Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 6 Number 3, December 2005
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Wilson, Elizabeth A. Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body. Durham: Duke UP, 2004, 126 pages, 0-8223-3365-1, Hardcover $64.95, Paperback $13.95.
Reviewed by
La Sierra University
Elizabeth Wilson’s Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body, is a dense and deeply plumbed argument about the usefulness of neuroscientific theories to feminist understanding of the body. Responding to those who have critiqued neuroscience as reductionist and essentializing, Wilson argues that the reductionism itself opens up a space for debate that feminist critics in the humanities have too easily set aside, and close analysis of these theories can actually expand feminist theories of the body.
Wilson maps out her argument over five chapters that explore the interconnections of biology and psychology in studies of depression, gastrointestinal disorders, sexuality, reflexes, and emotion. Feminist scholarship has often dismissed scientific studies of the body in favor of historical, social, cultural or linguistic analyses. Wilson’s study boldly incorporates evidence from scientific studies, psychological research and theory, popular literature and historical documents in a multi-pronged approach that will appeal to scholars in many disciplines.
Wilson begins by pointing us to Freud’s early work on physiology, published several years prior to his work in hysteria and before his later move to more exclusively psychological research. Beginning with several accounts of “conversion hysteria” Wilson calls Freud’s own early interpretation of hysteria a complex interaction of psychological and physiological causes. This kind of work, she argues, acknowledges that the two systems (psychological and physiological) are not separable categories of analysis as has been the case in the division of the sciences and the humanities, but in fact communicate with one another and shape one another in highly complex ways. Openness to neurobiological data can have a “reorganizing effect on feminist theory” (14).
Weaving historical and contemporary studies together, chapter one examines two seeming divergent sources: Freud’s late nineteenth century studies that connected neurasthenia to sexual neuroses, and contemporary writer Peter Kamer’s popular work on Prozac as a treatment for depression. Wilson cogently argues that Freud did not insist upon a cause-effect relationship between inadequate sexual function and neurasthenia, but instead saw these as connected through a circuit of complex and interdependent systems that were both biological and psychological in nature and which responded to one another. The two parts continually influenced one another in a relationship of “neurological obligation.” Kramer’s work tells us that in some cases, long-term, recurrent depression can become hard-wired into ones’ biology; while it may start from external stimuli, depression can be internalized into one’s somatic experience. An appreciation of the neuro-biological experience of the body will thus complicate notions of the social construction of the body more popularly argued in the humanities.
In one of the most engaging chapters in the book, “The Brain in the Gut,” Wilson argues for the potency of the gut as a psychological organ. She presents evidence from studies of the enteric nervous system (ENS)—the entire gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus—that makes it uniquely akin to the central nervous system, and therefore more connected to the psychological experience than many other systems in the body. In addition, the nature of the ENS as a “tube” through which the world can pass (and thus in a sense remains outside of it) offers rich ground for understanding how the neurological systems negotiate the interrelations of people and the world around them.
Chapter three examines the 1991 work of Simon Le Vay that claimed that portions of the hypothalamus in homosexual men were significantly smaller than those of heterosexuals. Although the study was widely discredited soon after the study its release, Wilson grapples with the extensive criticism directed at Le Vay’s study and makes a case for seeing his data as a challenge to bring together binary conceptions of sexuality (homo- v. heterosexual). At the same time she argues that this work provides the opportunity to generate and illuminate a more distributed understanding of sexuality.
In the final two chapters of the book, Wilson takes on some of the most conventionally reductionist theories of evolution—reflex and emotion—arguing that in fact they are less reductionist than previously assumed. Chapter four discusses Darwin’s theory of adaptation, based on the subsequently discredited theory, Lamarckism. Neurobiologist Paul MacLean’s theory of the triune brain also comes under scrutiny in chapter five, but Wilson argues for a more nuanced reading of both Darwin’s and MacLean’s work than scholars are currently giving them. Both of these researchers, she argues, demonstrated an interplay of the psychological and the neuro-biological body that can be valuable and instructive for feminists.
The eclectic nature of Wilson’s argument and evidence is impressive, and she explains biological and psychological concepts side by side with apparent ease. The language of the book favors scholars in the physical and social sciences, however, and her argument occasionally becomes mired in technicalities that are not fully explained to the humanities scholars to whom she seems to be reaching out. In addition, several of the chapters would benefit from a more extended discussion of the impact on feminism on the several specific areas of research. Still, her skillful use of scientific and psychological research, popular nonfiction, feminist theory, and historical sources offers the informed scientific reader a very rich demonstration of the origin of her observations.