Perhaps “zeitgeist” is the word for it; “the spirit of the age” is how my dictionary translates it; and Steven Rose dissects and unfolds it, as possibly no other writer in his field can, in this awesome account of the most complex structure in the known universe. What is it? It is that sense that many of us have, at whatever level of understanding, that our cumulated edifice of scientific knowledge will soon empower humanity with the simultaneously thrilling, yet terrifying, ability—to fully explain, mend, and manipulate the mind.
Figure 1.
Steven Rose
Jonathan Cape, £20, pp 356 ISBN 0 224 06254 9 www.randomhouse.co.uk
Rating: ★★★⋆
This book's range is awesome because, in just 300 pages, Jones covers the fields of human neurogenetics, neuroembryology, comparative neuroanatomy, neurodevelopment, neurophysiology, neurodegeneration, neuropharmacology, psychiatry, and more. He builds his varied arguments like the proverbial brick wall, with solid foundations of neuroscience written with verve and authority and then, in a final sweep—weeding out any possibility of complacency—he explores the implications of this knowledge as “a citizen, in discussing how we should try to respond.”
Within these foundations, I discovered myriad new facts that I can now bore my students with—that most brain myelination occurs in the first two years of life (I was taught eight) or that all the familiar neurotransmitters may work as neuro-wet nurses long before they transmit anything. As the book developed, I took vicarious delight in Jones' merciless debunking of fashionable scientific perspectives. He hasn't got a positive thing to say about any of them—behavioural genetics, evolutionary psychology, Chomskyan linguistics, biological reductionism, consciousness theories—they all wither and die under Rose's scrutiny.
But it is when Rose turns his guns on psychiatry, and on issues pertaining to child psychiatry in particular, that the book really takes hold. He is scathing about the current direction of psychopharmacology and has little better to say about those of us who prescribe the drugs. His argument goes thus: we in psychiatry, from Kraeplin and Bleuler onwards, have committed the fundamental mistake of oversimplification. Just because altering synaptic dopamine levels reduces psychotic symptoms doesn't mean you've found the cause. He evokes R D Laing's freshly medicated, psychotic patient, complaining bitterly to his voices, “Speak up y'buggers, I cannae hear ye.” He gives even less credence to the notion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which, in Rose's opinion, is a pharmacological response (namely the universal phenomenon of improved concentration on exposure to methylphenidate (Ritalin)) crudely searching for a disorder.
And this is Rose's overall message—that human brains are anything but crude. They are mercurial, dynamic... fundamentally mysterious. Despite all attempts to understand brain function, there is still (as the cliché goes) so much that even scientists like Rose can't begin to understand. And perhaps this, ultimately, is why I closed this book feeling that something hadn't quite been achieved, despite the best efforts of Rose's 21st century mind.