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Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Science | Book | BF637 .N66 C65 1998 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
What is special about the face, and what happens when neurological conditions make expression of comprehension of the face unavailable? Through a mix of science, autobiography, case studies, and speculation, Jonathan Cole shows the importance not only of facial expressions for communication among individuals but also of facial embodiment for our sense of self. He presents, in his words, a natural history of the face and an unnatural history of those who live without it.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This British neurologist's "natural history of the face" opens with a delicately empathic case study of Mary, an elderly woman who becomes depressed and isolated after an ailment deprives her of facial expression and speech. Without expression, writes Cole, Mary seemed "less of a person, because she could not show her animated self." This revelation launches him on a quest to limn the relationship between our faces and our personalities. With varying degrees of success, Cole tackles this fertile subject from a variety of angles, from the philosophic to the scientific (discourses on the mechanics of expression and the evolution of facial function) to the journalistic (conversations with blind people, burn victims and sufferers of autism, Mobius syndrome, Parkinson's disease and Bell's palsy). While the book covers impressive ground, and while Cole has a generally erudite, pleasantly meditative voice reminiscent of Oliver Sacks (to whom the book is, in part, dedicated), the central thesis, that we are and are not our faces, is a predictable one. It doesn't help matters that some potentially provocative material is left inadequately explainedthe failure to more extensively elaborate on autism sufferer and memoirist Donna Williams's rather delphic reflections on her condition is particularly maddening. Nonetheless, readers can't help but come away with a heightened appreciation of our exquisitely mobile facial apparatus, or of that uniquely human form of social exchange, the mutual gaze. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A physician's curiosity leads him to a subject oddly underexplored in its own right: the face. British neurophysiologist Cole pursues the link between our faces and our inner selves in a science-minded inquiry that is very much a natural history rather than a cultural one. But it's not strictly scientific, either: Cole's topic lies among questions just out of the confident grasp of science--the nature and relationship of mind and body, of thoughts and feelings, the definition of consciousness itself. Given that, Cole assembles persuasive speculations from his journalistic research among people who either can't perceive facial expressions or can't make them as a result of blindness, autism, disfigurement, or face-impairing Mbius syndrome, Bell's palsy, and Parkinson's disease. Despite the variety of conditions described in these uniformly heartfelt interviews, his conclusions from them are largely similar: that facial expression exists somewhere pivotal between the mental and the physical, that the face, beyond simply expressing interior states, actually affects the emotional life through its importance in relating to others. The chapters on autistic subjects--for whom the disctinctions between self and others, body and mind and emotion, are strangely ruptured--are powerfully suggestive of the complexity of the face's meaning; but relying heavily, in brief encounters, on the ad hoc personal vocabulary used by subjects to try to explain their experiences, this study remains little more than suggestive. But that's only to say that Cole has initiated an ambitious synthesis, putting the face at the center of various disciplines that touch on it--neurological, psychiatric, evolutionary (he surmises that faces function emotionally in primates' individual relationships as well as humans') that may be taken up by such specialists in response to his impressions. A genial peek--in the mirror, as it were--at the mystery of the self. (13 illustrations, not seen)
Booklist Review
In the footsteps of Oliver Sacks, who taught Cole, according to his dedication, to listen, comes a thoughtful study of the significance of the mobile, expressive human face in the species' evolution and in the healthy development of children into adulthood. Clinical neurophysiologist Cole, like his mentor, talks with people whose unusual medical conditions make them in some sense "without face." These conditions include congenital and midlife blindness, autism, palsy and Parkinson's disease, Mobius syndrome--whose sufferers have no capacity to move their facial muscles--and facial disfigurement. Cole's methodology provides a way of understanding how our own faces and those of the people around us affect growth at the intersection of brain, mind, and emotions. Although Cole's work is somewhat less accessible than Sacks' very popular studies, more serious readers of Sacks' research will also want to learn About Face. --Mary Carroll
Choice Review
Cole focuses on the human face, its psychological meaning to individuals, and its role in social relationships. Case studies that cover a range of individual situations and challenges, e.g., autism, Asperger's syndrome, Bell's palsy, blindness, depression, dreams, facial nerve damage, Parkinson's disease, and facial disfigurement. Studies of animals--chimps, monkeys, and orangutans--provide comparative data. The author provides linkages among cases, a panorama of questions regarding the human face, and commentary about the contributions these contrasting studies make to his overall inquiry. The richness of the book rests on the content of the case studies. Reference materials for each chapter are included. Audiences for this book are general readers, individuals who share one or more of the case study challenges, and lower-division undergraduates studying social psychology and personality. E. Palola emeritus, SUNY Empire State College
Library Journal Review
British neurophysiologist Cole has produced a fascinating but difficult-to-categorize book about the importance of the face and facial expression to the development of personality and character. Largely through interviews with those who are blind, autistic, or suffer from various neurological disorders that limit facial expression, Cole considers just how much of ourselves is contained in our faces. Less personable and quirky than Oliver Sacks's books and less personal than the work of doctor-writers like Lewis Thomas or Richard Selzer, this is nonetheless a very interesting title that will likely appeal to a wide audiencelay readers, specialists in the neurosciences and psychological fields, and scholars who contemplate the origins of the self. Recommended for general collections with literate readership, as well as academic collections.Mark L. Shelton, Univ. of Massachusetts Medical Ctr., Worcester (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments |
| 1 The Pre-face: "Tell, Please" |
| Mary |
| Opening the Seam |
| "Tell, Please" |
| Looking through the Window |
| 2 Residing in Voices |
| "Not Like a Hand" |
| A Politician Who Finds It Difficult to Smile |
| 3 We Do Not Share the Same World |
| Floods of Faces |
| Sweating Blood |
| 4 Bone to Brain |
| Fish Face |
| Darwin's Nose |
| The Anatomy of a Smile |
| The Vanity of Astronauts |
| Bell's Nerve |
| Laughter and Sorrow |
| Cars and Faces |
| 5 Chimpanzees' Dreams |
| From Aristotle to Darwin |
| Universal Faces |
| Culture and Colors |
| Smiling Happy People? |
| Decoding Primate Faces |
| Howlett's Zoo, Kent |
| Monkey World, Dorset |
| The Tavistock Institute, London |
| 6 Born Independent |
| Theory of Mind |
| Feelings of Soul |
| The Color of Hair |
| 7 Like a Ball Off a Wall |
| 8 The Spectator |
| Imitation, Self, and Others |
| Child's Play |
| In the Playground |
| The Reflection of Ourselves |
| James |
| 9 One Big Family |
| George |
| 10 Dull and Boring? |
| Oliver |
| Mrs. Doubtfire |
| Coming Alive--The Video |
| Grumpy |
| 11 Changing Faces |
| Seven Years of Trial and Error |
| Seeing the Enemy |
| 12 Face Odyssey |
| Maps of Feelings |
| Hearing Emotions, Thinking Emotions |
| Controlling Emotions |
| Measuring Skulls |
| No Different Today |
| William James and James |
| Phantom Emotions |
| Face Value |
| Theory of Mind? |
| Seeing Consciousness |
| The Divine Fantasy |
| Notes |
| Index |