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Oxford Psychology
The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System
The Neuropsychology of Anxiety first appeared in 1982 as the first volume in the Oxford Psychology Series, and it quickly established itself as the classic work on the subject. This completely updated and revised edition is essential for postgraduate students and researchers in experimental psychology and neuroscience, as well as for all clinical psychologists.
448 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 2, 2022
The Neuropsychology of Anxiety: An Enquiry into the Functions of the Septo-Hippocampal System by Jeffrey A. Gray, is in part an interesting read about the research and studies that were conducted to reach our modern understanding of psychiatric drugs. I must confess I did not read the whole book since a large part is a deep dive into the physiology and anatomy of the Septo-Hippocampal system, this section of the book provides in-depth information that I either don’t understand or won’t remember. I think the psychologically verifiable aspects and changes due to changes in the physiological level are important and worth reading. The most important thing I wish to remember from reading this book is the experiments conducted on the rats and how they can potentially be revealing for human behavior. The book discusses anxiety and all the relevant fields influenced by it. If you are interested in understanding the functions of anxiety, then I would strongly recommend this book. I also learned a lot about depression and the spectrum of classifying depression. Human depression is experienced on a spectrum ranging from neurotic depression, which is apparently indistinguishable from extreme anxiety to melancholic depression. The type of person susceptible to which kind of depression and symptoms of both extremes is discussed in the book. This book opened my mind to research cold therapy as a treatment to increase resilience and I must say it seems that there is substantial evidence to prove it, as well as ways to practice it. In conclusion, the book does contain a mountain of information that might have been superseded by now but still serves as a history of the research on the neuropsychology of anxiety.
November 27, 2022
A great book on the nuts and bolts of anxiety; however, I subtracted two stars for the following reasons: it focuses too much on a model of anxiety of rats and rat experiments and too little on human anxiey. While there are surely many commonalities in the anxiety systems of all mammals, there are also differences between rat and human anxiety, particularly the cognitive component. Secondly, the chapter on treatment of anxiety feels quite sparse and rushed: cognitive behavioural therapy and anxiolitic drugs are mentioned, but not very deeply. There isn't an explanation of how CBT is actually done, and the anxiolitic drugs are not discussed individually so that the reader gets all the information about their pros and cons. Everything else in the book is quite excellent, though.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews