Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
It is rare that a book such as this can capture the heart and soul of America, an America divided by the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. The divisions are so great that the survival of America is threatened. Every citizen-- civilian and military-- should read this book, as it provides a sociological analyses of peace and war that mirrors the neuropsychological findings of the origins of peace and violence presented on this website. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
2. Montagu Book
Ashley Montagu (1971). Touching. The Human Significance of The Skin.
Perennial Library. Harper & Row. New York. San Francisco. London. Published in arrangement with Columbia University Press. 406 pp.
"This book is about the skin as a tactile organ very much involved, not alone physically but also behaviorally, in the growth and development of the organism. The central referent is man, and what happens or fails to happen to him as an infant by way of tactile experience, as affecting his subsequent behavioral development, is my principle concern here". --Preface. The pioneering work that opened humanity to love and compassion or its opposite--depression and violence--jwp. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
3. Hrdy Book
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (1999). Mother Nature. A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection.
Pantheon Books. New York.723 pp
"I have spent my entire adult life engaged in a quest to understand not just who I am but how creatures like me came to be. That human evolved at all is a fluke. My own existence, like that of any other person's, is more than a fluke--it is a miracle. Out of the seven million or so egg cells my mother was born with, it was mine that ripened to be fertilized by my father. Against the usual odds, that fetus survived the vagaries of gestation to be born. And what about this creature, this person I would become? What does it mean to be born a mammal, wth an emotional legacy that make me capable of caring for others, breeding with the ovaries of a primate, possessing the mind of a human being?"--Preface. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
4. Wills Book
Gary Wills (2000). Papal Sin: Structure of Deceit.
Image Books. Doubleday. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland. 312 pp.
"My own heroes, it will become clear, are the many truth tellers in Catholic ranks, preeminently Saint Augustine, Cardinal Newman, Lord Acton, and Pope John XIII. The truth, we are told, will make us free. It is time to free Catholics, lay as well as clerical, from the pressures of deceit that are our quiet modern order form of papal sin. Paler, subtler, less dramatic than the sins castigated by Orcagna or Dante, these are the quieter corruptions of intellectual betrayal..."(p. 9). "...as when the gender of the apostles is adduced to support a male monopoly on the priesthood, after the ancient and real reason for that monopoly, a belief in female inferiority, has become unusable (see Chapter 7)' (p. 7). Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
5. Bowlby Book
A summary of a report prepared under the auspices of the World Health Organization in 1951 on the importance of mother-love in the development of the child's character and personally and the problem of the motherless child. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. "Despite the body of opinion suggesting that human nature is basically aggressive and competitive, my own view is that our appreciation for affection and love is so profound that it begins even before our birth... A happy mother bears a happy child... Almost without exception, the mother's first act is to offer her baby her nourishing milk--an act which to me symbolizes unconditional love... What we see instead is a relationship based on love and mutual tenderness, which is totally spontaneous. It is not learned from others, no religion requires it, no laws impose it, no schools have taught it. It arises quite naturally." (pp 66-67). Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
7. Diamond Book
Jared Diamond (1992). The Third Chimpanzee. The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal.
Harper Perennial New York.407 pp
Though we share 98 percent of our genes with the chimpanzee, our species evolved into something quit extraordinary. Jared Diamond explores the fascinating question of what in less than 2 percent of our genes has enabled us to found civilizations and religions, develop intricate languages, create art, learn science--and acquire the capacity to destroy all our achievement overnight. The Third Chimpanzee is a tour de force, an iconoclastic, entertaining, sometime alarming book at the unique and marvelous creature that is the human animal. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
8. Drinan Book
Robert F. Drinan, S.J. (2004). CAN GOD & CAESAR COEXIST?: Balancing Religious Freedom & International Law.
Yale University Press. 266 pp
Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit priest, former Dean of the Boston College Law School and Member of the U.S. House of Representatives has devoted his life to the defense of human rights, religious freedom and social justice. He is noted for his counsel that the best position of government on the abortion issue is no position, as any government position (pro or con) would favor some religions over others, which is prohibited by the First Amendment. Click HERE for additional commentary.(last modified ).
9. De Waal Book
Frans De Waal & Frans Lanting (1997). BONOBO. THE FORGOTTEN APE.
University of California Press. Berkeley, Los Angeles London 202 pp.
How better to celebrate a little-known close relative than by marrying science and art, combining hard-won information with provocative images? The result is the first book that tries to piece together the bonobo puzzle in a fashion that we hope will appeal to a wide audience. - Preface. Click HERE for additional commentary. (last modified ).
"We have heard the rationales offered by the nuclear super powers. We know who speaks for the nations. But who speaks for the human species? Who Speaks for Earth?" The research of Dr. Prescott was identified as one "Who Speaks for the human species".
