The Principle of Humanity: Why We Are by Nature

What makes a person a person - a book about the most important secret of evolutionary success. Neurobiologists around the world are increasingly talking about the so-called "social brain". The conclusion: we are originally geared not towards selfishness and competition, but towards cooperation and responsiveness. The brain encourages successful cooperation by producing substances that create positive emotions and a good sense of well-being. Joachim Bauer: "The best drug for a person is a person." "Great success!" Heiko Ernst. Psychology Today. The essence of any motivation lies in interpersonal communication, in respecting the value of the individual, and in the ability to love and be loved. Everything we do in our daily lives is directly or indirectly determined by our desire to establish or maintain social connections. A prolonged disruption or loss of relationships can lead to the "collapse" of motivational systems. Then - and only then - aggression is born. Joachim Bauer not only describes how our "social brain" functions, but also vividly demonstrates to the reader how its functioning affects people's lives - from raising children to professional communication and issues of war and peace. Based on the latest results of neurological research, this book paints a picture of a person psychologically oriented towards cooperation and engages in debate with sociobiological views, such as the popular assertions of Richard Dawkins. Joachim Bauer extends this new approach to all of biology: genes are also anything but selfish. The deep driving force of all living things is not the "war of nature" postulated by Darwin. The main driving forces of nature are cooperation, mirroring, and resonance.

Joachim Bauer is a professor of medicine and a psychotherapist. He defended doctoral dissertations in therapy and psychiatry. For his research in the field of neurobiology, he was awarded the prestigious prize of the German Society for Biological Psychiatry in 1996. The author works at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine of the University Hospital in Freiburg. In addition to numerous articles, he published in 2002 the book "Das Gedaechtnis des Koerpers. Wie Beziehungen und Lebensstile unsere Gene steuern" ("The Memory of the Body. How Relationships and Lifestyles Control Our Genes"), and in 2005, the popular book "Warum ich fuehle, was du fuehlst. Intuitive Kommunikation und das Geheimnis der Spiegelneurone" ("Why I Feel What You Feel. Intuitive Communication and the Secret of Mirror Neurons") was published by Hoffmann und Campe.