Brain, Vol. 126, No. 7, 1713-1715,
July 2003
© 2003 Guarantors of Brain
doi: 10.1093/brain/awg135
Book Review |
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: NATURE AND NURTURE
Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff, UK
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY: NATURE AND NURTURE
By Bruce Pennington
2002. London: Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
Price £34.50. pp. 380. ISBN 1-57230-755-2.
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
This is a book providing clarity on how developmental neuroscience has progressed, especially recently. It is one hundred years since Freud’s Interpretation Of Dreams was published and the important role of our unconscious processes first recognised. How excited he would have been, to read what neuroscience is now revealing about developmental psychopathology. Pennington begins his book pointing out that the twentieth century started with Freud’s comprehensive, if inadequate, theory of psychopathology, stating that what often seems irrational become rational given more understanding of a person’s early history. In contrast, the neuroscientific approach shows that some of the explanation for irrational behaviour is ‘sub-personal’, i.e. the causes lie outside the persons individual beliefs, e.g. in Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and ADHD. It is unusual to find an account such as this book, which integrates with such mastery the biological and psychological mechanisms involved in the recent advances in genetics, epidemiology, neurobiology, neuropsychology