How the Brain Lost its Mind

Absorbing and scholarly... A twin biography of psychiatry and neurology, their study charts this uneasy relationship from marriage to divorce to reconciliation even as fundamental questions about the nature of mental illness remain... Hugely entertaining. * Guardian * A rollicking ride, patient by patient, through the history of two conditions, hysteria and neurosyphilis. * The Times * Central to this book is the ongoing dispute regarding which mental illnesses can be attributed to physical abnormalities within the brain and which originate in the mind, or consciousness. The authors emphasise that in many cases we still cannot be sure... Along the way, their investigations exhume some unforgettable scenes and characters... Fascinating * Mail on Sunday * Rich, compassionate and passionate... Sceptical of the excesses of both psychological and biological reductionism, it is a refreshing call for an intellectual reset and disciplinary rapprochement. -- Anne Harrington * Nature * This aptly titled book picks up where Oliver Sacks left off in examining the behavioral characteristics of neurobehavioral syndromes in an effort to span the gap that has historically separated the twin disciplines of the brain, neurology and psychiatry. * Jeffrey A. Lieberman, author of Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry * Through tales of eminent physicians and their suffering patients, replete with sex, drugs, and magnetically-induced hypnotism, we learn how a bacterium that deprived countless souls of their reason also helped scientists discover a role for brain biology in mental illness. * Alan Jasanoff, PhD, author of The Biological Mind * Ropper and Burrell have written an insightful, fantastically readable analysis of what was once called hysteria. Also, by studying how things can go wrong, we learn a great deal about the working of the human mind when things go right. * Elizabeth Loftus, author of Eyewitness Testimony *