How the SELF Controls Its BRAIN

How the SELF Controls Its BRAIN
Author: John C. Eccles
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 364249224X

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In this book the author has collected a number of his important works and added an extensive commentary relating his ideas to those of other prominentnames in the consciousness debate. The view presented here is that of a convinced dualist who challenges in a lively and humorous way the prevailing materialist "doctrines" of many recent works. Also included is a new attempt to explain mind-brain interaction via a quantum process affecting the release of neurotransmitters. John Eccles received a knighthood in 1958 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology in 1963. He has numerous other awards honouring his major contributions to neurophysiology.

The Self and Its Brain

The Self and Its Brain
Author: Karl R. Popper
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 749
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 364261891X

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The problem of the relation between our bodies and our minds, and espe cially of the link between brain structures and processes on the one hand and mental dispositions and events on the other is an exceedingly difficult one. Without pretending to be able to foresee future developments, both authors of this book think it improbable that the problem will ever be solved, in the sense that we shall really understand this relation. We think that no more can be expected than to make a little progress here or there. We have written this book in the hope that we have been able to do so. We are conscious of the fact that what we have done is very conjectur al and very modest. We are aware of our fallibility; yet we believe in the intrinsic value of every human effort to deepen our understanding of our selves and of the world we live in. We believe in humanism: in human rationality, in human science, and in other human achievements, however fallible they are. We are unimpressed by the recurrent intellectual fashions that belittle science and the other great human achievements. An additional motive for writing this book is that we both feel that the debunking of man has gone far enough - even too far. It is said that we had to learn from Copernicus and Darwin that man's place in the universe is not so exalted or so exclusive as man once thought. That may well be.

The Self Illusion

The Self Illusion
Author: Bruce Hood
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-06-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0199969892

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Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.

The Self and Its Pleasures

The Self and Its Pleasures
Author: Carolyn J. Dean
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501705407

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Why did France spawn the radical poststructuralist rejection of the humanist concept of 'man' as a rational, knowing subject? In this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds light on the origins of poststructuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers. Arguing that the widely shared belief that the boundaries between self and other had disappeared during the Great War helps explain the genesis of the new concept of the self, Dean examines an array of evidence from medical texts and literary works alike. The Self and Its Pleasures offers a pathbreaking understanding of the boundaries between theory and history.

No Self, No Problem

No Self, No Problem
Author: Chris Niebauer
Publisher: Hierophant Publishing
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1938289986

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While in grad school in the early 1990s, Chris Niebauer began to notice striking parallels between the latest discoveries in psychology, neuroscience, and the teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and other schools of Eastern thought. When he presented his findings to a professor, his ideas were quickly dismissed as “pure coincidence, nothing more.” Fast-forward 20 years later and Niebauer is a PhD and a tenured professor, and the Buddhist-neuroscience connection he found as a student is practically its own genre in the bookstore. But according to Niebauer, we are just beginning to understand the link between Eastern philosophy and the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience and what these assimilated ideas mean for the human experience. In this groundbreaking book, Niebauer writes that the latest research in neuropsychology is now confirming a fundamental tenet of Buddhism, what is called Anatta, or the doctrine of “no self.” Niebauer writes that our sense of self, or what we commonly refer to as the ego, is an illusion created entirely by the left side of the brain. Niebauer is quick to point out that this doesn't mean that the self doesn't exist but rather that it does so in the same way that a mirage in the middle of the desert exists, as a thought rather than a thing. His conclusions have significant ramifications for much of modern psychological modalities, which he says are spending much of their time trying to fix something that isn’t there. What makes this book unique is that Niebauer offers a series of exercises to allow the reader to experience this truth for him- or herself, as well as additional tools and practices to use after reading the book, all of which are designed to change the way we experience the world—a way that is based on being rather than thinking.

The Problem of the Self

The Problem of the Self
Author: Henry W. Johnstone
Publisher: University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1970
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

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The Self and Its Shadows

The Self and Its Shadows
Author: Stephen Mulhall
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0199661782

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Stephen Mulhall presents a series of multiply interrelated essays which explore the idea of selfhood as a matter of non-self-identity: for example, as becoming or self-overcoming, or as being doubled or divided. He draws on Nietzsche, Sartre, and Wittgenstein, but also on works of opera, cinema, and fiction.

