"Using Your Brain for a Change": Neuroscience and Identity in Self-Help Literature

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Project Abstract SES 0135559 "Using Your Brain for a Change:" Neuroscience and Identity in Self-Help Literature Anne Harrington/ Ginger Hoffman Harvard University What can a definition of a synapse offer individuals seeking hope, solace, and self-improvement? This postdoctoral project generates a detailed study of the role neuroscientific information plays within a widely used resource for self-betterment: the self-help literature. Specifically, a combination of historical, anthropological, and cultural/science studies methods are used to realize three principal objectives: 1)to document the types of neuroscientific information relayed to the public via the self-help literature, 2)to explore how this information influences individuals ' identities and sense of agency, and 3) to chart how (1) and (2) have changed over time. The fellowship holder's hypothesis is that neuroscientific information within the self-help literature delivers complicated messages about the relationship between us and our bodies, and that these messages have profound implications for both who we are and who we can end up being. To explore this claim, critical textual analysis of the self-help literature is combined with interviews of self-help readers and self-help authors, and will result in the production of several scholarly articles and the foundations of a book.. These research activities are enhanced by three in-depth training activities: 1)graduate level coursework in the history of science, anthropology of science, and public understanding of science; 2) the development and teaching of an undergraduate course on the history and philosophy of neurobiological models of mental illness, and 3) participation in a interdisciplinary working group (named Psychopharmaceuticals and Identity) conducting ethnographic research. This training serves as a critical adjunct to Hoffman's graduate training in neuroscience, and enables her research to be conducted from a solid interdisciplinary base. Investigating the presence of neuroscientific data within the self-help literature helps both scientists and the public understand how scientific facts travel from the lab bench to popular culture, and indeed, how these facts shape concepts of personhood, self-control, and the ways in which hope and help are attained.