James DeMeo (1998). SAHARASIA. The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in The Deserts of the Old World. Oregon Biophysical Research Lab, Greensprings, Oregon. An extraordinary review of the historical evidence that supports the author's thesis that desertification: "climate change eventually spread to create the vast Sahara Desert and the interrelated deserts of the Middle East and Central Asia: Saharasia" as the principal cause of patriarchal, authoritarian and violent, warlike societies. The desertification thesis does not explain the violence against children, women and men that is prevalent among the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans, who live in lush jungles; or the peaceful behaviors of the Eskimos who live in icy, cold climates. How geography translates into brain mechanisms is not explained. The psychobiology of somatosensory affectional deprivation advanced by this writer is a more universal explanation of peaceful and violent cultures. Changing deserts to jungles will not eliminate violence and authoritarian domination by the male (patriarchy).
Deborah Blum (2002). Love at Goon Park. Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. Perseus Publishing. Cambridge, MA. The remarkable observation about this important scientific story of an extraordinary man -- Harry Harlow -- Is what was not said. Although, Blum reviewed the Mason-Berkson moving mother surrogate study she failed to recognize that it was the most important study in the history of infrahuman primate studies on mother-infant separation. Inexplicably she failed to cite the Time-Life documentary film "Rock a Bye Baby" (1970) that reviewed these studies, the damage inflicted upon the cerebellum and other brain structures that were supported by the NICHD. A letter of protest and request for corrective actions was sent to Discovery Magazine, which went unacknowledged and is attached HERE .
Joseph Chilton Pearce. (1992). Evolution's End." Changing the Potential of Our Intelligence. HarperSanFrancisco New York. This book dedicated to David Bohm, charts how modern homo sapiens has "thwarted evolution's plan and locked ourselves into the lowest level of the brain-mind structure - -a level that has led us into a cultural state bordering on futility and despair. Human beings are now in grave biological jeopardy due to five common practices that have given rise to rampant violence, child suicide, and deteriorating family and social structures", namely Hospital Childbirth, Daycare, Television, Premature Attempts at Formal Education and Synthetic Growth Hormones. As of this writing (2007), the escalating world conflicts of religious/civil violence propel humanity to selfdestruction.
Stanley Milgram (1974). Obedience to Authority. Harper & Row Publishers. New York. "The dilemma posed by the conflict between conscience and authority inheres in the very nature of society and would be with us even if Nazi Germany had never existed. To deal with the problem only as if it were a matter of history is to give it an illusory distance. " (p.179). Additional commentary HERE
23. Peter Cook. Early Child Care: Infants & Nations At Risk.
<="" a="">Peter Cook (1996). Early Child Care: Infants & Nations At Risk: New Weekly Books. Melbourne "The fact remains that for children under three years of age non-familial child care involves a massive-experiment in raising infants and young children in day care centres in the absence of any adults who are related or have a continuing commitment to them. This occurs in the years when infants are learning more rapidly than in any other period of their lives, and important foundation of emotional life are being laid" p. 18. "On the basis of this developmental and social ecology of daycare in America, I conclude that we have a nation at risk" (Belsky, 1992. p. 90. Italics inserted). p. 19. "Bowlby described how it was found that if a child between the ages of about twelve months and three years is removed from his mother-figure to whom his is attached and placed with strangers in a strange place, "his initial response...is one of protest and of urgent effort to recover his lost mother."...Sooner or later, however despair sets in. The longing for mother does not diminish, but the hope of its being realised fades. Ultimately the restless noisy demands cease: he becomes apathetic and withdrawn, as despair broken only perhaps by an intermittent and monotonous wail. He is in a state of unutterable misery." (Bowlby 1981, p. 9)...This longing for the mother "is often suffused with intense, generalised hostility" (Ibid p. 13). (Attachment and Loss. Vol 3. Loss, Sadness and Depression--Cook, 1996. p. 36). (Modern psychiatry has failed to recognize this history and that the epidemics of depression, rage, suicide and homicide in our children and youth have yet to be connected to these early child separations and failed
Emmy E. Werner and Ruth s. Smith (1977). Kauai's Children Come of Age. The University Press of Hawaii. Honolulu A unique multidisciplinary longitudinal study that has lasted from the prenatal period to age 18. "The unique aspect of this study was the opportunity to follow all pregnancies and births in an entire island community in Hawaii for nearly two decades: On the one hand, there is greater awareness of the increasing risks of biological and psychosocial stress among the children of the poor. On the other hand, there is the persistent inability of public agencies to reach those among the poor who are the most at risk." "The most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit"--Erik Erikson. (p. 227)
