The Female Brain Amazon Review

Heart and Diamonds, or Spades and Clubs

 In this world there are facts, and there are opinions.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts." Patrick Moynihan.

This book is not about the female brain, but about hormones, and the fluctuations experienced throughout life, through birth, teen years, sex, love, mommy and menopause. I felt compassion and new understanding of what women have to go through. A woman or a man reading this book might gain value and insight from that information. That aspect is quite good.

With the 90 pages of references that this book contains to scientific reports, one might expect that this book would reflect an unbiased scientific proof of those reports. However, the author cherry picks her facts, and colors them pink with her own personal biases and prejudices:

The female brain is superior to men because women are better at communicating and connecting, and men may experience brain envy. Is she a mind reader? In fact, if women are four times as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety as men, as she says, why would anyone make that trade?

There is only one brain diagram listing seven items in darker shade leaving most of the brain depicted blank, and its function unexplained. What goes on in this area? Another brain book I am reading has 11 good diagrams with plenty of detail.

She explains why women do not tend to excel at science and math; hormone difference in teen years, plus she spoke to some women friends, one in particular, who was a scientist. She wanted a more social career. This is an example of her sweeping generalizing, and superficial exploration of a provocative topic. One woman equals all women. No mention of famous female scientists. Examples would be Marie Curie, and Florence Nightingale, who invented the pie chart..

Men are continuously portrayed as socially and emotionally retarded, and overly aggressive. She uses the playground analogy, of the young girl, and her cousin Johnny who would take her toys. Johnny is represented as not only typical of all five year olds, but all men. Girl good, boy bad. Boy bad, all men bad.

She thought something was wrong with her own baby son because he was less interested in faces than a girl his age. Doesn't she know that boys are more interested in objects, and ideas while girls are more interested in people?

Then a three year old girl is brought to her, because she said she was a boy, and her behavior was aggressive, and yet she had girlish interests. She diagnosed her with CAH a hormone disorder, and used hormones to put it right. Hmmm.

She states that in ancient times women banded together to protect themselves from dangerous cavemen. Was she there? Can she time travel? In fact the more likely explanation proposed by evolutionary biologists is men risked being kicked out of their small community if they were rejected by a female, and never have a chance for replication, and that explains why men feel anxious approaching women. What about women banding together to connect and socialise as she mentioned earlier.

Most annoying is her bandying about the words perception and reality as if they have the same meaning. Here are examples: hormones change reality, teen reality, female reality, hormones created a reality, her reality was stable, a version of reality, reality in fact can be a daily uncertainty. Hormones change teen reality, and perception of themselves. She does mean perceptions of reality or events, right?

Reality can be defined as -things as they are, not appearances.
"All reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Einstein.
"There is no reality only perception." Dr Phil Mc Graw.
"Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K Dick.

She states there is no difference between clitoral and vaginal orgasms, because the nerves are all connected internally. Sounds like going to Anaheim, and giving Disneyland a miss. What about all the contradictory reports, like the Shere Hite report.

She asks does chemistry change perceptions? Rather tellingly, she does not ask , if perceptions change chemistry, or offer any meaningful suggestions of how they can. That is the single biggest failing of this book.

One could easily gain the impression that female consciousness and attention does not matter, or does not exist. There is no chapter on consciousness in the book. Nor is there a chapter on reasoning, or focus, or behavioral flexibility, or Triune Brain theory.

My concern with this book is the hormones and pills change everything approach. A pill is not a skill. Skill is learning to observe emotions and perceptions as they arise, release them, change them, and so evolve.

As Aristotle said: ..Man is a rational animal.' When we grow up we learn to channel our aggression in useful ways. We build houses, roads, bridges, cars, systems.

Let's say our ancestors killed buffalo. Caring what the buffalo thinks or feels interferes with dinner plans. Talking might distract us from our mission and alert the buffalo. Not being aggressive enough or persistent in purpose meant we would not eat.

We protect those we love. We make scientific discoveries. What we lack in finesse, we can compensate for in willingness to learn. We are not knuckle dragging troglodytes.

The G spot was discovered by Dr Grafenberg, a man. Women's satisfaction matters to us. We work with spades and clubs, and yet, what would they be without hearts and diamonds to complement them.

Now, she is writing a book called The Male Brain. Grrr. Instead of burying her head in Scientific Journals, she needs to read some books to broaden her perspective.

I recommend other authors such as David Buss, Richard Dawkins, Helen Fisher, and Secret Psychology of How We Fall In Love by Paul Dobransky MD, which is a how to book about the courtship process, and contains resources for dealing with anxiety, low self esteem and depression.