Beyond the Conscious Mind Unlocking the Secrets of the Self
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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 (Doubleday, 1980), I have marveled at the practical value of better understanding the physical basis of the mind. Letters 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 experiments showed us the way to a new understanding of consciousness that recognized that we can have independent 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
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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 oversimplification. 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 important part of our self-concept is the false belief that the self module is the mind and can therefore authoritatively explain all behavior. In fact, most behavior is controlled by other modules of the mind to which the self module has no access.
