Michael Potts's Blog: Bits and Pieces: Book Reviews and Articles on Writing, Horror Fiction, and Some Philosophy - Posts Tagged "heart-and-emotion"

Matters of the Heart: History, Medicine, and Emotion by Fay Bound Alberti

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fay Bound Alberti's book is a fascinating journey into the cultural history of the heart and its relation to emotions. From the time of Descartes's sharp separation between mind and body and his reduction of the body to a machine, the traditional view of the heart as the seat of emotion was subject to challenge. However, this was a live debate up until the early twentieth century, when contemporary science pushed the brain into the place of the heart so that the brain became the seat of emotions. Yet throughout the so-called process of mechanizing the heart, nineteenth century physicians still tended to accept the view of the centrality of the heart to emotional experience.

Although I cringe when I see the term "gendered," recalling the identity politics of postmodern cultural criticism, Alberti's historical account of functional vs. structural heart disease and which patients tended to be diagnosed with which in nineteenth century medcine. It is true that women tended to be diagnosed with functional heart disease and men with structural heart disease. She also notes the interesting fact that among the Victorian literati, having heart disease was a kind of status symbol, indicating greater sensitivity of emotions.

The nineteenth century view of the heart suggested a more holistic approach to the body and emotion than was later characteristic of the brain-centered view. The march of medical reductionism, in which the whole was understood in terms of its constituent parts, led to increasing specialization in medicine, including a sharp separation between neurology and cardiology, and a devolution of the heart to a mere pump.

Today, at least in some circles, this situation is changing. Stories of organ recipients allegedly taking on the personality of their donors abound. The Institute of Heart-Math accepts the view that the heart in itself is the chief causal factor in many emotions. The Canadian physiologist Andrew Armour (whom I met at a conference at the Vatican in 2005) has done considerable work on the "mini-brain" and nervous system in the heart. Yet reductionism remains strong, and we will have to wait and see whether holism will make major inroads into the current paradigm of medical practice.

If you want an excellent, scholarly book that brings the history of attitudes toward the heart from Descartes' time until today in to focus, then this is the book for you.



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