46 pages • 1 hour read
Norman DoidgeThe Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Norman Doidge
Norman Doidge, the author of The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, is a Canadian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and poet famous for his research on neuroplasticity. Among his most acclaimed works of nonfiction are The Brain That Changes Itself (2007) and The Brain’s Way of Healing (2015), both becoming New York Times bestsellers within their first months of publication. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in classics and philosophy, and then returned to obtain a medical degree. Doidge then pursued a residency in psychiatry and psychoanalysis at Columbia University. He was granted a two-year research fellowship by the National Institute of Mental Health for his work. As of 2023, he has worked as faculty at both the University of Toronto and Columbia University for the last 30 years.
Doidge has received numerous awards for his writing. He was the winner of the E. J. Pratt Award in Poetry in 1969 at the age of 19. In 1994, he won the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Saturday Night Literary Award for his memoir. Doidge’s writing on neuroplasticity has been praised as crucial to changing people’s understanding of human nature. As of 2023, he is training as a supervising analyst at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), a famous Austrian neurologist, is widely considered the founder of psychoanalysis. He graduated from medical school at the University of Vienna in 1881 and became a professor of neuropathology in 1885. Of Jewish descent, he fled to the United Kingdom after the 1938 German annexation of Austria. Freud’s most famous contribution to psychoanalysis is the Oedipus complex, a product of his belief in early childhood as a critical stage for sexual development. His work on psychological repression and the subconscious mind are heavily quoted in Doidge’s writing. Although Freud never used the term neuroplasticity, his belief in treating the psyche with reasoning shows his understanding of a changing brain. Although his clinical techniques have fallen out of favor, they remain influential in psychology and psychiatry.
René Descartes
René Descartes (1596-1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician of the Enlightenment, whose work influenced science and modern philosophy. He sets himself apart from his predecessors with his insistence on empiricism, epistemic justification, and rationalism for natural sciences. He believed philosophy was the only field capable of embodying all knowable knowledge, and its accuracy could only benefit from empirical research. Descartes is most famously remembered for a statement made in his book-length essay Discourse on the Method about the division of body and mind: “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). His perspective later led to the rise of Cartesianism, a philosophy and scientific school that believes in the separation of the mechanical body from the immaterial soul. In other words, the mind (or soul), untethered from the material world, does not share the mechanical limitations of the body. The body, including the physical brain, is framed as incapable of transcending its limitations, only responding to outside stimuli. This body-mind dualism heavily influenced science and philosophy, to the point that Doidge argues it slowed research on neuroplasticity.