28. Werner and Smith: Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children From Birth to Adulthood.
Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith (1992). Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood Cornell University Press. Ithaca and London. "We need to keep in mind that our research on individual resilience and protective factors has focused on children and youths who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, with informal support from kith and kin, not children who were recipients of intervention services" (p207)
appeared with the rise of the monotheistic religions. It is the belief of this writer that Embodied Human Love that has been sacrificed to Divine Disembodied Love (Spirit) for Eternal Salvation by the monotheistic religions is the principal cause of violence against the human body with its many consequences that threatens the survival of Homo sapiens. Christianity, the most violent of the monotheistic religions, captured this ethic in The Crucifixion, where an agonizing death on the cross was offered as the ultimate expression of Christian Love: God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life. It was not to judge the world that God sent his Son into the world, but that through him the world might be saved (JOHN 2:16-17) God, the Father is wholly responsible for the agonizing death of His Son on the Cross: "So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Fathers only Son, full of grace and truth": for one purpose - The Crucifixion (John 1: 1-14). Christian Love represented in The Crucifixion equates Pain, Suffering and Death with Love, as the gateway to Eternal Salvation and has condemned Humanity to the loss of EMBODIED HUMAN LOVE, the gateway to PEACE ON EARTH. GOD, THE FATHER ATTEMPTED TO CORRECT HIS BOTCHED CREATION BY COMMITTING THE ULTIMATE CRIME OF DIVINE FILICIDE. Recent advances in developmental neuropsychology have confirmed that somatosensory affectional deprivation during the formative periods of brainbehavioral development induces brain-behavioral abnormalities that mediate the depression, homicidal and suicidal behaviors commonly observed in the failure of maternal-infant/child affectional bonding and that of youth sexual affectional bondingthe neurodissociative brain vs the neurointegrative brain. See Tbl 1 in PDF. http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html http://ttfuture.org/violencehttp ://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/barack.html Additional commentary HERE.
Benjamin Spock, M.D. and Michael B. Rothenberg, M.D. (1946/1992). Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care, 6th Edition. Fully Revised and Updated For The 1990s. Dutton Publishers. New York. The bible for child rearing first published in 1946. Translated into thirtynine languages and has sold forty million copies worldwide since its first publication. Additional commentary HERE
Candace B. Pert, Ph.D (1997). Molecules of Emotion. Why You Feel the Way You Feel. Scribner. New York. "The first component of the molecules of emotion is a molecule found on the surface of cells in body and brain called the opiate receptor. It was my discovery of the opiate receptor that launched my career as a bench scientist in the early 1970s, when I found a way to measure it and thereby prove its existence." (p.21). "Darwin speculated that the emotions must be key to the survival of the fittest" (p.131). "Neuropetides and their receptors thus join the brain, glands, and immune system in a network of communication between brain and body, probably representing the biochemical substrate of emotion" (p.179). "For me, science has been a quest to understand nature--both human and Mother. As I have known it in it purest, most exalted form, science is the search for truth. It was this belief that drew me to science, and thorough my naivete and despite all my many false turns, it's what has kept me on the journey. The heart of science is feminine. In its essence, science has very little to do with competition, control, separation--all qualities that have come to be associated with science in the male-dominated, twentieth-century form. The science I have come to know and love is unifying, spontaneous, intuitive, caring--a process more akin to surrender than to domination". The rational, masculine, materialistic world we live in places too much value on competition and aggression. Science at its most exalted is a truthseeking endeavor, which encompasses the values of cooperation and communication, based on trust--trust in ourselves and in one another". (p315).
Frans De Waal: Primates and Philosophers; How Morality Evolved. Princeton University Press. Princeton. New Jersey (2006). "Seeking the origin of human morality not in evolution but in human culture, science insists that we are moral by choice, not by nature." (Inside cover). Morality has been caught in the old Nature v Nurture battles that have been discredited a long time ago. Evolution and human culture cannot be disentangled from one another. Biology shapes culture and culture shape biology. It is always and everywhere an interactive process. A necessary read. For additional commentary click HERE.
Dear Mr. President, On December 5, 1969, when you appointed me as National Chairman of the White House Conference on Children and Youth, you stated: Never has this White House Conference come at a time of greater national questioning. Long held attitudes on such subjects as family planning, pornography, health services, school curricula, sex education, family structure, drug abuse, moral standards, governance of higher education, responsiveness of government - all are now openly challenged and debated. The White House Conference can and will define problems, seek new knowledge, evaluate past success and failures, and outline alternative courses of action.
Stephen Hess National Chairman December 5,1969 For additional commentary click HERE.
46. April 1994: Publication of the "Report of the Panel on NIH Research on Antisocial, Aggressive, and Violence-Related Behaviors and their Consequences"
"Panel Meetings in June and September 1993. National Institutes of Heath. Bethesda, MD (Participant Dr J. W. Prescott, BioBehavioral Systems, San Diego, CA. He presented this testimony.)" For additional commentary click HERE.
