Mental Health and the Bipartite Brain

Sorry for the delay in posting...missed last week's class so excuse me if I repeat something!

 

The conversation is very interesting. I am currently reading a book called Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious. The author, Gerd Gigerenzer, interviews a judge on the subject of intuition or "gut feelings, hunches" and the judge responds by acknowledging that he will follow his own intuition but that he does not find the unconscious knowledge of others legitimate. I find this nteresting as we will trust our own thoughts, reality but not those of others, which led me to think about defining a mental "health" "illness" definition. Is it actually even possible to define when we cannot trust what others offer from their unconcsious thought such as intuition? And then I thought about certain mental "illnesses" already defined, such as the disorders involving delusions or hallucinations. How do we know these are simply not intuitions manifesting themselves?

Anyway, I did not go to the site on collective conscious yet, but the first thing my mind jumps to when I hear the term "collective conscious" is Hitler or Hiroshima...not sure why.

 Missed you all last week and look forward to seeing you tonight..

Meredith

This was my second encounter with Dr. Grobstein’s story of the bipartite brain.  What struck me, on this occasion, was the possibility of the I-function influencing the tacit knowledge.  That by some mechanism, the unconscious can be communicated with, controlled, or even modified. 

I think I have been trying to modify my unconscious understanding with respect to my sport, horseback riding, for some time.  When I am approaching an obstacle or jump on my horse, I unconsciously ask her to move up, or increase her impulsion and lengthen her stride.  This is entirely unnecessary, she is perfectly capable of clearing 3’ obstacles from a slow, lopey pace.  Why do I do it then?  Because my older horse, does require those signals in order to correctly clear a jump.  Sending those specific signals to my horse has become a habit for me. 

However, with out my trainer, or photographs showing me, I am completely unaware of these movements on my part.  How do I fix an undesirable unconscious habit?   As I approach each jump, I attempt to think, consciously, about sitting still and supporting my horse in order to keep our pace steady.  Starting to see some success this way.  Therefore, I do think it is possible for the conscious to affect significant change in the unconscious.  However, in the absence of active conscious thinking, I still sometimes, relapse. 

 

I do like the idea of the triune brain but I'm not sure if I buy it. Where is this third part, this preconscious? Where does it exist? In our memory or lack thereof? I suppose what I like about the bipartite brain is that I feel like I can see it. There is an action/reaction structure that I find satisfying. I won't discount the importance of this social function or the need for talk therapy, I have seen first hand how useful it can be. I just don't understand WHERE this bridge between  the conscious and tacit knowledge exists. As we do more and more research we begin to understand how much behaviour is tacit and how much of say, Freud's story for example, is obselete. It is unnecessarily complicated perhaps when it doesn't need to be.

As for tacit knowledge, I am a big fan of this being the 'unconscious' we so often discuss. Lets take something like flirting for example. All of us know how to do it (to varying degrees of success) but certainly no one has taught us how. This is just one of many examples. We talk about a shared consciousness but I think, the story that is more useful perhaps, is the idea of a shared tacit knowledge (or unconscious if you like that word). We are linked more closely by what we do without realising than anything else.

Psychoanalytic Therapy Wins Backing

I apologize if this is either irrelevant or redundant; I haven’t yet read others’ posts…

Walt Whitman wrote, in stanza 51 of the poem Song of Myself:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/logr/log_026.html


This notion of “containing multitudes” is one, for me, that gives texture and meaning to experience, to life, to interactions. I think that multiple “realities” are necessary in order to truly conceptualize the breadth of human experience, both to reconcile conflict within oneself and to understand similarities and differences in perceptions amongst people. In my thinking, “reality” is not a singular, knowable, “thing,” but rather a collection of unknowable things. The level of uncertainty about what is “real” is made less daunting and lonely based upon an understanding that while there is little that can be “known” there is much knowledge that can be shared. Even if we map out the entire brain and understand what each and every “box” within it does and from which boxes behaviors originate, randomness always exists and behaviors that defy “laws” persist. As such, our best guess must be one that is inclusive, not exclusive and one that enables a maximum number of people to thrive. Furthermore, more stories need to be included in the story of "truth," and/or our culturally accepted, perhaps implictly and not explicitly known, version of "truth" or "reality" needs to be extended, so more "truths" are incorporated. If we are all our own storytellers, perhaps with multiple versions of a story, sometimes which are conflicting, why are we not better at listening to our own stories or communicating them to others? On the flip side, perhaps, given the variation in individual stories, we are excellent at it and should congratulate ourselves for reconciling so many differing stories with as much harmony as we do.

Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and anthropologist writes of “illness as narrative” and speaks to his observation that in certain cultures, particularly Chinese and East Asian, mental “illness” more often manifests as physical illness. And, thus, illness, both mental and physical, can be viewed as a story that the body, the mind of the sick person is telling. It is the physical manifestation, perhaps, of the unconscious. Here is an interview with Kleinman from 2006: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/07/23/qa_with_arthur_kleinman/?page=2

Are we making ourselves more "sick" in some ways becaue of the types of stories our culture tells about illness? Maybe not "more" sick, but sick in different ways?

Jung talks about a “collective unconscious” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconscious
Which he held to be “objective.” Whether or not it is “objective,” is there some shared experience that is a “human” experience? I mean not to set humans apart from other organisms particularly, but for the purpose of extending the notion of our individual stories into some sort of tapestry of stories that may, in fact, be interwoven. Perhaps this is something to celebrate and not to fear. Perhaps, from an extension of shared experience or shared knowledge can come a shared understanding, rather than alienation from "self" and others.

Finally, when we dream, does our unconscious seeps into our conscious? http://www.ondreaming.com/
This site has a gallery of drawings, paintings, etc. based upon dreams people had that they submitted, along with accompanying interpretations of the dreams. I found some of them very interesting and wanted to share it, for those interested. If, according to the schematic Professor Grobstein showed us in class, the unconscious is far bigger than the “I-Function” in size, yes, but also in its boundaries, what is the interplay between the conscious and “tacit knowledge?” How and when is information exchanged and is a disconnect between the two manifest as “illness?”

What I left class being most intrigued by was the difference between Professor Grobstein's bipartite brain and the alternative tripartite brain theory, mostly because I think in many (maybe even most) ways the two models are actually very similar.
In the tripartite model (from the explanation in class) there is one realm of human function that is conscious, one that is unconscious, and one that can be unconscious but can also be accessed by the conscious mind if it so desires (the preconscious). Prof Grobstein's model on the other hand has the conscious and unconscious as the only two realms within the brain/mind, but they are connected by arrows going in opposite directions: the unconscious affects the conscious (the more obvious and easily agreed upon principle) but also the conscious effects the unconscious. Like the tripartite model, then, this certainly leaves open the possibility that if the conscious brain wants to become aware of something in the unconscious, it can. To me however, there is a difference in the limits of the two models; two-way arrows leave open the possibility that with enough conscious effort (perhaps to the level of meditation or something similar) the ability of the conscious mind to influence the unconscious is limitless. Is it a theoretical possibility that someone could eventually be able to make all of their unconscious functions accessible to the conscious when it desires them? In the tripartite model, the line between the preconscious and the unconscious answers this question: no, at some point, some functions can only ever be unconscious. But in Professor Grobstein’s model, is this a theoretical possibility? (Professor Grobstein?)
In applying this question to mental health, the tripartite brain then says that at some (very real) point people’s attempts to control their actions are futile – the conscious mind simply cannot expand its power further. However the bipartite model doesn’t necessarily have such a problem. It allows us to say yes, the large part of our actions may be unconscious, but that does not mean we cannot learn to be conscious of them and thus consciously change the unconscious.  

I can relate to the basketball player example from class- where, before she shoots, she tries to get out of her own head, in a way- trying to get out of her awareness, and her consciousness, to a place where she can focus without being so overly stimulated and aware. I try to do this when I play tennis, except a lot of the time, I end up failing. I've always tried to be able to find the key, the distinguishing factor, or factors, that result in either a successful escape, or a trapped, overly aware conscious. It's when I become aware that I need to escape that I know I'm already in trouble, and maybe that's a general part of the awareness part of the conscious. 

 I think different people have different resting states, with different measures of how aware and conscious of the world around them that they are in general. I think one of the biggest problems I have is being too aware and too involved in every little thing that goes on around me. Someone suggested that I read about the 'highly sensitive person', an innate sensitiveness.  I'm not sure I buy into the whole Jung personality types fully, but it is interesting. Do those of us, with such active conscious', have more trouble reaching down into what is unconscious? I wonder if you need all the noise and all the distraction to stop, in order to see what lies beneath and beyond?