[6] In the early 1960s, the team of the neurosurgeon Joseph Bogen, the neuropsychologist Roger Sperry, and the "psychobiology" graduate student Michael Gazzaniga performed psychological experiments on patients who for medical treatment had undergone "split-brain surgery" which cuts the corpus callosum and thus severs the main link between the two sides of the brain known as the cerebral hemispheres.
"[10] In his book Of Two Minds Schiffer "enters the fray" by giving his research findings and implications of his theory of each person having a "dual brain."
"[12] The author writes that in 1995 he read about research by Werner Wittling which described a technique of how a movie could be shown just to one hemisphere in "intact," normal people – meaning in those who had not had "split-brain" surgery.
In the first three chapters, Schiffer discusses more recent "split-brain" studies, and studies in patients with intact brains using "lateralizing" devices (which first show an image to only one hemisphere), as well as other tests to assess brain activity such as the Wada test, electroencephalogram (EEG), PET scan and functional MRI scan.
The author writes that the "aim of dual-brain therapy is to mend the archaic, destructive ideas and emotions of the mind on the troubled side, to teach it that it is safer and more valuable than it learned during some traumatic experience.
"[4] In these chapters the author deals with cases of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), "nervous breakdown" (psychotic episode), cocaine addiction, and the psychological aspects of heart attack.
Here, in the first edition of his book from 1998, the author presents other scientific studies which he is planning to perform to evaluate "Dual-Brain Psychology."
The title in German is Eine Brille für die Seele: Die neue Dual-Brain-Psychologie und ihre Anwendung bei Ängsten, Konflikten und Belastungen ("Glasses for the Soul: The New Dual-brain Psychology and Its Application to Fears, Conflicts and Stress").