The Archaeology of Mind
Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions

I love Jaak Panksepp. He's like the Princess Diana of neuroscience. This book reads a bit like a textbook, but isn't dry. It also doubles as a manifesto for the inner lives of animals. Panksepp first asserts that our core affect (or in other words, our rawest emotion) is created by ancient subcortic......more

Finally, here's a book that solidly connects neuroscience to affectivity. The authors even call this field, "affective neuroscience." Most of neuroscience, they write, doesn't touch the role of emotions or, if it does, emotion is put under cognition where it is created by or subject to consciousness......more

Panksepp and Biven have delivered a remarkable and detailed record of the neural architecture of human emotions. There is quite a lot to take from this book. In my opinion, Panksepp was way ahead of his time and I can't find a better description than one made by another Goodreads user (Morgan Blackl......more

Regrettably I couldn’t finish it within the last year, but this was a really big book to digest, despite being written for the general reader (at least hypothetically). That being said, it is a tremendous achievement. It really unfortunate that the author passed away so soon after it was published,......more

I was introduced to this book first by Albert and Beatriz Sheldon’s Complex Integration of Multiple Brain Systems in Therapy (an explosive must-read for psychotherapists interested in theoretical integration) and later through authors in the IPNB series. While much of Panksepp/Biven’s research/writin......more