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The Neurobiology of “We,”: How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are

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You've no doubt heard of the mind-body connection. But Daniel J. Siegel suggests that there's another piece to the the profound influence of those around us. On The Neurobiology of "We" the founder of the emerging field known as interpersonal neurobiology presents a new model of human potential that he calls the mindbody-relationship connection. Building on more than two decades of scientific research, Siegel offers listeners an in-depth exploration of this new map of human consciousness; insights into how interpersonal experiences shape the developing mind and foster emotional well-being; details on the untapped power this connection holds for individual and societal transformation; and more.

7 pages, Audio CD

First published May 1, 2008

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2514 people want to read

About the author

Daniel J. Siegel

187 books3,231 followers
Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., is an internationally acclaimed author, award-winning educator, and child psychiatrist. Dr. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he also serves as a co-investigator at the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, and is a founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. In addition, Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute.

Dr. Siegel has the unique ability to convey complicated scientific concepts in a concise and comprehensible way that all readers can enjoy. He has become known for his research in Interpersonal Neurobiology – an interdisciplinary view that creates a framework for the understanding of our subjective and interpersonal lives. In his most recent works, Dr. Siegel explores how mindfulness practices can aid the process of interpersonal and intrapersonal attunement, leading to personal growth and well-being.

Published author of several highly acclaimed works, Dr. Siegel’s books include the New York Times’ bestseller “Brainstorm”, along with "Mindsight," "The Developing Mind," "The Mindful Brain," "The Mindful Therapist," in addition to co-authoring "Parenting From the Inside Out," with Mary Hartzell and "The Whole-Brain Child," with Tina Bryson. He is also the Founding Editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology, which includes "Healing Trauma," "The Power of Emotion," and "Trauma and the Body." Dr. Siegel currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

For more information on Dr. Siegel's work, please visit DrDanSiegel.com.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
Profile Image for Senthil Parthiban.
3 reviews1 follower
April 26, 2014
I am really impressed with the trinity model Siegel proposes. Relationships - the process by which we share our energy and information, Brain- The mechanism used to share energy and information, Mind- The regulatory control for Brain. Also Siegel provides valid argument for how early relationship between child and its parent or parents play a crucial role in the development psychology of the Child’s brain and its future. An Excellent point is the case of an adult who had dissociative relationship during his childhood with his mother developed a brain, with its left hemisphere which is responsible for social skills and communication is not in sync with its right hemisphere which generates ideas from memories.
Siegel also gives a brief but make sense explanation about neural circuitry for empathy based on mirror neurons and information flow and the nine fold path he provides for better integration of the mind’s domains to create a better holistic we through our relationships is very sensible.

This book is an excellent work on how our relationships shape our mind and how empathy and compassion between us creates new neural pathways for integration in the brain to create a better sense of ‘we’.
In short a highly recommend read for any parent or couple and anyone how wants to build better social wellbeing.
Profile Image for Laura Clawson.
116 reviews
November 6, 2022
I stumbled upon Dr. Siegel's work through three separate sources, all in a two week period, and at this point, I'll probably read anything that Dr. Dan Siegel puts out.

Such a rich audio experience of teaching by Dr. Siegel on the delicate and amazing connection between mind, brain, and relationships. The teaching is formatted to experience the content which he's communicating. Giving a meaningful and memorable overview of the parts of the brain, Dr. Siegel explores human attachment, making sense of our stories, rupture/repair in relationships, and moving in maturity through mindfulness practice. Such interesting work.

