The Female Brain
by Louann Brizendine M.D.
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Book Summary Information
Author: Louann Brizendine M.D.Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-01
ISBN: 0767920090
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of The Female Brain
Book Review: A Brilliant Achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Female Brain" is a concise and pithy, nuanced and profound exploration of why and how women think and behave by a brilliant and experienced neuropsychiatrist. In 183 pages Dr. Louann Brizendine, founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic in California, distills and refines decades of scientific and clinical research and demonstrates lucidly and powerfully that who we are at this particular moment is determined by a certain proportion of certain chemicals in our brains. All humans have estrogen and testosterone, and it is the proportion of the two that determines our gender and behavior.
"The Female Brain" will radically change how educators, parents, and just about everyone else perceive women and the world. Consider Dr. Brizendine's discussion on how girls and boys learn differently in the classroom. Girls are wired to respond to faces and emotions while boys respond to numbers and objects. So while girls are obsessed with pleasing the teacher, boys are obsessed with sports and video games. And that explains why girls fare so better in school than the boys. However, Dr. Brizendine also points out that if schools are biased towards girls the scientific community -- with its emphasis on competition, awards, and statistics -- is greatly biased towards men (So Larry Summers is right although not in the way he imagined it). It's this kind of objective pursuit of facts, information, and the truth that make Dr. Brizendine the world's best neuropsychiatrist, and makes "The Female Brain" such a compelling and informative read.
In her book Dr. Brizendine takes us on a succinct tour of what it means to be a woman. Young girls tend to be sympathetic and emotive, and thus a pleasure to rear and to teach. But as they become teenagers their hormones undergo a tremendous flux, and their priority changes from pleasing their parents and teachers to pleasing other girls in school. Dr. Brizendine explains that that's because the human brain was primarily designed for a hunter-gatherer society, with women as the gatherers. Men could go and hunt animals, and the stronger, more competitive, and more aggressive among them usually returned with the boar. But women, because they both had to rear a child and gather fruits and nuts, needed to co-operate with each other, and that meant avoiding conflict and communicating often. Men are excited by competition and conflict, and women are stressed by it.
Women's primary responsibility is to give birth to and rear children. To accomplish this women will seek a wealthy husband although after marriage women will tend to cheat with men who they find physically attractive. That from an evolutionary biology perspective is what's most logical: women need to find a long-term mate who can provide comfort and security but they're also looking for the best genes for their child. Once women have children they become obsessed over their children, an obsession that is re-inforced and cemented by constant physical contact with their children. However, once the children leave home, women completely change. They become more independent and assertive, and seek out to carve their own individual space. Men who are in their mid-fifties who have grown accustomed to and dependent on a supportive wife are shocked to suddenly discover their wife distant and cold, Dr. Brizendine writes, and it's their failure to accept what's natural that explains why divorce rates among mature couples are so common and why the majority of such divorces are initiated by the wife.
Nothing that Dr. Brizendine writes is shocking and new, and that's mainly because every aspect of women's lives have been explored endlessly. Most of this exploration tends to be self-serving, political, and emotional. But Dr. Brizendine gives us a scientific context and a frame to best understand how and why women think and behave the way they do. She argues quite conclusively and powerfully that brain chemicals heavily influence our thinking and behavior. For example, greater testosterone can account for greater sexuality activity among young girls and what we may consider to be life-threatening depression may just be a minor chemical imbalance that can be relieved with the right medication and monitoring.
Those reading the book can find Dr. Brizendine's arguments and conclusions threatening and abject. Doesn't this mean that we have no control over our destiny? Doesn't this mean that the gender divide is just natural and immutable? Doesn't this mean that drugs can control our minds?
"My intentions for this book were to help women through the various shifts in their lives: shifts so big they actually create changes in a woman's perception of reality, her values, and what she pays attention to," Dr. Brizendine writes in the epilogue. "If we can understand how our lives are shaped by our brain chemistry, then maybe we can better see the road ahead."
In other words coming to terms with how evolution has wired women's brains is the first necessary step to closing the gender divide and granting women control over their destiny. It may take decades for "The Female Brain" to impact schooling and parenting, culture and society but the book -- because it is so honest and truthful, fair and clear -- will impact. With "The Female Brain" Dr. Louann Brizendine has made a tremendous contribution to the future of humanity.
Summary of The Female Brain
Every brain begins as a female brain. It only becomes male eight weeks after conception, when excess testosterone shrinks the communications center, reduces the hearing cortex, and makes the part of the brain that processes sex twice as large.Louann Brizendine, M.D. is a pioneering neuropsychiatrist who brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and whom they'll love. Brizendine reveals the neurological explanations behind why
. A woman remembers fights that a man insists never happened
. A teen girl is so obsessed with her looks and talking on the phone
. Thoughts about sex enter a woman's brain once every couple of days but enter a man's brain about once every minute
. A woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can't spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm
. A woman over 50 is more likely to initiate divorce than a man
Women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.
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