The Master and His Emissary

December 2, 2009
A U.K. mental health consultant and clinical director with a background in literature, McGilchrist attempts to synthesize his two areas of expertise, arguing that the "divided and asymmetrical nature" of the human brain is reflected in the history of Western culture. Part I, The Divided Brain, lays the groundwork for his thesis, examining two lobes' significantly different features (structure, sensitivity to hormones, etc.) and separate functions (the left hemisphere is concerned with "what," the right with "how"). He suggests that music, "ultimately... the communication of emotion," is the "ancestor of language," arising largely in the right hemisphere while "the culture of the written word tends inevitably toward the predominantly left hemisphere." More controversially, McGilchrist argues that "there is no such thing as the brain" as such, only the brain as we perceive it; this leads him to conclude that different periods of Western civilization (from the Homeric epoch to the present), one or the other hemisphere has predominated, defining "consistent ways of being that persist" through time. This densely argued book is aimed at an academic crowd, is notable for its sweep but a stretch in terms of a uniting thesis.

November 15, 2009
Incorporating medicine, literature, cultural studies, philosophy, and critical theory, McGilchrist, a London psychiatrist with an interest in brain research, presents an interdisciplinary perspective on the brain and the rise of Western civilization. Writing in a scholarly yet engaging, approachable, and humorous tone, he flows between anatomical descriptions of the brain and the critical theory and philosophies of Heidegger, Descartes, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Erasmus, and others. His major thesis is that the essential differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brainwith the right ("the Master") attending to the "Other" and one's relationship to the "Other," and the left ("the Emissary") creating a self-directed, self-contained world disconnected from the "Other"have been instrumental in shaping our culture. He argues that we desperately need to begin to engage the right hemisphere's attunement to broader relationships, capacity for emotion, and ability to empathize if we want to avoid forfeiting the left-brain-oriented civilization we have created. VERDICT With 57 pages of notes and a 67-page bibliography, McGilchrist's dense tome may intimidate some readers, but his fascinating ideas are sure to attract academics and cultural critics.Candice Kail, Columbia Univ. Libs., New York

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