Books that shaped me… Janice Hiller

Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions.
New York: Oxford University Press.

First on my list has to be Jaak Panksepp's thorough yet very readable textbook on the brain systems underpinning emotional states. Reading Panksepp introduced me to the emotional-limbic brain from which sexual feelings emerge, the biological nature of sexual drives and love, brain masculinisation, oxytocin and vasopressin, and much more.

This book was inspiring, and an excellent source of information when I was researching biopsychosocial development for a chapter in an earlier co-edited book, 2006's Sex, Mind and Emotion. At the time I was a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and head of a Sexual and Relationship service at Goodmayes Hospital, and I was always keen to bring new concepts into individual and couple work. Following up on the footnotes and references provided a wealth of fascinating ideas about neuroscience and couple relationships, and the human condition, which motivated me to write two journal articles on neurobiology and sexual behaviour.

Fisher, H.E. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. New York: Henry Holt.

In 2012 I was offered a role as an academic tutor in psychosexual studies with Tavistock Relationships, so, after many years in the NHS, I decided it was time to leave and pursue an academic route. Part of the TR job was running annual psychosexual conferences, and I also had to deliver a series of one-day training events. Neurobiology and Sexual Desire was one of the topics. This gave me the opportunity to read more widely about neuroscience and relationships.

Previously, I had found the work of Helen Fisher and her team in 2001, when I was asked to teach romantic relationships to clinical psychology trainees at UCL. Fisher is an anthropologist who has extensively researched and written about the neurochemistry of romantic love. This book describes romantic love as a primary emotion-motivation system in the human brain, with the function of energising and directing behaviour, rather than as solely an emotion. Fisher's research also discovered the three brain systems of lust, attraction and attachment. These systems can function separately but also interact together, and this concept helps to explain some of the complexities of human romantic relationships.

Fisher has published many journal articles, but her 2004 book captures the approach and methodology really well. Every seminar and training day at TR on Neurobiology and Sexual Desire was very well attended – although neuroscience is a complex topic – so it was clear that there was a real interest in the subject. During the five years I spent delivering seminars and teaching events at TR, I carried on reading the literature and updating the content of these talks.

Brizendine, L. (2006). The Female Brain. London: Bantam.

Luann Brizendine is a psychiatrist, neurobiologist and also a clinician, so her book on the female brain is full of illuminating case examples as well as research. This book adds another level of understanding to relationships, by describing how brain chemistry changes over the various life stages that women go through. Brizendine also focuses on some differences in the neural pathways between women and men, and how this impacts relationships. Each chapter brings together the underlying neurobiology with the specific developmental phases experienced by women, from birth through to the mature brain.

Brizendine repeated the format of The Female Brain with a companion book, 2010's The Male Brain. As with her previous book, Brizendine addresses relationship and sexual problems over the male life course and includes clinical examples. There are some really interesting details about how the new father's neural pathways change after the birth of his baby, and how parent-infant synchrony can emerge from physical touch and play. 

Both Brizendine's books illustrate the differences and similarities between women and men on the level of the neural correlates of emotional needs and responses in relationships. These two books are a great read for anyone wanting to know more about how and why they respond to a partner, and the issues facing couples over time.

Damasio, A.R. (2000). The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness. New York: Random House.

I wanted to understand more about conscious awareness, which is significant in all forms of therapy but has a particular role in couple work. This is because a central theme in relationships is our ability to manage emotional states in the context of the dynamic between ourselves and a partner.

Damasio, a neurologist, provides a detailed description of how conscious awareness is represented in the brain. His work outlines the ways in which discrete brain systems produce the variety of human emotional responses that contribute to our complex behaviour patterns, and to our unique sense of self. Damasio's view of the connection between emotions and feelings has been very helpful for understanding how we respond to the context in which experiences occur. Whereas Panksepp described brain/mind interactions, Damasio's work is also about brain/body feedback along the multiple pathways that, together, manage our essential homeostatic regulation.

Cozolino, L. (2017). The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social Brain. New York: W. W. Norton.

After leaving TR in 2017, I decided to put what I had learnt through teaching neuroscience, love, and sex to good use by writing a journal article. My idea was to trace the neurobiological underpinnings of various stages of relationships, rather than the phases of the individual's life course. However, there was a large amount of new research, so the article eventually turned into a book. 

To find out more about how neuroscience can be applied to psychotherapeutic practice, I turned to Cozolino's textbook, which gives a wealth of information on this topic, although he does not include a specific focus on sex or intimate relationships. Cozolino links successful psychotherapy of all kinds to the co-construction of narratives between therapists and clients. His explanation is that these narratives support neural network integration by combining feelings, emotion, knowledge and behaviour to promote healing. 

Of significance to relationship work, Cozolino views meaningful relationships as creating shared narratives which can resculpt the brain's neural networks. This thesis provided the missing pieces for my attempts to understand the links between psychosexual therapy, neuroscience, and intimate relationships and gave me the confidence to complete my own book. 

Although Sex in the Brain (2024) is based on empirical studies, each chapter includes case examples to show how knowledge from neuroscience can be used in clinical work. Neuropsychosexual is a term I have introduced to include the role of neural pathways in a psychological approach to working with sexual and relationship difficulties.

Read an abridged chapter from Sex in the Brain by Janice Hiller.