I'm curious about the thread of attention in his work and can't wait to revisit this title along side others in a discussion group. Would recommend to anyone raising kids, doing counseling work, or curious about pathways to human maturity. Excellent overview of attachment research and interpersonal neurobiology.
Profile Image for Carolyn.
104 reviews1 follower
August 9, 2010
Started to listen to the audio book version, but seemed to cover the same material as Siegel's Mindsight and also The Mindful Therapist.
Profile Image for Angelique Gigi.
137 reviews1 follower
January 17, 2025
THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF WE

🧬👨🏻‍💻🧘🏽💛

This in depth roadmap that follows the inner teachings of interpersonal neurobiology by Dr. Daniel Siegel was a wonder to experience! I will say this book is very science heavy so it might not be a fun and interesting read for everyone. I enjoyed the crafted sessions and the scientific connection that has been made over decades between emotional well being, the developing mind and interpersonal experiences. I see this everyday with clients and how it truly maps out not only their worldview, but their ability to move through life and cope with various stressors based on these breaks in connection they have suffered over time. The case study like session depicting attachment styles was also clearly defined and easy to digest which was nice to see in what felt like a science heavy book. In short I would recommend this book if you are into science, the mind body connection and interpersonal experiences. There are gems in this book for everyone willing to get into the text.

All in All
Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice 🚫
Waterworks 🚫
Profile Image for Eoin Flynn.
198 reviews22 followers
May 5, 2021
3.5 stars..

I hate how Siegel talks about science in the first half of this book. It borders on pseudoscience. Maybe it's an effort to make things seem less intimidating. However, I doubt it, as the second half delves into some pretty heavy anatomy and physiology. The amount of times Siegel unnecessarily emphasises that something is backed by science would be a real warning sign for me if this guy didn't have such impeccable credentials. He has a tendency to present something as "backed by science" and then go off on a wildly speculative tangent that is definitely not backed by science. Perhaps it's something unique to psychiatrists. Perhaps Siegel, like Jordan Peterson (to be clear, Siegel is not the charlatan that Peterson is) is one of those psychologists who loves Jung and is drawn to the magical thinking of daft ideas like synchronicity. I don't know. But, much of what is said in the first half of this book, or perhaps the first third, has the whiff of synchronicity and nonsense. There is nothing to support the notion that we are all connected by some greater mental force, nor is there any evidence that the mind is anything more than an emergent property of the complexity of the matter that makes up the brain. Siegel admits this, and yet carries on an entire lecture series as though it were the case. I don't buy it. He also loves to conflate energy as defined by thermodynamics with a more Deepak Chopra type definition of some sort of psychic or emotional energy. I suspected he was doing this on purpose. I hated it. But it will probably appeal to those who want to believe in gods, and greater powers, romantic love and other such things.

However, once the wishy-washy opening is out of the way there is a lot of interesting, reliable content. Seigel is adept at taking complex neurological info and turning into useful guides to how to promote your own mental wellbeing. I found myself, at numerous points, taken aback at how accurately Siegel was describing my own state of mind. I also found some of the methods he describes to improve my mind to be quite useful. Whether his thesis about greater connectedness of the collective human mind is correct or not becomes irrelevant at such points. The acute methods he uses seem to work. The sections on attachment theory are the most compelling of all and are really where this book is at its finest. I loved those sections as much as I hated the pseudoscientific parts.

Definitely worth a read. But if you're like me, you'll grind your teeth through the first parts...
Profile Image for Amanda Jones.
32 reviews1 follower
January 26, 2024
Profound! Important and fascinating stuff. I enjoyed this so much and learned so much!
Profile Image for Katie.
524 reviews
January 7, 2025
This was an interesting listen on attachment theory. Out of 8 hours, only the last was about how to change an attachment style, and even that was pretty cerebral (pun intended!). I thought the first 4 hours were very interesting and the last 4 less so. I got the feeling that therapists are the intended audience, so I'm not surprised that this audio seminar didn't really resonate with me.
Profile Image for Kevin.
26 reviews8 followers
December 18, 2013
I enjoyed the ambiance of this audiobook. Siegel's pace was measured and calm, his tone disarmingly personal. It turns out that he literally founded the field of interpersonal neurobiology, which purports to synthesize vast swathes of scientific disciplines into a coherent whole. Large claims by an influential man.

