This is a break from usual emails to let you know that I am releasing a new course today on the brain, neurobiology, predictive brains and my take on why these issues are important.

Apart from that hard-sell this newsletter is shorter, a few brain thoughts, a few brain book recommendations but I am afraid there are still a few bad brain jokes at the end!

I am experimenting with these courses and thinking about whether they are useful enough to continue to release them. Any feedback would be gratefully received.

My interest in the brain goes back a long way. I remember how my mind was blown when in the earlyish 2000’s I learnt about the work of the likes of Allan Schore and his dense but amazing books, and way back then I was lucky to hear him talk in a small room at the Tavistock. I am forever grateful to the wonderful Mary Sue-Moore who so helped us understand how the brain is changed by experience and not just a given, and especially the role of trauma and abuse in such processes.

Such ideas all made so much sense to me and fitted with what I knew of how social forces, culture and early experiences could have such an effect on how we see and experience the world. The old Marxist concept of ideology, or more Bourdieu’s concept of a habitus that is lived through us and we through it, seemed linked and important. Nowadays it is so clear how we all tend to see and interpret the world we expect to see, something that is so much more true in our current world of silos.

Working for so many years in fostering and adoption and with trauma made it all too clear that so many children and adults from such awful backgrounds of abuse and fear so clearly experienced the world very differently, too often sadly as one of danger, in which trust has no place. In those cases the ideas about predictive brains are so helpful.

Like many I worry that thinking about the brain and biology can be seen as concrete, and unimaginative. I am also all too aware of both how little we still know, and also how much bad pop psychology stuff is out there which does the subject an injustice, think reptilian brains etc. However I still find that may find these ideas helpful, not least teachers, social workers and many parents. I am interested to hear what you think.

In all the course has about 70 lessons, contained in 8 chapters and over 2 hours of video

On shopify you can find Womb Life as well as a selection of paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook and .. guess what, bundles of print and ebooks, plus there is the option for signed copies of a variety of books.

Access here or by clicking on the picture below.

Please let people know about it and SPREAD THE WORD!

And please review. Thank you!

Brainy books, a small selection of my favourites below, some on my bulging shelves!

Antonio Damasio, possibly The Feeling of What Happens
Louis Cozolino The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, now in 4th edition
of course Mark Solms eg The Brain and the Inner World
Lisa Feldman Barret is a must, How Emotions are Made
Iain McGilchrist.. incredible on right hemisphere, if you’re brave, his new one has 1500 pages The Matter with Things .,. he has a lecture next week, see here
of course there has to be Porges, perhaps his pocket guide to Polyvagal Theory
John Baylin and Dan Hughes , The Neurobiology of Attachment-Focused Therapy

Apologies, there are so many more I could put in here, but these are some that made a difference to me: So many others, eg Dan Seigel, Jeremy Holmes’ recent Friston one on predictive brains eg

I dont know this but on my list : Naturezi Gabrieli, The Neurobiology of Connection: Re-Wilding Your Deep Nervous System for Wellbeing

This is very old but some still stands up, made with Sue Gerhardt and co-ordinated by Amanada Jones

It might not be a full newsletter but there is no escaping some bad jokes.

And as it is Valentines day I am sending this on:

And one I should take note of:

Now a few truly awful brain jokes

What is an amygdala?
“I’m not sure, but for some reason, I feel strongly about it”.

What do you call a Tyrannosaurus under stress?
“A nervous Rex”.

What did the hippocampus say during its retirement speech?
“Thanks for the memories”.

What continues to work even after it is fired?
“A neuron”.