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This remarkable text advances a bold and sweeping thesis about the human mind, accompanied by valuable insights, and small gems of summary and description. A simplified version of the book's major thesis is that there is a part of the mind that models and mirrors all other parts of the mental apparatus, interacts with other parts of the mind, and sometimes takes over decision making in difficult and critical situations.
It is important to state at the outset, that Emotion and the Psychodynamics of the Cerebellum: A Neuro-Psychoanalytic Analysis and Synthesis is a difficult book. The unusual structure of the book creates a work in which different portions are suitable for different groups of readers. The first four chapters of the book are written at a level appropriate for a general audience of psychoanalysts, students, or candidates interested in the relationship of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. In this introductory portion of the book, two chapters are multi-authored reviews of contemporary work on sleep and dreaming, written by Fred Levin and an impressive group of neuroscientists, including Jaak Panksepp. The rest of the book is written by Fred Levin alone. Chapters three and four provide a highly readable evaluation of a collection of articles on emotion which appeared in the first issue of the journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis, in 1999. Target articles by Mark Solms and Edward Nersessian (Freud's Theory of Affect: Questions for Neuroscience) and Jaak Panksepp (Emotions as Viewed by Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: An Exercise in Consilience) are presented and discussed. Commentaries by Antonio Damasio, Andre Green, Joseph LeDoux, Allan Schore, Howard Shevrin, and Clifford Yorke are considered in an extremely insightful manner, providing a superb introduction to leading opinions within the new field of Neuro-Psychoanalysis. Up to this point, the reader has been provided with a superb introductory text. At the same time, this early section of the book presents a nu