The author was careful to precede his discussion by asserting that the mind and the brain are distinct, that he would like to move away from the aphorism that "the brain is the seat of the mind". Instead, Siegel advocates a philosophical stance of emergentism, that the brain-mind connection is causally bidirectional. In my view, this point was rather underdeveloped & the book as a whole does not hinge on the point.

One interesting chapter relates to attachment theory. Children-caregiver relationships tend to group into four distinctive categories. These can be divined from the Strange Situation test, which places the child in a foreign environment, and then removes the caregiver for a few minutes. Attachment style is linked to child response: secure-attachment children reach out to the parent, and then resume play; avoidant-attachment children ignore the parent; anxious-attachment cling to the parent and are slow to be comforted; disorganized-attachment exhibit confused, contradictory responses.

What Siegel demonstrates is how later in life, a particular interview called the Adult Attachment Interview can predict, with 85% accuracy, the attachment style learned by the adult, earlier in life. When asked to explore feelings about early childhood relationships: the secure adult will be able to fluently conjure feelings; the anxious adult will be derailed by more present anxieties ("just last week, my mom did something nice for my brother, but not for me"; the avoidant adult will not be able to fully access emotional data ("my mom was organized, beautiful"); the disorganized adult will answer relatively normally until faced with questions of loss or abuse.

The demographic ratios between these styles in US society tends to be 55% secure, 20% anxious, 20% avoidant, 5% disorganized.

Another interesting point of the book relates to trauma, or PTSD. Siegel summarizes an impressive swath of research that suggests that PTSD is the result of memory-encoding inconsistency. Memory is not a monolithic system, but rather divides into myriad subsystems (ex: http://www.pnas.org/content/93/24/134...). Siegel argues that trauma occurs when the threatening event is encoded into implicit memory, but stress hormone prevents the hippocampus from encoding it into episodic memory. Without access to the conscious "metadata" for the event in episodic memory, flashbacks trigger confusion between the memory, and the event itself.

Finally, Siegel presented a way of thinking about the brain that I found more helpful than Latin names. If one curls up the thumb into the palm, and curls the fingers around the thumb, it is a half-decent model of the brain. The palm represents the brain stem, the wrist the spinal column, the thumb the limbic system, the fingers the cortex. Within the "fingers", the back section between second and third knuckles represent perceptual systems, the tips, the prefrontal cortex.

I'll now list two criticisms I have, one specific and one general. The first is a matter of definition; Siegel likes to define the mind as a "process that organizes energy and information flowing through the brain". This is largely fine, and reflects the consilience between thermodynamics and information theory. But, he tends to conflate the use of "energy" between thermodynamics and emotional/psychic energy, which is unfortunate. My second criticism is one that I have so far felt against the fields of positive psychology as a whole: I just didn't learn very much from this book. The brain sciences don't seem to be sophisticated enough yet to give Siegel the mileage he needs to establish his conclusions. With so little attention given to mechanism, books such as this one will always feel empirically inadequate.

That said, this book does represent a fairly compelling "beginner's guide" to interpersonal neurobiology, and I look forward to learning more (especially how interpersonal neurobiology relates to mindfulness meditation).
Profile Image for Bassmh.
223 reviews36 followers
October 5, 2021
This book is perfect. it's an easy listen, packed with scientific knowledge and has a touch of humanity and mindfulness.

