Crying

Crying offers a kind of smorgasbord of just about everything known about human tears from the disciplines of anthropology, literature, psychology, philosophy, history, physiology, and biochemistry. Tom Lutz is generous with examples drawn from literature and art--topics that were poorly represented in prior, book-length studies of the subject--and he goes far beyond any of his predecessors in the ease and sophistication with which he presents contemporary ideas from biochemistry and physiology. It is unfortunate, however, that he should minimize his indebtedness to earlier studies of crying. There are at least two books that should have received more notice than they do: biochemist William H. Frey's Crying: The Mystery of Tears (1985), a book based on his research about adult crying behavior, is mentioned only in passing; and psychotherapist Jeffrey A. Kottler's The Language of Tears (1996), a study of crying that includes theoretical as well as descriptive material, is ridiculed as inspirational "pop" psychology. Lutz's dismissive tone seems unnecessary, since his own book is clearly in the tradition of these earlier studies as well as an improvement on both

Aesthetics · Art · Crying · Epistemology · History of psychology · Literature · Notice · Psychoanalysis · Sophistication · Subject (documents) · Tears · Tone (literature) · Computer Science · History · Infant Health and Development · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology