The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine M.D. Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Female Brain
Book Review: Everything you always wanted to know about ...
Summary: 4 Stars
Everyone should read this! Guys, it won't kill you to read this technical manual on your significant other. Gals, know thyself!
I like the author's style; it is breezy where it should be, and adequately technical where necessary. There are plenty of examples from her practice to whet one's interest.
More than half the population of the Earth use this 'operating system' - not to put too fine a point on it. There are neurological and hormonal reasons for the way we see life. This author doesn't waste any time with being politically correct. Science and medicine don't have time for that. It's so 60's. This is about facts. The facts, M'am, just the facts.
Knowledge is power; get some here.
Recommended.
Book Review: Excellent Book Regarding the Brain and How it Works
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this book because my linguistics professor recommended it at the beginning of term (I ended up using it for my final paper). This book is very interesting and is organized in a way as not to be cumbersome. Louann Brizendine uses scientific evidence mixed with a bit of humor to help the reader understand the workings of the female brain (as well as the males brain) and why women are "the way we are" when it comes to particular areas of life etc. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this area.Book Review: Excellent Step Towards Correcting Political Correctness!
Summary: 5 Stars
Many years ago I read a book focusing on the complexity of the human brain - all the chemicals and enzymes involved, and the impact of various shortages or overages. That book convinced me that there are scientific bases for claims that various groups are different; unfortunately, the PC police then took over. "The Female Brain" moves us back towards science-based fact-finding.
Brizendine begins by pointing out that while male brains are about 9% larger (even after correcting for body size), they have the same number of cells as female brains. Thus, size is not a meaningful difference between the sexes. However, she also tells us that there is a 2:1 ratio of depression in women vs. men, and that this differential doesn't appear until puberty - thus, chemistry does seem to be an important distinguishing factor. Further, new tools such as PET and fMRI have since documented an astonishing array of differences between men and women. Examples include different brain sensitivities to stress and conflict, use of different brain areas to solve problems and process language, etc. Women have 400% more neurons then men in the brain centers for language and hearing; men have 2.5X brain space devoted to sex, as well as larger centers for action and aggression.
As for the claim that women do less well than men in science and men (eg. Larry Summers, at Harvard), Brizendine asserts that the abilities are the same, but that estrogen causes girls to lose interest in pursuits that require more solitary work. Because of their larger communication centers, girls grow up to be more talkative - using an average 20,000 words/day, vs. 7,000 for men.
"The Female Brain" examines male-female differences over a human's life-cycle. Menopause brings other changes - less interest in sex, and greater anger (65% of divorces over age 50 are initiated by women).
Bottom Line: "The Female Brain" is a great step forward. It is an easy read, with plenty of objective documentation in its end-notes.
Book Review: Excellent, highly readable with particularly good sections on sexual behavior and bonding
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first picked up this book I was a bit put off because there were some comments that weren't particularly complimentary to men that seemed unfair and biased. However, the overall tone of the book was good and I was able to overlook the occasional comment that seemed a bit "off" with respect to holding a balanced position on the genders. Other reviewers have also commented on this from their perspectives, so I won't elaborate any further. You can read these reviews for yourself.
This was a difficult book to put down because it used stories to illustrate the different stages of a woman's life and the physical correlations to her behavior. At the same time, it painlessly introduced important information about the brain, hormones and how these are connected to behavioral changes in a woman's life. While this exploration was not comprehensive, it was useful, concise, understandable and well-suited to a non-professional audience.
This title also contained a lot of similar information on men and I found this information to be more than a superficial smattering. I wouldn't say the book is titled incorrectly, but don't be misled that it only includes information about the female brain. It contains lots of good content on the male brain as well.
The chapters that most grabbed by attention were on the teenage years, developing trust and sexual behavior. These sections brought in a lot of good references from a variety of sources including evolutionary biology, anthropology and neurobiology. Since the author was presenting her own unique perspective as a clinician, she did not bring in a lot of other significant research. This is a legitimate criticism. However, this is a very complex area and I found that the information was an excellent introduction to a vast body of research.
