Offering up clinical studies and a complete reevaluation of classical psychiatry, Oughourlian explores the interaction among reason, emotions, and imitation and reveals that rivalry - the blind spot in contemporary neuroscientific understandings of imitation - is a misunderstood driving force behind mental illness.
In this revolutionary volume Jean-Michel Oughourlian shows how René Girard's hypotheses can be combined with the insights of neuroscientists to shed new light on the "mimetic brain." Offering up clinical studies and a complete reevaluation of classical psychiatry, Oughourlian explores the interaction among reason, emotions, and imitation and reveals a misunderstood driving force behind mental illness. Oughourlian's analyses shake the very foundations of psychiatry as we know it.
