The Essential Difference: Male And Female

Brains And The Truth About Autism by Simon

Baron-Cohen

Free download audio book.

Original Title: The Essential Difference

ISBN: 046500556X
ISBN13: 9780465005567
Autor: Simon Baron-Cohen
Rating: 4.3 of 5 stars (3961) counts
Original Format: Paperback, 288 pages
Download Format: PDF, DJVU, iBook, MP3.
Published: August 18th 2004 / by Basic Books / (first published 2003)
Language: English
Genre(s):
Psychology- 39 users
Nonfiction- 24 users
Science- 23 users
Gender- 8 users
Biology >Neuroscience- 5 users

Description:

We all know the opposite sex can be a baffling, even infuriating, species. Why do most men use
the phone to exchange information rather than have a chat? Why do women love talking about
relationships and feelings with their girlfriends while men seem drawn to computer games, new
gadgets, or the latest sports scores? Does it really all just come down to our upbringing? In The
Essential Difference, leading psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen confirms what most of us had
suspected all along: that male and female brains are different. This groundbreaking and
controversial study reveals the scientific evidence (present even in one-day-old babies) that
proves that female-type brains are better at empathizing and communicating, while male brains
are stronger at understanding and building systems-not just computers and machinery, but
abstract systems such as politics and music. Most revolutionary of all, The Essential Difference
also puts forward the compelling new theory that autism (and its close relative, Asperger's
Syndrome) is actually an example of the extreme male brain. His theory can explain why those
who live with this condition are brilliant at analyzing the most complex systems yet cannot relate to
the emotional lives of those with whom they live. Understanding our essential difference, Baron-
Cohen concludes, may help us not only make sense of our partners' foibles, but also solve one of
the most mysterious scientific riddles of our time.

About Author:

Simon Baron-Cohen FBA is Professor of Developmental psychopathology at the University of

Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He is the Director of the University's Autism Research Centre,
and a Fellow of Trinity College. He has worked on autism, including the theory that autism involves
degrees of mind-blindness (or delays in the development of theory of mind) and his later theory
that autism is an extreme form of what he calls the "male brain", which involved a re-
conceptualisation of typical psychological sex differences in terms of empathising-systemising
theory.

Other Editions:

- The Essential Difference: Men, Women And The Extreme Male Brain (Paperback)

- The Essential Difference: The Truth About The Male And Female Brain (Hardcover)

- The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain. (Paperback)
- The Essential Difference (Paperback)

- The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain (Penguin Press Science)

Books By Author:

- The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty

 - Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind

- Autism and Asperger Syndrome

- Autism: The Facts

- Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Cognitive

Neuroscience

Books In The Series:

Related Books On Our Site:

 - The Other Side of Normal: How Biology Is Providing the Clues to Unlock the
Secrets of Normal and Abnormal Behavior

- Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain

- The EFT Manual

- Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding

- The Evolution of Human Sexuality

- The Last Eunuch Of China

- Brain Gender

- The Psychopath's Bible: For the Extreme Individual

 - A Regular Guy: Growing Up With Autism

- Shock of Gray: The Aging of the World's Population and How it Pits Young
Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation
Against Nation

- The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children--and Its
Aftermath

- The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation

 - A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of
the Brain

- Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms
and Cultures

- Developing Talents: Careers for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome and

High-Functioning Autism

- Autism: Explaining the Enigma

 - Strange Brains and Genius: The Secret Lives Of Eccentric Scientists And
Madmen

- The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy-and What We

Can Do to Get Happier

Rewiews:

