In this first chapter of Part II, we switch register and examine the way biological thinking is merging and melding with the project of human improvement. Here, we review recent policy, tracing the ways in which neuroscience, in particular, has been invoked to relocate an older moral project on the high hard ground of scientific rationality. The previous chapter reviewed the fields of biological psychiatry and examined the potential impact of a neuro-developmental thought style. We argued that, for all its sound and fury, surprisingly few killer insights have been produced. In this chapter, we explore the emergence of a preventive mindset in social policy: if only we could get things right in the first few years of life, madness, badness and all manner of vexing social problems, including poverty, would be effectively nipped in the bud. In chapter one, we referred to Valentine, Valentine et al's (1975) critique of the theory of sociogenic brain damage. Despite such critique, the idea of impairment to the infant brain has proved appealing and very hard-wearing to politicians, policy makers, academics and reformers of both conservative and liberal mindsets, as it promises to explain intergenerational social disadvantage. It has been a potent myth.

The Valentines’ trenchant objections to the thesis of sociogenic brain damage, and its associated theology, took place at a time when neuroscientific understandings of the impacts of environment on brain development were alluringly novel. Since the 1970s, there has been an explosion of brain science and, as we have noted, it is now exerting a strong influence on mainstream social policy. Significant use of neuroscientific evidence is being made to warrant claims about the irreversible vulnerabilities of early childhood and the proper responses of the State. There is a particular emphasis on the promotion of ‘targeted early intervention’ to enhance the lives of disadvantaged children. Sociogenic brain damage is back in the technicolour, bewitching detail of fMRI imagery. The ‘damaged’ infant brain, or rather the promise of social improvement implied by the optimisation of its development, is popular across the political gamut.