love it!
Profile Image for Lisa.
96 reviews1 follower
August 12, 2016
The science parts were quite interesting. The book starts with theories about post-traumatic stress and the use of narrative to synthesize past trauma. It's pretty strong here. The author, a psychologist, is commenting on the continuing value of talk therapy over the strong push toward increased medication. While the science continues to be interesting as the book progresses, it starts to become fuzzy over what is mainstream science, what needs more research, and what are purely Siegel's theories based on experience and anecdote, but not controlled research by him and others. The ending is the weakest part in that he doesn't really seem to tie a bow on the book. He doesn't offer concrete self improvement techniques or suggestions. He doesn't talk about clear directions for science. He goes off into mindfulness and fuzzy talk of his terms and theories. Don't get me wrong, I am convinced of the benefit of meditation and mindfulness, but he doesn't tie it all together with his initial discussions of narrative and neurology. Interesting, especially the science, but lacking in a clear message of either science or self-help, which falls apart at the end.
Profile Image for David Mullens.
42 reviews14 followers
Read
December 27, 2011
Great book on Interpersonal Neurobiology. Wish he would have went a little bit more indepth, but he did point to a couple of other books that sounds like they would fill in some gaps. A pretty heady subject, but he makes the material pretty accessible.
Profile Image for Paul.
3 reviews
March 23, 2018
I can't believe this book was never released in print! It does such a good job covering attachment styles, trauma, neurobiology/neuroplasticity, and it makes a strong scientific case for living a more mindful/conscious/awakened life. Give it a listen!
Profile Image for Kristina Handy.
93 reviews2 followers
September 19, 2011
Very interesting. Not exactly a self-help book. More like a "how your brain works" for non-neurobiologists.
Profile Image for Anna.
16 reviews
October 13, 2012
Listening to this on CD. Wow. Figured out a few things about myself.
Profile Image for Joe.
522 reviews
October 20, 2023
"The Neurobiology of 'We'" by Daniel J. Siegel explores the interconnections between relationships, the mind, and the brain, and how they collectively shape individual identity. Below are key points, action points, and lessons that can be gleaned from the audiobook:

### Key Points:
1. **Interpersonal Neurobiology**: The audiobook introduces the concept of Interpersonal Neurobiology, explaining that the mind emerges from the interactions between the brain and relationships.
2. **Revolutionary Model of Human Development**: Dr. Siegel presents a new model of human development that emphasizes the importance of relationships and mind-brain interactions in fostering well-being.

### Action Points:
1. **Transforming Trauma and Stress**: By understanding and applying the principles discussed in the audiobook, individuals can transform trauma, transition from stress to calm, and achieve a state of equanimity.
2. **Promoting Well-being**: The insights from the audiobook can be used to promote well-being not just for individuals, but also for families and communities.

### Learnings and Implementation:
1. **Understanding Mind-Brain Interactions**: Gaining a deeper understanding of how the mind and brain interact, and how relationships influence these interactions, can provide a foundation for personal and communal well-being.
2. **Application in Stress Management**: The principles discussed can be applied in stress management and mental health practices, providing a holistic approach to achieving calmness and well-being.

Actionable Steps

1. **Explore Interpersonal Neurobiology**: Understand how your mind, brain, and relationships interact and influence each other. Engaging with the concepts of Interpersonal Neurobiology can provide a foundation for healing.

2. **Seek Supportive Relationships**: Foster relationships that provide support, understanding, and validation. Engage in open communication with trusted individuals who are supportive of your healing journey.

3. **Mindfulness Practices**: Implement mindfulness practices to bring awareness to your thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness can help you stay present, manage anxiety, and process trauma.

4. **Educate Yourself**: Learn about the new model of human development discussed in the audiobook which emphasizes the transformative power of relationships and mind-brain interactions.

5. **Engage in Therapeutic Practices**: Seek therapeutic interventions that resonate with the audiobook’s principles, such as therapies focusing on relational healing and mind-brain interactions.

6. **Community Engagement**: Engage with communities that promote well-being and provide a supportive environment for healing.

7. **Practice Stress Reduction Techniques**: Employ stress reduction techniques that move you from a state of stress to calm and equanimity as suggested in the audiobook.

8. **Promote Well-being**: Apply the principles discussed in the audiobook to promote well-being for yourself, your family, and even your community, which can in turn contribute to personal healing from trauma.

The actions outlined are rooted in the understanding and application of the concepts discussed in "The Neurobiology of 'We'", and aim to provide a holistic approach towards transforming trauma.