Being No One

Being No One
Author: Thomas Metzinger
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 896
Release: 2004-08-20
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262263807

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According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model." In Being No One, Metzinger, a German philosopher, draws strongly on neuroscientific research to present a representationalist and functional analysis of what a consciously experienced first-person perspective actually is. Building a bridge between the humanities and the empirical sciences of the mind, he develops new conceptual toolkits and metaphors; uses case studies of unusual states of mind such as agnosia, neglect, blindsight, and hallucinations; and offers new sets of multilevel constraints for the concept of consciousness. Metzinger's central question is: How exactly does strong, consciously experienced subjectivity emerge out of objective events in the natural world? His epistemic goal is to determine whether conscious experience, in particular the experience of being someone that results from the emergence of a phenomenal self, can be analyzed on subpersonal levels of description. He also asks if and how our Cartesian intuitions that subjective experiences as such can never be reductively explained are themselves ultimately rooted in the deeper representational structure of our conscious minds.

Self In The System

Self In The System
Author: Michael P. Nichols
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2013-10-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 113582164X

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First published in 1988. This thought-provoking volume offers a constructive critical anal­ysis of family therapy for its neglect of the self in the system, and provides a therapeutic approach to clinical problems that takes into account both individual and family dynamics. The author shows that by elevating the metaphor of the system to dogma, family therapy has lost sight of much of the richness and complicating influence of personal feeling, motivation, and conflict, resulting in a proliferation of esoteric, abstract theories and highly mechanistic, technical interventions. The Self in the System describes a different reality that is often overlooked: no matter how much their behavior is coordinated within the system, family members remain separate individuals with private hopes and ambitions, motives and expectations, quirks and foibles, and potentials for creative work. This book provides a unique approach that develops a better understanding of family members' individual experiences, and helps in enhancing their personal responsibility and ability to solve their own interactional problems within the family system. The approach, however, is not just another version of psychoanalytic family therapy, but rather one that utilizes the best tools of family therapy and the most useful ideas from individual psychology and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Chapters cover such important topics as finding the family and losing the self; the problem of change; working with interaction; the effective use of empathy; making assessments that include both the whole family system and the psychology of its members; interac­tional psychodynamics; a practical guide to object relations theory; how to develop understanding; and working with resistance.

The Collapse of the Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration

The Collapse of the Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration
Author: Rochelle G. K. Kainer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2013-06-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134902867

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The Collapse of the Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration is a rich and clinically detailed account of the therapeutic restoration of the self, and speaks to the healing process for analysts themselves that follows from Rochelle Kainer's sensitive integration of heretofore dissociated realms of psychoanalytic theory. In describing how the reworking of pathological internal object relationships occurs in conjunction with the transformation of selfobject failures, Kainer brings new insight to bear on the healing of the self at the same time as she contributes to healing the historic split in psychoanalysis between Kleinian theory and self psychology. Extensive case illustrations, refracted through the lens of her uniquely integrative perspective, bring refreshing clarity to elusive theoretical concepts. Of special note is Kainer's distinction between normal and pathological identifications. Equally valuable is her introduction of the term "imaginative empathy" to characterize the kind of attunement that is integral to analytic healing; her nuanced description of the relation between imaginative empathy and projective identification bridges the worlds of Kleinian theory and self psychology in an original and compelling way. She ends by spelling out how her theoretical viewpoint leads to a more comprehensive understanding of various clinical phenomena. The Collapse of the Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration, is a sophisticated yet accessible work, gracefully written, that elaborates a relational theory of thinking, of creativity, of identification, and of the formation and healing of psychic structure. Kainer's ability to bring the often dissonant voices of different psychoanalytic schools into theoretical harmony as she develops her viewpoint conveys both the breadth of intellectual engagement with colleagues and the depth of clinical engagement with patients that inform her project from beginning to end.