First class subject material
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Pert has done a first class job of making the scientific link between the role of consciousness, the way it's facilitated by the brain and its resultant effect upon body chemistry (neuro-peptides/hormones carrying molecules of emotion that have the potential to change our DNA).
Gary Bate author of 'We are here to know ourselves'
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Finally a scientist makes me understand what I didn't before
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I have an M.Sc degree in molecular biology, and for many years my mother (a psychologist) was trying to convince me of the link between body and mind, which I didn't disbelieve, but also couldn't understand from a biological point of view.
After reading the enlightening "Biology of belief" by Bruce Lipton, I devoured this one in a week and I wish there were more books like this. Pert gains her credibility during the first 100 pages in her description of the scientific life in a lab: in that part she also makes me regain my drive and excitement about discovery, in a moment (my PhD) where sometimes some experiments do go wrong!
The book was for me very easy to follow and definetely inspiring. I would suggest it to anyone who cannot get convinced about complementary therapies and power of our brains by those who don't seem credible enough because of their backgroud and lexicon. And like stated before, it's an excellend autobiography of a female scientist. I loved it! Now my mom is up reading it, and next will be my boyfriend and a friend doing her PhD in neuroscience!
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Fascinating
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A great read. It's full of real science, but has a real human thread to it.
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An excellent and thought provoking book.
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It's not very often that books on the body/mind connection are written by people with serious scientific credentials but this is definitely one that is.
Candace Pert describes in great detail but also in great clarity how she discovered the role of natural opiates and thereafter the body mind connection that gave us the new science of psycho-neuro-immunolgy.
A gripping read and a fascinating insight into what the mind really is .
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Validation for bodyworkers, healers and other practitioners
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At a meeting I went to Candace Pert said she didn't quite understand why complementary practitioners needed her to 'validate' their work, that surely the fact that we (and our clients) know it works (when it does!) is validation enough.
Perhaps she was just being modest here - I have to say that it is precisely the work of Candace Pert and others in the field that gives me, as a practitioner, a way to understand what is happening, and therefore a way of explaining to clients, in a clear way, what they may be experiencing, without it being 'spooky wooky - woo, you must be a healer' - which can be disempowering or frightening to the client, depending on their belief system 'the practitioner healed me' and also places burdens on the practitioner's view of themselves.
Medical science also needed to understand 'what is going on' - and the respectability now of Psycho Neuro Immunology as a concept - due, in very large part, to Pert's work - means that without necessarily having any greater understanding of, or belief in, what 'goes on' in particularly bodywork and healing sessions, there is a greater willingness to suggest patients utilise this as adjuncts to conventional medicine.
The placebo effect is finally achieving respectability in its own right - how the mind and body can affect each other, positively, is being engaged with.
And .........on a slightly more humorous note, I have found it very useful to be able to blind a funding body with 'science' (which they didn't particularly understand) in order to get funding for one particular area where I work. This wasn't unethical, I had been asked to provide validation, and so had decided to ask clients to give subjective feedback of improvements in certain symptoms. A wiser person than myself said 'don't do that - provide some complicated science, they will be far more impressed'. So, to come back to Candace Pert's 'you don't need me to validate your work' - well, actually, we do!
And...........for the non-scientific, this is actually a VERY clear and readable account of neurochemistry. Having struggled hard to wade through some scientific papers, eyes crossed and with wet towel clamped firmly to head, Pert was a breath of fresh air!
Her individual journey is explored, and this is also very valid - there is of course a whole debate around how 'the observer' influences the experiment, so Pert's acknowledgement of WHO the scientist in the equation is utterly pertinent. The 'healer' and the 'client' engage together in a process - of course this does provide some stumbling blocks to the old double blind cross over randomised study, as the 'in the moment, this client, this therapist' is hugely central.
Very powerful book
However - Amazon, you have it wrong, this book 'Molecules of Emotion' is by Candace Pert - not Deepak Chopra - DC (wonderful though his work is) just wrote the foreword - there's somehow some sort of synchronicity going on here - often in 'science' the work of a woman scientist in the field gets unacknowledged or sidelines - cf Rosalind Franklyn's role in the 'discovery' of DNA.
Yes, yes, I know Amazon aren't doing this deliberately, its an annoying inputting blip which means that a lot of books with Forewords end up being credited to the foreword writer, rather than the author, due to the foreword writer being listed first.
I just thought it was amusingly illustrative in this case!
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