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It is perhaps man's fate to be wrapped up in the false dichotomy of Cartesian duality, at least in so far as it touches upon our ability to think about ourselves as objects. We must live with the frustration of attempting to use the object of investigation as the instrument with which we investigate, and the knowledge that because of this, the task can never be completed. What must surely be clear by now, however, is that the dichotomy is a function of perception and does not reflect underlying reality. Human beings are psychosomatic entities. The psyche and the soma are different approaches to a whole.
Nonetheless the mind/body split continues to dog psychological thinking. This book attempts to square the circle. In collaboration with John Price, Anthony Stevens develops themes he has already explored extensively elsewhere, and together they attempt to provide a unifying framework for a theory of psychiatry, which they consider is woefully lacking.
The authors amass impressive evidence, drawn from recent developments in biology, linguistics, neurology and ethology, in support of a neo-Darwinist theory that innate