The audiobook presents a rich blend of neuroscience and relational concepts, offering a fresh perspective on human development and the potential for healing and growth through relational connections. Through the exploration of interpersonal neurobiology, readers can better understand the intricate interplay between relationships, the mind, and the brain, and how these elements coalesce to shape who we are. This knowledge can be instrumental in transforming personal and communal experiences, leading to enhanced well-being and a fulfilling life.
Profile Image for Letecia.
289 reviews6 followers
March 27, 2021
Daniel Siegel seems to bring neuroscience and western psychology to meet Sikolohiyang Pilipino - Filipino Psychology with his notion of interpersonal neurobiology.

I listened the first time without taking notes. Unfortunately there talk is recorded as one entire 8-hour session with no chapter breaks. So I used my first listening session to prime my mind/memory.

During the second listening, I took a few notes but found I still wanted to relax into the information.
So I plan to listen a third time or more.
Profile Image for Charity.
1,453 reviews40 followers
December 31, 2022
This audiobook builds on a lot of what Siegel discusses in his other books, so if you've read Developing Mind or Parenting From the Inside Out, there's a lot of overlap, but he takes those concepts into another intriguing direction. It's really interesting but not as actionable as I'd like for something that I can see might have big implications for how I approach teaching and interpersonal relationships. I'm hoping that his new book, Intraconnected, which appears to include a lot of the same concepts, will have more in the way of practical suggestions for how to promote integration.
9 reviews
October 9, 2024
I started this book two years ago trying to figure my brain out. I had to put it down because my mind was “blown” after reading the first 20%. I was at capacity with the information I took in. I read a few other books & lived my life, finally picking it back up a few months ago. I am so glad that people smarter than me can invest their lives into learning about our bodies and minds.

The quote that will stay with me the most is:

“Patterns from the past are preventing people from resonating fully in the present”

Looking forward to noticing more patterns & healing this brain of mine 🤍
Profile Image for Kendra PeloJoaquin.
6 reviews
June 3, 2019
This work is so fantastic. Siegel is an excellent teacher, slowly scaffolding our understandings of how the nervous system functions, how humans inter-relate and how our mind, brain and relationships co-create one another. So much of what I've heard others describe metaphorically is explained more literally here. I will definitely listen to the last three chapters at least one more time to really understand them.
1 review
October 9, 2021
One of the best, most accessible discussions on the biology behind why we do what we do, feel what we feel. I've listened to it three times, and recommend it to everybody I know. This book, paired with a solid contemplative mindfulness practice, is a good start for anybody interested in becoming a better human being, and helping others do the same.
Profile Image for Michael Few.
5 reviews
November 24, 2020
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Siegel and this amazing book he has written. I found tremendous value in the way he is able to eloquently communicate complex subjects in a relatable manner.
Profile Image for ALL.
132 reviews1 follower
December 10, 2022
One of the best books that mixes science with practicality. It could be described as mindful in how it teaches the reader to be aware of the science in their body while learning how reflection and integration can change the brain.
Profile Image for Kaleigh S.
88 reviews8 followers
April 10, 2024
Dr. Siegel’s voice makes me feel safe 🥹 Really enjoyed this, really appreciate Siegel’s work. The brain is ABSOLUTELY WILD. Did anyone take notes while listening? Want to share with me pretty please???
Profile Image for Diane Moore.
25 reviews1 follower
August 22, 2017
Loved this audio program. Perhaps it was my prolonged listening that I seemed to lose the thread of the main points, but I enjoyed the personal stories mixed with the science.
Profile Image for Aimee.
416 reviews10 followers
May 13, 2018
audiobook. really interesting. going to do research on attachment theory as a result.
91 reviews5 followers
February 20, 2019
I am not the intended audience for this book
This book is highly technical. It's steeped in anatomy and jargon that is unfamiliar to me.
Profile Image for Nela.
156 reviews
May 16, 2020
One of the things that kept me going through this book was his soothing voice. I would have liked / I expected a more scientific based approach. I had the feeling his theories were very anecdotal.
108 reviews
May 25, 2020
I had expected more practical advice or “how to’s” from the audio book description. The Goodreads description is more accurate. Fairly dry but I finished it (at 1.5 speed)
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