Feb 11, 2016

Robert
Rated it: did not like it
Shelves: science, non-fiction, autism, biology
This may end up being another lengthy review, so here's the headline:
THIS BOOK IS INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST
Having said that I had better justify my claim pretty quickly. The primary problem is that in
presenting his thesis the author extensively cherry-picks the evidence. Supporting evidence is
discussed at length. Contrary evidence is minimised in two way. Firstly on some occasions it is
simply not mentioned at all. Secondly, if mentioned it is not discussed in detail and not referenced
so one c
This may end up being another lengthy review, so here's the headline:
THIS BOOK IS INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST
Having said that I had better justify my claim pretty quickly. The primary problem is that in
presenting his thesis the author extensively cherry-picks the evidence. Supporting evidence is
discussed at length. Contrary evidence is minimised in two way. Firstly on some occasions it is
simply not mentioned at all. Secondly, if mentioned it is not discussed in detail and not referenced
so one cannot look it up for one's self either. Twice the author says, "There is counter evidence
but let's assume I'm right anyway." Cherry picking of results in this way allows the reader no
opportunity to fairly assess whether the author has a sound scientific case or not.
The author also indulges in a chapter on "evolutionary speculations." Now, whilst admitting that
they are speculations a couple of times, what the author is doing here is making up plausible
stories to justify his position, then using a few anthropological studies to back him up somewhat.
Again, there is no presentation of any counter-arguments that might exist. The chapter appears
simply in order to act as what Daniel Dennett describes as an "intuition pump." That is an attempt
at rhetorical persuasion, rather than scientific discussion. The kind of approach we are talking
about is rife in socio-biology - a field so derided by other scientists for its total lack of rigour that it
changed its name to evolutionary psychology, in order to carry on being allowed to waste public
research funding. The fundamental trouble with this type of evolutionary Just So Story is that just
about any educated person with a little imagination can come up with one to cover just about any
hypothesis about human psychology you care to name. The whole approach has become so
laughable that there has even been a competition in a popular science magazine to invent the
silliest example.
The author also uses a technique of mixing illustrative examples, case-studies, anecdotal
evidence and actual scientific results in a manner that requires careful concentration in order to
keep them all apart and know what's explanatory and what's evidence. (There is also an entire
chapter devoted to a case study of a mathematician with Asperger's Syndrome and speculations
that Paul Dirac and Albert Einstein also had AS. This appears to be just padding to make the book
longer.) To give an egregious example of this sort of thing, in endeavouring to persuade the reader
that the male bias in STEM jobs is due to innate sex differences, the author trots out three
professors he knows who aren't biased in their selection process. This is supposed to counter all
the research on the subject that says there is selection bias and that it occurs in schools and my
personal anecdotal evidence of appalling sexism in academia. Another example: male
suppression of emotion (particularly crying) is innate essentially because he says so, despite the
abundant evidence that there is cultural variation regarding this, both now and historically.
The author has a hypothesis that autism is caused by having an "extreme male brain." His
approach to this idea goes as follows: Take every observed behaviour/task where women
statistically out-perform men. Define all these tasks as empathy/empathising. Take all the
observed behaviour/tasks where men statistically out-perform women. Define all these tasks as
"systemising" (which appears little distinguishable from STEM). Now define a person who is good
at "empathising" (in quotes because it's a gigantic extension of the concept you'll find in the
dictionary) as having a "female brain." Similarly define a "male brain" as being good at
"systemising." Cherry-pick the evidence that these differences are biologically innate to the sexes.
Next say, people with autism behave in a manner consistent with having an extreme case of the
"male brain." Here comes the really horrendous and scary part of the book: The theory doesn't
work. It doesn't explain all the symptoms generally associated with AS or classical autism. In order
to get it to work the author says we should re-define one of the major areas of autistic behavioural
difference so that the hypothesis fits and totally ignores the area of sensory differences between
autistic and neurotypical people. This is a massive dis-service to people with autism. Instead of
making an honest attempt to understand the condition, the author is attempting to bend the very
defnition of it to his will so that it fits his hypothesis: I'm being used to further his career. This is
utterly disgusting. And we're taking about the head of the Cambridge Autism Research Centre
here; he must be influential.
I would like to think that the above described crimes are confined to this book. They aren't. Modern
popular science publishing is rife with books that are trying to sell you the author's pet theory and
are not doing so honestly. If you read this type of thing I strongly advise you to use the utmost
scepticism when you are reading and to watch out for the techniques described here. It's as if the
authors of such books don't believe scientific ethics (which boil down to scrupulous honesty about
the strengths and weaknesses of ones work and what one did) don't apply in the popular science
arena. Not only is this false, but when one is talking to potentially scientifically naive people, the
onus is on the scientist to attempt to help them understand how to make their own fair assessment
of the evidence.
Non-scientific criticisms of the book include: it's padded. It's patronising in tone, especially early
on.
I could append here a lengthy discussion of the question of whether there are innate psychological
differences between the sexes but this review is probably alarmingly long already. Suffice to say
that there are some cross-cultural, repeatable statistical differences between males and females in
performance on certain tests. These results, scientifically, require an explanation. An honest one,
not driven by egotistical attempts to further one's reputation or by PC ideology.
Again, I could append my views on where autism research should go but I will confine myself to
one point: Many people who have an autism diagnosis complain of extreme sensitivity to certain
sensory stimuli; these could be specific noises, bright lights, types of touch stimulus or specific
smells. These make some people's lives miserable and restricted. Nothing in the "extreme male
brain" hypothesis explains why this should be the case. There are very few therapies to help with
these problems and they have limited efficacy. Very little research is being done on it by anybody,
but is the leading problem autistic people able to express an opinion want help with.
22 likes
19 comments