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 “Inner and outer narratives here, as everywhere, must fuse” (79). I think this is the key. A person with Tourette’s, schizophrenia, brain damage…we need to find out how to bring the dissociation of the self back together.

I feel a bit dissociative myself at the moment…did you ever feel like you were having one of those moments were you were in a dream? Both of the readings were powerful, a bit selfishly. I almost could not believe what I was reading. First…Greg’s story sounded so familiar to a personal experience I had with my youngest brother who had a brain tumor, and then encephalitis. My brother experienced similar temporal lobe and frontal lobe damage to Greg. My brother was also blind but refused to believe that he no longer could see and we repeatedly had him evaluated by eye doctors just to make sure. I also found it fascinating when Sacks explains about diencephalon damage in regards to appetite, as four days a week for ten months, I brought my brother pizza for lunch, reminding him to eat (diencephalon) and also reminding him that it was his “favorite” food (temporal lobe). Ok, so, then I read the next article, and I’m reading along and I stop dead in my tracks. Not only did I meet another woman with NF recently (the disease my brother had), the next article I am reading talks about a patient with Neurofibromatosis. Now, you must understand this is not something that is brought up in my conversations. So, on the topic of tacit knowledge…did you ever just know you were suppose to be just where you were at the time you were there in life for a reason but could not really explain why?

Ok, some thoughts specifically about the first reading. Throughout the reading, I could not help but think about Greg’s understanding of his own sight and how he viewed the world. It was obvious that his “meaning” of sight was completely different then someone who is not blind, but who is to say he did not experience his own meaning of sight that is perfectly NORMAL for him? I wonder, since Greg was able to understand his father’s absence after his death, (implicitly, through other objects), if he was ever able to understand the meaning of his blindness in “seeing people’s” sense of the word?

Another topic I kept wondering about throughout the reading was the connection of other types of traumas to the brain, especially to the frontal lobes, such as ongoing psychological abuse, i.e. sexual, verbal, emotional,  and how this can effect changes in the brain functioning. I am especially interested in patients with DID, so, Prof. Dalke or Prof. Grobstein, if you have any good info on this, please let me know! I am signing off...maybe my brain can get some much needed rest…