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Brain, Psyche, and Self: a Dialectic Between Analytical Psychology and Neuroscience

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Brain, Psyche, and Self: a Dialectic Between Analytical Psychology and Neuroscience BRAIN, PSYCHE, AND SELF: A DIALECTIC BETWEEN ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE A dissertation submitted by KESSTAN C. BLANDIN to PACIFICA GRADUATE INSTITUTE in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of Pacifica Graduate Institute by: •ennis P. Slattery, Chair Jennifer L.~Selig, Reader (/tyjz Susan E. Mehrtens, PhD External Reader UMI Number: 3519792 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. DiygrMution UMI 3519792 Published by ProQuest LLC 2012. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ii JANUARY 25, 2011 Copyright by KESSTAN C. BLANDIN 2011 iii ABSTRACT Brain, Psyche, and Self: A Dialectic Between Analytical Psychology and Neuroscience by Kesstan Blandin Although much of C. G. Jung's work is not compatible with neuroscientific methods or perspectives, his ideas on the structure of the psyche and self overlap with attempts to understand the phenomenon of a self in consciousness through mapping correlates with brain functions and processes. They are therefore appropriate to engage in dialogue with neuroscience. Through these dialogues we can further understand the construction of the self and identity in light of current findings in neuroscience and the theories of C. G. Jung, particularly the collective unconscious and archetypes. In this exploration we discover how the boundaries of the self in the imagination of the psyche are revealed as the horizon of the self in the brain emerges. This dissertation employs a dialectic methodology with a dual-aspect monism and complex systems theory perspective. Dual-aspect monism understands brain and mind as different aspects of the same phenomenon, whereas complex systems theory holds that the emergence of the psyche is of unique integrity and relative autonomy. Research on implicit consciousness and the right brain hemisphere indicates that the subjective experience of the collective unconscious is autonomous and thus outside the boundaries of the ego. Temperamental predispositions manifested through neurobiological profiles are analyzed through Jung's theory of typology, which is found to be the first subjective manifestations of physiological predisposition. A discussion of iv the role of experience and the external world is provided for balance and clarity in light of the self s construction through the interchange of brain, psyche, and experience. The theory of archetypes is analyzed through a current dialogue within analytical psychology in light of an emergent perspective in neuroscience. Further exploration considers the role of memory as the bridge between neuronal functions of the brain and imaginative functions of the self. Primary conclusions are that identity is the mythic skin of the self, whereas archetypes are emergent symbols of the potential becoming of the self. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Statement of Research 2 The Dialogue 8 Fear of Reduction 16 Pathology and Souls in Distress 18 Essays on Definitions 24 Subject, self7Self 24 Identity, Ego, Persona 26 Provisional, Habitual, Conditioned self 27 Chapter 2. The Modern Self: Introduction to the Literature Review 29 Metaphysical Self. 31 Historical Self 35 Physiological Self 40 Fictive Self 44 Summary: The Clearing of the Research 50 Chapter 3. Methodology 52 An Archimedean Point 52 Dialectics and Interiority 56 Dual-aspect Monism 57 Delimits 58 SECTION I. THE BRAIN 60 Chapter 4. The Ground 63 The Collective Unconscious 64 The Evolution of the Brain: Phylogenetic 67 The Evolution of the Brain: Ontogenetic 70 The Limbic System 71 Prefrontal Cortex 77 Case Study: Borderline Personality Disorder 79 Chapter 5. The Other Within 91 Core Consciousness 92 Implicit Consciousness 95 Cerebral Hemispheres 100 Conclusions 109 SECTION II. FATE 113 Chapter 6. Temperament and Typology 116 Temperament 116 Typology 128 Chapter 7. A Confluence of Events 139 Biological Predisposition 140 Temperament and Parental Conditioning 145 The Other Environment: Social Adaptation 147 Parents and Culture 154 Public and Private Selves 159 vii Conclusions 164 SECTION III. IMAGINATION 171 Chapter 8. Imagine the Archetype 173 A Continuum of Existence 184 Archetypes are Emergent 189 Archetypes are Numinous and "Not-me" 198 Archetypes are Subjective, Distinctly Human, and Transformative 200 Chapter 9. Memory's Cleave 209 Memory in the Brain 209 Imagination and Memory 219 Misattribution 221 Suggestibility 222 Bias 225 Memory's Cleave 227 Chapter 10. Psyche's Remainder 230 Self Memory System 230 Nodal Points 233 A Congregation 236 Archetypes Revisited 240 Mythic Skin 245 Chapter 11. Concluding