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In this first and definitive book on the psychology of smell, neuroscientist Rachel Herz traces the importance of smell in our lives, from nourishment to procreation to our relationships with the people closest to us and the world. Smell was the very first sense to evolve and is located in the same part of the brain that processes emotion, memory, and motivation. To our ancestors, the sense of smell wasn't just important, it was crucial to existence and it remains so today. Our emotional, physical, even sexual lives are profoundly shaped by both our reactions to and interpretations of different smells.
Herz examines the role smell plays in our lives, and how this most essential of senses is imperative to our well-being, investigating how our sense of smell functions, what purpose it serves, and shows how inextricably it is linked to our survival. She introduces us to people who have lost their ability to smell and shows how their experiences confirm this sense's importance by illuminating the traumatic effect its loss has on the quality of day-to-day living. Herz illustrates how profoundly scent and the sense of smell affect our daily lives with numerous examples and personal accounts based on her years of research.
For anyone who has ever wondered about human nature or been curious about the secrets of both the body and the mind, The Scent of Desire is a fascinating, down-to-earth tour of the psychology and biology of our most neglected sense, the sense of smell.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
November 21, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
- ISBN: 9780061852992
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780061852992
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780061852992
- File size: 1027 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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August 27, 2007
Herz, a Brown University professor specializing in the psychology of smell, demonstrates that this sense is vital to our well being—so important to mental and physical health that its loss can drive some people to suicide. Herz explores the relationships between scent, emotion and behavior, emphasizing that scent is an important component of sexual attraction and thus crucial for the survival of our species. Many intriguing facts enliven her book. For example, scents are intimately connected to memory and can be used as memory aids; olfaction shuts down while we are asleep; newborns and their mothers recognize each other by their scent. Herz debunks the mystique of aromatherapy, which she says is effective because of our emotional associations with scents rather than because of any direct action of the scent. Emerging technologies of scent, such as electronic noses that can sniff out terrorists, breath analyzers that can detect diseases and marketing theories based on scents, are given a chapter, but Herz admits that she would rather see the development of technologies to restore the sense of smell to people who have lost it, because for her, scent “is essential to our humanity.” This illuminating book argues convincingly that the sense of smell should never be taken for granted.
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