Beyond the Conscious Mind: Unlocking the Secrets of the Self

299 Pages·1996·8.217 MB·English

by  Thomas R. Blakeslee (auth.)

Beyond the
Conscious
Mind
Unlocking the
Secrets of the Self
Beyond the
Conscious
Mind
Unlocking the
Secrets of the Self
THOMAS R. BLAKESLEE
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
On file
ISBN 978-0-306-45262-8 ISBN 978-1-4899-4533-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-4533-4
© Thomas R. Blakeslee 1996
Originally published by Plenum Press New York in 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996
10987654321
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
Preface
In
the fifteen years since I wrote The Right Brain (Dou
bleday, 1980), I have marveled at the practical value of
better understanding the physical basis of the mind. Let
ters from many readers confirmed that their lives were also
greatly improved by this understanding. Some even wrote
that they had bought copies for each of their friends to
share their discovery. Since my own understanding has
recently been brought to a new level, I am eager to share
my new insights with all who will listen.
Roger Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning split-brain ex
periments showed us the way to a new understanding of
consciousness that recognized that we can have inde
pendent thoughts in the right side of our brain that control
our behavior yet remain outside of our awareness. These
experiments are described in detail in my previous book
and also in Appendix One of this book.
v
vi PREFACE
Michael Gazzaniga, who worked with Sperry on the
first split-brain experiments, continued the work with
many additional patients and ultimately concluded that,
while the simple right-brain/left-brain model of the mind
was an important first step, it was a gross oversimplifica
tion. He concluded that there are not two, but actually
hundreds of independent, specialized modules of thinking
in our brain that all vie for control of behavior in a kind of
competitive free-for-all. One of those thinking modules,
which he called the "interpreter" module, tries to explain all
of our behavior, even though it is only in control occasionally.
Carrying Gazzaniga's thinking further, I have come
to the conclusion that his interpreter module is actually the
physical basis of what we normally call the self. In fact,
what is commonly called self-control is actually behavior
under control of this mental module. I have therefore
renamed Gazzaniga's interpreter the self module. The self
module is the specialist in the process called introspection,
through which we examine our own thoughts. It interprets
reality based on certain basic assumptions that are learned
in childhood, which I will call the self-concept. An impor
tant part of our self-concept is the false belief that the self
module is the mind and can therefore authoritatively ex
plain all behavior. In fact, most behavior is controlled by
other modules of the mind to which the self module has
no access.
The self module's delusion of power and control is the
cause of endless conflicts, misunderstandings, and wasted
potential. It is therefore clearly worth some effort to correct
your self-concept to one based on how the mind really
works. To develop this new understanding, I will devote
a large part of this book to demonstrating that many of the
PREFACE vii
most obvious facts" about consciousness are not true. As
II
I will show, our sense of self is a powerful but false illu
sion-an illusion that is never given up without a fight. A
lifetime of habits will not be undone by simply reading a
book. Still, I hope to direct you toward a new under
standing that you can use to relearn your mental habits.
My ultimate goal is to help you find, as I have, that a new
understanding of self can help you make sense out of
previous enigmas in love, relationships, creativity, sports,
and art and help you better understand anger, bad habits,
and phobias in yourself and others.
While most psychological theories tum out to be fan
tasies built on the biases of their authors, I have tried to let
sound evolutionary logic lead the way. The principles of
neural Darwinism, suggested by Nobel Prize-winner Ger
ald Edelman, seem to me to provide a solid basis for
understanding human consciousness as the inevitable re
sult of evolution.
Acknowledgments
This book is the direct result of my attempts to under
stand the bizarre interactions of a stormy love affair. From
that pain came a new understanding for which I am grate
ful. Thanks, therefore, to Ms. Ginny Cicciarelli, who
started me on the path to discovery by mystifying me with
mental illusions.
Many of the concepts in this book are well accepted
as part of the cognitive revolution, a new collaboration based
on evidence from brain-scanning equipment and a healthy
dialogue between evolutionary biologists, psychologists,
philosophers, and mathematicians. This new consensus,
discussed in the many cognitive technical journals, has
many practical applications that have not previously been
explored. My goal of easy readability and emphasis on
useful applications rather than theory is served by confin
ing technical details and references to the Notes chapter at
the end of the book.
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Credit for many of the concepts in this book must go
to the real leaders of the cognitive revolution: The late
Roger Sperry certainly deserved his Nobel Prize for start
ing the whole thing back in the 1960s. His kind comments
and support of my previous book will be missed on this
one. Thanks also to Daniel Dennett, Michael Gazzaniga,
Gerald Edelman, Robert Solomon, and Donald Hebb,
whose ideas I have borrowed freely.
Thanks also to my son Robert for the art direction and
to the many friends who helped and encouraged me,
including Allyn Wiebold, Kyle Culley, Larry Zempel, Mel
Walsh, and Carolyn Wesson.
Contents
Chapter One: The Self-Organizing Mind 1
The Miracle of Spontaneous Organization 8
The Human Body: A Colony of Cells 10
The Emergence of Mind . . . . . . . . 11
The Emergence of Self . . . . . . . . 19
Context Switching .......... 20
Sports and Creative Thinking Modules 24
The Mind as a Computer . . . . . . . 26
Chapter Two: Getting to Know Your Self
Module 29
The Self Module as Press Secretary 36
Gap Filling . . . . 37
Blindness Denial . . . 41
Other Fabrications . . 44
Why Did You Do That? 46
"I Wasn't Myself' . . . 48
xi