Key insights from
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
What you'll learn
We are all familiar with the pop psychology mainstay of left-brained and right-brained thinking. The conventional breakdown posed the left side as rational and the right side as emotional. Psychiatrist and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist argues that pop psychologists and even many neuroscientists have failed to pull back the veil and help us see the hemispheric brain for what it is and how it helps us come to know. After 20 years of brain research and combing through thousands of relevant research articles, McGilchrist shows us what the relationship is between the right hemisphere (the “master”) and the left hemisphere (the “emissary”). He also shows us what it reveals about who we are, and how the hemispheric relationship has shaped the course of Western history.
Key insights
- 1 The left brain-right brain myth is completely wrong, but for different reasons than most neurologists supposed.
- 2 The human brain has never been bigger, but the brain’s hemispheres have never been more disconnected or asymmetrical.
- 3 Each hemisphere allows us to attend to the world in different ways.
- 4 Both hemispheres perform crucial roles and must stay connected, but the right hemisphere is the master—not the left.
- 5 The West is in more danger than it realizes, but for different reasons than most suspect.
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