole human being. The neurological body, that Wilson rescues from the myopic extremes of second-wave feminism, is bought back to life in a carefully argued and well-written work.

Wilson’s rescue mission attempts to bring into balance—cultural, social and political theories of the body, specifically those of feminism, and biological/neurophysiological theories. "Fierce antibiologism marked the emergence of second-wave feminism" (p. 13). This fierce unholistic approach has been as equally unproductive and unbalanced as the extreme scientific reductionism (biological determinism) that feminist critique attempts to expose.

Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body seems very much to be a book that transcends the extremes of reductionism regardless of discipline. This is in keeping with a "new wave" of avant garde thinkers and writers who have rediscovered the holistic nature of existence. This is evident in research areas as disparate as quantum physics, environmental ecology, medicine, mathematics and architecture.

The book has five chapters together with an informative introduction, good Bibliography and Index. Throughout the chapters Wilson, ". . . moves between the central and peripheral nervous systems and among the cognitive, the affective, and the unknowing, in an attempt to build a critically empathic alliance with neurology" (p. 29).

Chapter One—Freud, Prozac and Melancholic Neurology looks at neurological determinism, some of Freud’s neurological work, and Kramer’s Listening To Prozac. The quote from Kramer on page 26, in a sense sums up the nature of Wilson’s quest, "Spending time with patients who responded to Prozac had transformed my views about what makes people the way they are [my emphasis]."

Chapter Two—The Brain in the Gut discusses neurogastroenterology and psychoanalysis and argues that, ". . . the nervous system extends well beyond the skull, and as it so travels through the body it takes the psyche with it (p. 47).

Chapter Three—Hypothalamic Preference: LeVay’s Study of Sexual Orientation looks at LeVay’s study of the hypothalamus, carefully and non-hysterically, and what implications this organ has for the development of gay men, hence the participation of neurology as a role in personality development.

Chapter Four—Trembling, Blushing: Darwin’s Nervous System highlights the benefits of assessing some of Darwin’s work as an aid to critical neurological thinking. Special attention is giving to the unique human trait of blushing.

Chapter Five—Emotional Lizards: Evolution and the Reptilian Brain discusses various aspects of evolution, the triune brain and how evolutionary theory may be employed to expand ". . . feminist theories of psyche and soma" (p. 95). This chapter also discusses how Oliver Sacks’ approach to motor function in reptiles helps us understand neurological modification and development in human beings.

My only criticism of this book apart from being rather slim (126 pages) is that developmental psychology and the work of researchers, such as Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again, are not given enough consideration. Clark’s "feedback loops" from brain to peripheral nervous system, for example, seem to me to be especially relevant to Wilson’s thesis. Yet some of Freud’s questionable, outdated theories are given perhaps too much discussion. As an example, Freud’s notion of excessive masturbation and/or coitus interruptus being implicated in "neurasthenic melancholia" and "somatic weakness" does nothing to help Wilson’s argument. A reference to Oriental medicine and the vast experience of the Chinese in this regard could have been a worthwhile inclusion.

This is an important book because it moves positively towards bringing about a balance between the extremist views of the antibiologist ranting of certain second-wave feminist theories and the myopic view of absolute biological determinism.