The Feeling Of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness - Softcover

Damasio, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099288761 ISBN 13: 9780099288763

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

‘The Feeling of What Happens will change your experience of yourself’ New York Times

Where do our emotions come from? What does it mean to be conscious?

At its core, human consciousness is awareness of the feeling, experiencing self, the 'very thought of' oneself.
Brilliantly wide-ranging in his scope, leading expert on the neurophysiology of emotions Antonio Damasio illustrates his thesis with fascinating and illuminating neurological case studies that are both stimulating and provocative.

About this title

Review:

As you read this, at some level you're aware that you're reading, thanks to a standard human feature commonly referred to as consciousness. What is it--a spiritual phenomenon, an evolutionary tool, a neurological side effect? The best scientists love to tackle big, meaningful questions like this and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio jumps right in with The Feeling of What Happens, a poetic examination of interior life through lenses of research, medical cases, philosophical analysis and unashamed introspection. Damasio's perspective is, fortunately, becoming increasingly common in the scientific community; despite all the protestations of old-guard behaviourists, subjective consciousness is a plain fact to most of us and the demand for new methods of inquiry is finally being met.

These new methods are not without rigour, though. Damasio and his colleagues examine patients with disruptions and interruptions in consciousness and take deep insights from these tragic lives while offering greater comfort and meaning to the sufferers. His thesis, that our sense of self arises from our need to map relations between self and others, is firmly rooted in medical and evolutionary research but stands up well to self-examination. His examples from the weird world of neurology are unsettling yet deeply humanising--real people with serious problems spring to life in the pages but they are never reduced to their deficits. The Feeling of What Happens captures the spirit of discovery as it plunges deeper than ever into the darkest waters yet. --Rob Lightner

Review:

"The life-changing read of the year... The book is crammed with tiny gems of information with which to reassess how you look at the world and think about yourself" (Katie Mitchell Guardian)

"A tour de force...a monumental book...a gem of a work" (Anthony Clare Sunday Times)

"Compelling...a story told with clarity and pace, unencumbered by unnecessary technical jargon and illustrated with insightful clinical anecdotes" (The Times)

"A fascinating and suggestive book" (Literary Review)

"Both Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens are essential reading. They are groundbreaking classics of psychology and neuroscience. These are the books to buy, keep and ponder upon. Do so, and you will be ahead of the ruck by at least a decade" (Journal Of The Royal Society of Medicine)

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0099288761
• ISBN 13: 9780099288763
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400