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We were stumbling a bit in our class today (my theory is that we shouldn't have started this section on the brain w/ two 'authoritative' lectures...it took us too long to realize that we had brains ourselves, and could speak w/ authority about our own experience!)...until I asked everyone to describe their brain, metaphorically. Then we started cooking!

My brain is a
"a wrinkly thing" (a cauliflower)
the sea
a puppet master
a movie
a giant jawbreaker (i.e.: unending layers...)
chocolate ("too much of it makes me sick")
an organ
a magical machine
a controller
a Doppelgänger
a cage
my best friend
a (very messy) Victorian house, w/ an attic and a basement, both crammed  full....

Then we tried to organize these impressions of our brains into two parts; in consciousness we placed the
questioner
machine
"a daytime movie"
"can't turn it off," and
"can be trusted."
In the unconscious we placed
the sea
"a nighttime movie"
magic
"unpredictable"
the puppet master (there was some debate about where to place this...also: if my brain is a puppet master, then what am I? the puppet??).

Discussion, thereafter, was fascinating. There was testimony of things our brains knew that "we" didn't (where is the self, if not in the brain?); of being surprised (for example) by panic attacks, when "we thought" everything was fine; one of us said that she felt her brain had "betrayed" her...

I think there's lots more to come, where all this came from....