47. Beauvoir, Simone de (1949.2009). The Second Sex. Alfred A. Knopf. GENDER EQUALITY OF REPRESENTATION IN THE WORLD
James W, Prescott, Ph.D. "There is a good principle that created order, light and man; and a bad principle that created chaos, darkness and woman." Pythagoras (circa 582-507 B.C.) (In Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949/2009). Gender Inequality has existed ever since human history has been written. Pythagoras has given a moral definition of being male and female that has set humanity and its civilizations on a collision course with the extinction of Homo sapiens. No species on this planet is as violent toward its females and her offspring than Homo sapiens. There is not a theistic religion on this planet that has affirmed the full equality of the feminine with the masculine, which has set in stone the perpetration of violence against women and her children. Prescott (1989,1995ab) has reviewed this history in essays: Genital Pain vs. Genital Pleasure:"Why The One and Not The Other?"; "Violence Against Women": "Philosophical and Religious Foundations of Gender Morality"; "OPINION: The challenge: achieve gender equality"; and "A Proposed Bodily Sovereignty Amendment To The U.S. Constitution." http://www.violence.de/prescott/truthseeker/genpl.html http://www.violence.de/prescott/women/article.h tmlhttp://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Gender.pdf http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Bodily_So vereignty_Amendment.pdf Simone de Beauvoirs The Second Sex originally published in France (1949) and recently reprinted in a new translation by Alfred A. Knopf (2009) is considered the authoritative translation of her work and the leading intellectual document of the feminist cultural movement. It is the foundation for restoring full
equality between man and woman that was lost with the passing of the hunter-gathers some 8,00010,000 years ago. ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY HERE
48. Prescott, J.W., Read. M.S., Coursin D.B. 1975. Brain Function and Malnutrition: Neuropsychological Methods of Assessment. John Wily, New York.
The published proceedings of a conference jointly sponsored by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development, NiH and the U.S, - Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program. Leading authorities in nutrition, brain development and quantitative electrophysiology describe improved methods for assessing neurological development by noninvasive electrophysiological techniques including EEG and cortical evoked potentials. The mathematics of signal processing technologies developed in the physical sciences intelligence community were demonstrated utilizing the brain as a signal generator to generate useful diagnostic quantitative criteria of brain impairment and quantitative measurements of normal brain development. Additional commentary HERE.
49. Doerr, Edd. and Prescott, James W. (Eds) (1989). Abortion Rights and Fetal "Personhood'. Americans For Religious Liberty. Silver Spring, MD and Centerline Press, Long Beach, CA.
The proceedings of this Conference reviewed the biological, neurobiological, cultural anthropological, sociological, legal and religiousbiblical evidence on the question of "Personhood" of the fetus. Principal findings include: 1) The Bible is silent on the issue of the morality of elective abortion. God the Father, Son, Holy Ghost and St. Paul all were silent on this question. No punishments were specified for the act of elective abortion. 2) Roman, British and American Constitutional Law has never recognized the fetus as a Person". The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly defines "All persons born"-- not the unborn-- as "citizens of the United States."
3) Neuromaturation of fetal brain: No neocortical synapses are seen earlier than 19 weeks of gestation. Beginning at perhaps 21 to 23 weeks of gestation there is a transition to a neocortex potentially in receipt of sensory input. The maturity of this interconnection is not realized until about 34-36 weeks of gestation, at which time the emergence of "Personhood" can be expected. See Figure 1 and http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/MJFlower.pdf http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S09609822%2811%2900885-2 4) Cross-cultural and psychometric studies: "In summary, "anti-choice" persons and cultures are characterized by: (a) an intolerance for the dignity, integrity, and life of the human body; (b) a high tolerance for and/or indifference toward human pain and suffering; (c) a lower value on nurturance of children and families; and (d) an anti-sexual pleasure ethic." http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/JWP-1989a.pdf An extended summary of this book can be found at: Fetal Personhood: Is An Acorn An Oak Tree?http://www.violence.de/prescott/truthseeker/acorn.html The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in flesh and is not endowed with sense - St Augustine. (In. Jane Hurst (1983).The History of Abortion In the Catholic Church" The Untold Story. Catholics For a Free Choice. Washington, DC. Additional commentary HERE.
50. Dennison, George C. and Milos, Marilyn Fayre (1997). Sexual Mutilations: A Human Tragedy.Plenum Press, New York. From the Preface
Sexual mutilation is a global problem that affects 15.3 million children and young adults annually. In terms of gender, 13.3 million boys and 2 million boys and 2 million girls are involuntarily subjected to sexual mutilation every year. While it is tempting to quantify and compare the amount of tissue removed from either gender, no ethical justification can be made for removing any amount of flesh from the body of another person. The violation of human rights, implicit in sexual mutilation is identical for any gender. The violation occurs with the first cut into another persons body. Additional commentary HERE.