The Limits of Neuroscience

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When I set about becoming a writer in my twenties, I felt I needed to understand the nuts and bolts of language. I compiled lists of words and learned their etymologies. I broke down the sentence structure of books I admired in the hope of discovering a particle physics behind their greatness. One day I came upon Tolstoy's response to an accusation that he used language in an ordinary way. "You don't need beautiful bricks," he wrote, "to build a beautiful building."When I entered the field of psychology, I felt I needed to understand the inner workings of the brain. The 1990s promised that we were edging ever closer to Freud's dream of uncovering a "nerve" basis of the psyche. The DMH demanded "evidence-based practice," looking to a reductive medical model imported from the physical sciences. In county clinics, I watched psychiatrists educate patients by referring to diagrams of the brain, pointing out how ADHD arises out of deficits in frontal-lobe processing and PTSD from dissociation of limbic areas from higher cortical regions. I struggled to memorise the specialisations of brain areas. I learned about myelination and action potential and absorbed Daniel Siegel's definition of mental health as brain integration.More...

The Limits of Neuroscience