LUNAR EFFECT: Biological Tides and Human Emotions

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 1978

Miami psychiatrist Arnold Lieber has written a lunar gusher of lore and livid examples of lunacy, love, and assorted phenomena which presumably peak according to phases of the moon. He begins with a statistical tabulation of violent attacks leading to murder which show peaks at new or full moon--or a few days later, depending on latitude. Indeed the latitude is very wide in Lieber's book. He is an enthusiast for ""cosmobiology""--a new field dealing with various possible interactions between humans and cosmic forces. Lieber's theory is that just as ocean tides are high at full or new moon, so, too, are the fluids of the body pulled by lunar gravity and that these inner tides affect membrane permeability, blood pressure, neurotransmitters, etc. Most of us can swing with the changes (which become even stronger at times of lunar perigee or lunar eclipse) but the susceptible are likely to be unhinged. Such a hypothesis should lend itself to physiological experiment but Lieber does not indicate such a research approach. Instead, there is an enormous potpourri of tie-ins--to post-Freudian sex-and-aggression themes, astrology, Jungian racial memory, Graves' White Goddess, Ornstein's studies of consciousness (for left and right hemisphere read sun and moon), biorhythms and biological clocks. For example: ""The association of the pull of the Moon with sexual and aggressive drives, formed when animals first emerged from the sea to the land, would easily have been linked, eons later, with the aggressive behavior of the wolf."" Easily? Well, well, despite the pulling out of all stops, Lieber manages to write a reasonably sober concluding chapter with cautionary statements and scientific earnestness. The brew served up before, however, will be far too fizzy for rational readers.

Pub Date: July 21, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Anchor/Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1978

Categories: NONFICTION