The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic.

• Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
• Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
• The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
• Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
• The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
• The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life
• What Art Is
• In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
• The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)