Psychosomatic

It is quite a while since we have heard a voice as refreshing as that of Elizabeth A. Wilson. With boldness, wit, and extraordinary inventiveness, she shows us just how delimiting have been prevailing tendencies in science studies and feminist theory to marginalize, if not outright repudiate, the material, biological dimensions of human psychology. At the same time, by demonstrating the power of reading biological accounts with the eye of a critical theorist, she reveals the limitations operating within the life sciences. Psychosomatic teaches all of us how to do better: how to read neuroscience for the creative lessons it can offer the human sciences and how to employ the insights of the human sciences to open these same texts to dramatically new understandings.Evelyn Fox Keller, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines Wilsons writing is eloquent, considered and thought provoking. . . . In one of her articles, Wilson urged her readers to buy a copy of The Origin of Species as an important feminist text. I certainly endorse this suggestion, but I add my own: buy a copy of Psychosomatic, as it may turn out to be one of the most inspiring feminist works you will read. -- Myra J. Hird * Feminist Theory *

Elizabeth A. Wilson is a Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney in Australia. She is the author of Neural Geographies: Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Somatic Compliance 1 1. Freud, Prozac, and Melancholic Neurology 15 2. The Brain in the Gut 31 3. Hypothalamic Preference: LeVays Study of Sexual Orientation 49 4. Trembling, Blushing: Darwins Nervous System 63 5. Emotional Lizards: Evolution and the Reptilian Brain 79 Notes 97 References 113 Index 123