Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment - Hardcover

Berns, Gregory

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080507600X ISBN 13: 9780805076004

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2005

Synopsis

“A discussion that is meaty, contemporary and expansive . . . Berns artfully blends social critique with technical expertise.”—The Washington Post Book World

In a riveting narrative look at the brain and the power of novelty to satisfy it, Dr. Gregory Berns plumbs fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and evolutionary psychology to find answers to the fundamental question of how we can find a more satisfying way to think and live.

We join Berns as he follows ultramarathoners across the Sierra Nevadas, enters a suburban S&M club to explore the deeper connection between pleasure and pain, partakes of a truly transporting meal, and ultimately returns home to face the challenge of incorporating novelty into a long-term relationship.

In a narrative as compelling as its insights are trenchant, Satisfaction will convince you that the more complicated and even downright challenging a life you pursue, the more likely it is that you will be satisfied.

About this title

About the Author

Gregory Berns, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of
psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University. Profiled twice in the
Science section of The New York Times, Berns and his research have been featured in Forbes, the Los Angeles Times, Nature, Money, New Scientist, Psychology Today, and on CNN, NPR, ABC, and the BBC. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

Berns kicks off this thought-provoking exploration with a simple question, "What do humans want?" He challenges the belief that we are driven primarily to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Rather, Berns finds that "satisfaction comes less from the attainment of a goal and more in what you must do to get there." With a series of experiments using cutting-edge MRI scanning technology, he sees that the interaction of dopamine, the hormone secreted in the brain in anticipation of pleasure, and cortisol, the chemical released when we are under stress, produces the feelings people associate with satisfaction. Berns, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, ventures into the physical world to prove his thesis, looking at bruised and reddened s&m enthusiasts and ultramarathoners collapsing after a 100-mile run. The author then brings his journey home, confronting issues in his own marriage and the sexual dissatisfaction that so often plagues long-term relationships. His conclusion is simple and compelling: people are wired for novel experience, and when we seek it out, we are satisfied. This will be a highly satisfying read for anyone interested in what gets us out of bed in the morning day after day.
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Gregory Berns believes that the striatum, a tiny bit of tissue in the lower brain, holds the key to satisfaction in life. Berns, who teaches psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University, is interested in what motivates people to seek out novel experiences as a way to achieve satisfaction--a process, he says, controlled by the striatum. Yet it is surprising and disappointing that such a prolific researcher and author of scholarly articles has chosen to entertain readers with exploits rather than science. Only a few short sections of Satisfaction focus on his own work, so we get little understanding of how neuroscience is done. Explaining brain anatomy, chemistry and psychology to a general audience is a huge challenge--and one Berns does not really meet. Each chapter has a few pages of hard science but then describes at length a visit by Berns to an exotic location or an event that illustrates how people strive to meet extreme challenges as a way of attaining satisfaction. In one chapter, Berns flies to the Sierra Nevadas to observe ultramarathoners run for hours over mountain trails, which he then uses to write about brain metabolism and exhaustion. His other trips--to a volcano in Iceland and to a sadism and masochism club near his home in Atlanta, for example--follow the same pattern. These jaunts reach a high (or low) point when he ends up in a Long Island, N.Y., kitchen, his feet immersed in warm lemon juice and fennel, waiting for a chocolate cake to come out of the oven--as the chef reads Jorge Luis Borges's poetry to him in Spanish. The final chapter is somewhat embarrassing. Berns confesses that while he has jetted around he has left his wife at home with few sources of adult stimulation and two toddlers. In addition, he complains that their sex life has become routine. He finds a solution in the sexual crucible, a program developed by a Colorado marital therapist. The result is a night of lovemaking that pleases him in a way that he equates with an ultramarathoner's high. Some readers may fall in love with Berns's quests for novelty; others may fi nd no satisfaction here.

Jonathan Beard

A university research psychiatrist, Berns here combines neuroscience with a series of personal adventures to find out what gives people satisfaction. Infinite may be the range of human behavior, from the depraved to the noble, but to the extent behavior reflects striving for satisfaction, Berns summarizes the matter in one word: novelty. Easily bored, people seem to naturally want more of whatever interests them, but where does this drive come from? The clinical aspect of Berns' answer takes readers into the brain stem, specifically the striatum, which produces the neurotransmitter dopamine. Implicated in the sensation of pleasure, dopamine is also, paradoxically, involved in feeling pain, which may be why some people intentionally seek pain, such as at a sadomasochism club he visits or a 100-mile marathon he attends. Berns also entered a crossword contest, ate a meal cooked by a master chef, and spent an evening with an Icelandic storyteller. Readers interested in psychology will find Berns to be accessible, insightful, and comradely. Gilbert Taylor
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There is no reason to think that the pleasures of sex would be completely spared the fate of the hedonic treadmill. Familiarity leads to boredom, and with it the incessant reduction of all pleasures that can threaten the sexual glue binding many couples together. While novelty is a sure-fire way of creating great experiences, the belief that matrimonial harmony depends on stability, fidelity, and constancy stands in direct opposition to this. As in everything related to satisfaction, and perhaps also relationships, the tension between what is predictable and safe versus what is novel and dangerous, is constantly being played out.

Satisfaction—that state of blessed contentment, mystical enlightenment, tranquility, a sense of something beyond your own existence—is ephemeral at best. Everything I have encountered inside the lab and out in the world suggests that satisfaction is not the same as either pleasure or happiness, and that searching for happiness will not necessarily lead to satisfaction. It is in the quest for satisfaction that you find it; within any quest you encounter novelty and your brain changes as a result. Novelty can take you far, but like everything, it too is subject to habituation, and the risks associated with pursuing novelty for its own sake may be substantial. How, for example, can you incorporate it into a long-term relationship?

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080507600X
• ISBN 13: 9780805076004
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304