For the average layperson, the mixture of science, story and the implications of these facts to everyday life is perfect. For the scientist or other technical audiences, it may not have enough meat from an information standpoint, but the story and interweaving of different threads of research makes the book very engaging for anyone including a professional.
By education, I was trained early in my career as a biologist and biochemist. Later, I went on to study psychology. I had difficulty putting the book down and it flowed like a good novel in terms of the writing. The organization of this book was well thought out, particularly the way that different research findings were presented to support the author's argument without interrupting the flow of the story.
For many people who haven't read David Buss or anthropology, the insights on short and long term mating strategies will be an eye opener. I also liked the cross cultural references to support her arguments that certain behaviors appear to be due to shared neural architecture rather than cultural influences. There is a lot of controversial content here that is good food for thought.
The author tells the story of the human brain concisely with the impact of a good novel. This book is worth owning for anyone who wants to understand women better, how they change over the years and how female psychology correlates to development and physiology. As you go deeper, however, you will find that this book may not be comprehensive enough.
I didn't find this book to be overly reductionistic. It looked at the impact of physiology on behavior, but it didn't reduce behavior to physiology. The only bias that was sometimes annoying is the implication that men were somehow "less than" rather than "complimentary to" women. This bias wasn't usually glaring, but I felt it was often present.
This book has become somewhat controversial, but that doesn't change the fact that it includes a lot of great information and puts it in the hands of the average person. If you are really serious about this area, I would pick up additional books to compliment this author's unique perspective. While I didn't necessarily agree with everything that Dr. Brizendine said, I certainly benefited from engaging with this book and sparked my curiosity to know more about certain areas of interest.
If you are considering buying this book, I think it's important to remember it was written by a clinician and not a research scientist. The value of the material is based on ONE physician's experience over her career. She is presenting a mixture of research material and her own opinion. If you are clear about this, I think you will enjoy it.
This is clearly a book for a GENERAL AUDIENCE. I believe this author wrote from a sincere place and I don't fault her for writing from a first person perspective. Like a good historical novel, this book captures the essence of the subject, but does sacrifice some accuracy in the process. If you are looking for more hard science, you may find something else more to your liking.
Some books on related topics that I enjoyed were the Developing Mind by Daniel Siegel (general book on how the mind develops apart from gender differences), Emotional Intelligence (Goleman) and various gender-related titles by Carol Tavris. (The book by Carol Tavris on Anger is not directly related to this topic, but it is excellent as well.)
I also like the work of Antonio Demasio on the mind-body relationship, role of emotions and the development of consciousness. There is some speculation and a fair amount of first-person perspective in his books too, but they are quite good overall and he is a neurologist with good credentials. THE FEELING OF WHAT HAPPENS is the most dense title and LOOKING FOR SPINOZA is probably the most accessible.
If you want a more controversial and provocative read, PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH talks in-depth about the embodied mind from a cognitive perspective. There are also many good books out there on gender differences and they are referred to in other reviews including the spotlight review above. In short, if this is an area of interest, you need to read a broad array of material because I don't think any one author has a monopoly on the truth. The differences between men and women are mysterious and with over a quadrillion synaptic brain connections to consider, I doubt the full picture of brain gender differences will emerge anytime soon.
Book Review: File in Fiction, not Science.
Summary: 1 Stars
The problem with this book is that Brizendine actively misrepresents research and uses numbers that are basically made-up. Her "science" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
For instance, on differences between male and female speech patterns she claims that women speak three times more words than men in a day, and speak almost twice as fast. In fact, no reliable studies had been done when the book came out. Prompted by the book, somebody actually bothered to measure, and it turned out that men and women speak about the same number of words, and men speak (very slightly) faster. You can get details about the studies from the excellent blog LanguageLog, which reports on real linguistic science. Google for the post titled "Gabby guys: the effect size".
In sum: This book should be filed in the Fiction section, not the Science section.