Thoughts 248 Critique of Jungian Theory 248 Brain and Psyche: Structures of the Self. 250 Vlll The Joy of Discovery 253 References 254 The style used throughout this dissertation is in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Edition, 2001) and Pacifica Graduate Institute's Depth Dissertation Handbook (2010-2011). Chapter 1 Introduction Identity has been a life-long fascination of mine, primarily because I wanted to be someone else. I remember the day that a favorite fantasy came into being: I was 7, alone and lying flat on my back against cool earth in the middle of a rhubarb patch. It was late spring in Vermont: a saturated, fragrant, and lush world of green, warm wind, humming insects. In my fantasy, I suffered a terrible accident that left me with complete and irreversible amnesia. I remembered no thing and no one. A tabula rasa. I would quickly move, as only a 7-year-old can, through the obligatory letting go of sad family members for whom I was as lost as my memories, and begin the glorious task of rebuilding myself from the inside out. Without memories, I had no evidence of known qualities or characteristics. I began from scratch. This took quite some time, and as I repeated the fantasy through the years, I would try on different qualities from people I admired like a Potato Head doll. When my personality was rebuilt, I went about constructing new memories from my new life to gird my personality; sometimes pre-amnesia memories would reappear like ghosts. I would decide whether to keep each one or not, and how I would treat it, as though it were a guest. I relished this fantasy and told no one about it. Although the construction of identity from the world is plainly obvious—family conditioning, cultural and historical influences—it is plainly not complete either. Always, a navel of mystery remains; for example, why do people respond so differently to similar life circumstances? Even my siblings, who were raised with the same familial conditioning factors, in the same part of the country at the same time in history, incorporated those conditioning influences differently than I did. Each self, it appears, does the same thing uniquely. 2 How did you come to be? Have you ever wondered how much of who you are has been imagined? Put another way, have you ever considered if who you think you are is somehow constructed or made up? And if this is so, who or what constructed you? What aspects of identity can be reconstructed, recreated, or changed, and which cannot? It is possible, and the current research posits, that our identity is a product of imagination as much as of physiological processes and conditioned experience. This dissertation searches into the nature of identity as an imaginative and physiological construction—a historical fiction. The intention is to deconstruct the literalness of identity—the certainty of who we think we are—by examining its construction in early experience employing an interdisciplinary analysis of neuroscience and Jungian psychology. Statement of Research: Importance and Contribution Western culture values self-knowledge, beginning with the Greeks and the examined life of Socrates and the Oracle at Delphi's famous dictum, Know Thyself, and this charge being taken up by centuries of philosophers. Still, Western culture, and particularly American popular culture, has been accused of promoting a high degree of self-involvement and even narcissism. Is research into the construction of identity contributing to anything other than turning the gerbil wheel of self-absorption? Andre Gide, in a famous reference, denounces self-knowledge: "Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly" (quoted in Nersoyan, 1969, p. 58). An ironic statement, indeed, for a novelist and philosopher, one who must spend considerable time in reflective thought on his own interiority and that of others if he is to connect with readers, a necessity of a 3 successful writer, which Gide certainly was. Still, it is a comment worthy of response. Why know yourself? The construction of subjectivity, a question that inquires into how we know at all and therefore how we know the world itself, has been central to psychology and philosophy for more than the last century. However, the 20th century has seen an increased and compelling interest in identity in many fields, perhaps in large part due to the dangerous and precarious state of the world and the essential role played by human beings in creating this state. Scholar Nick Mansfield's description of the subjective experience of the modern self reflects this precariousness: Things and events are now understood on the level of the pulsing, breathing, feeling individual self. Yet at the same time, this self is reported to feel less confident, more isolated, fragile and vulnerable than ever.
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