The Mimetic Brain
The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s led to an explosion of research and debate about the imitative capacities of the human brain. Some herald a paradigm shift on the order of DNA in biology, while others remain skeptical. In this revolutionary volume Jean- Michel Oughourlian shows how the hypotheses of René Girard can be combined with the insights of neuroscientists to shed new light on the “mimetic brain.”
Offering up clinical studies and a complete reevaluation of classical psychiatry, Oughourlian explores the interaction among reason, emotions, and imitation and reveals that rivalry—the blind spot in contemporary neuroscientific understandings of imitation—is a misunderstood driving force behind mental illness. Oughourlian’s analyses shake the very foundations of psychiatry as we know it and open up new avenues for both theoretical research and clinical practice.
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The Mimetic Brain
The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s led to an explosion of research and debate about the imitative capacities of the human brain. Some herald a paradigm shift on the order of DNA in biology, while others remain skeptical. In this revolutionary volume Jean- Michel Oughourlian shows how the hypotheses of René Girard can be combined with the insights of neuroscientists to shed new light on the “mimetic brain.”
Offering up clinical studies and a complete reevaluation of classical psychiatry, Oughourlian explores the interaction among reason, emotions, and imitation and reveals that rivalry—the blind spot in contemporary neuroscientific understandings of imitation—is a misunderstood driving force behind mental illness. Oughourlian’s analyses shake the very foundations of psychiatry as we know it and open up new avenues for both theoretical research and clinical practice.
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The Mimetic Brain

The Mimetic Brain

The Mimetic Brain

The Mimetic Brain

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Overview

The discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s led to an explosion of research and debate about the imitative capacities of the human brain. Some herald a paradigm shift on the order of DNA in biology, while others remain skeptical. In this revolutionary volume Jean- Michel Oughourlian shows how the hypotheses of René Girard can be combined with the insights of neuroscientists to shed new light on the “mimetic brain.”
Offering up clinical studies and a complete reevaluation of classical psychiatry, Oughourlian explores the interaction among reason, emotions, and imitation and reveals that rivalry—the blind spot in contemporary neuroscientific understandings of imitation—is a misunderstood driving force behind mental illness. Oughourlian’s analyses shake the very foundations of psychiatry as we know it and open up new avenues for both theoretical research and clinical practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611861891
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Publication date: 01/01/2016
Series: Studies in Violence, Mimesis & Culture
Edition description: 1
Pages: 228
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jean-Michel Oughourlian is the former chief of psychiatry at the American Hospital of Paris and a former professor of clinical psychopathology at the Sorbonne. He collaborated with René Girard on Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (1978) and has authored several books on psychiatry, neuroscience, and mimetic theory, including The Genesis of Desire (2008), Psychopolitics (2012), and The Mimetic Brain (2016). He is a founding member of the Association Recherches Mimétiques, a French organization devoted to René Girard’s thought.

Table of Contents

Authors Note vii

Preface ix

Introduction xvii

Part 1 Towards a Mimetic Anthropology

Chapter 1 Contagious Desire 3

Chapter 2 The Precursors 17

Chapter 3 Some Contemporaries 23

Part 2 A Psychiatry of the Three Brians

Chapter 4 Interdividual Psychology 33

Chapter 5 Psychological Time and the Nodal Points N and N' 39

Chapter 6 The Three Brains 49

Chapter 7 The Three Possibilities of the Interdividual Rapport 57

Chapter 8 Classical Nosology 65

Part 3 An Essay in Mimetic Nosology

Chapter 9 Figures of the Other in Normal Experience 73

Chapter 10 Figures of the Other in Neurotic Experience 89

Chapter 11 Figures of the Other in Psychotic Experience 103

Chapter 12 Mood Disorders 133

Chapter 13 Diseases of Desire 143

Part 4 The Dialectic of the Rational, Emotional, and Mimetic Brains

Chapter 14 The Mimetic Mechanism 165

Chapter 15 Some Clinical Studies 171

Conclusion 187

Notes 201

Bibliography 211

Index 215

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