Cartesian Dualism, Freud's Unconscious and Damasios Concept - Literature review Example

Cartesian Dualism and Damasio’s Physiological-Neurological Concept of “Mind” Introduction In his book “Descartes’ Error” Antonio Damasio deals with the popular misconception about human mind, especially those that are ensued by ‘Cartesian dualism’. Damasio’s argument primarily revolves around his proposition that the human being is the integration of body and mind and, therefore, “body and mind” cannot be separated from each other. This view of Damasio necessarily evolves from the fact that human mind is the essential projection of the bodily function of the human organs, he says, “Feelings are just as cognitive as other percepts. They are the result of a most curious physiological arrangement that has turned the brain into the body’s captive audience” (Damasio 34). Whereas the traditional Cartesian view of body and asserts, individually existential mind dominates the bodily existence of human being, Damasio affirms that the existence of mind itself begins from the physical feeling, as he says, “Feelings let us catch a glimpse of the organism in full biological swing, a reflection of the mechanism of life itself as they go about their business” (Damasio 34). Damasio’s view of mind further implicates that human mind is more of a social construction of moral, ethic and values that he proves through the case study of legendary Gage’s injury. In this regard Damasio comments that “Were it not for the possibility of sensing body states that are inherently ordained to be painful or pleasurable, there would be no suffering or bliss, no longing or mercy, no tragedy or glory in the human condition” (Damasio 35). Comparison between Damasio and Freud Damasio’s approach to human body and mind contrast with Freud’s approach in the sense that the place of the physical existence is of less importance in Freud’s approach than in Damasio’s one. Freudian view of mind is an individual entity that develops through bodily experience and feelings. The space-time matrix of the Freudian dream clearly asserts that mind is the reflection of human existence in which body is the limitation spatial restriction of human mind and mind can transcend this limitation through his imagination. In their book, “Studies on Hysteria” Freud and Breuer acknowledge the physicality of human being as a contribution to the development of mind. But this approach of Freud and Breuer, though resembles to that of Damasio’s, differs from his approach on the point that though mind is shaped by bodily feeling, Freud and Breuer’s concept of mind does not include the physical function of human brain to the development of mind. According to them the physical feelings like trauma are stored in human mind first in the form of memory of a foreign entity and then in the form of an agent that determines his future functions of body and mind. Reflection of Gage’s and Anna’s Cases Damasio says that Gage was “no more Gage” after the injury, yet he continued his survival though with a deformed intellectual. According to Damasio, the phrenology of human brain is allocated in such a way that its various parts is assigned with various task of human intellect. As the prefrontal lobe of Gage’s brain was circumcised due to the injury, he was subjected to memory loss. Hence human mind is constructed of the physical portion of human brain that enables the survival capability of human being by observing social convention and taking the right decision, as in this regard Damasio says, “The unintentional message in Gage’s case was that observing social convention…making decision advantageous…requires knowledge of rules and strategies and the integrity of specific human brain” (Damasio 58). Freud and Breuer’s study of the case of Anna O reflects, though not the neurological interpretation of mind like Damasio’s view, the state of a mind that, to a certain extent, fit with the view of Damasio’s concept. Freud and Breuer trace the pathogenesis of Anna’s case as a hallucination of a snake in her waking dream (Freud & Breuer 38). If examined with Damasio’s neurobiological approach, Anna’s paralysis can be considered as the Chaotic state of motor drive. Damasio’s Refutation of Cartesian Concept of Mind In chapter five of the book, Damasio comes up with his arguments against Cartesian concept of mind. Indeed the theory of mind that he proposes is a computational one to a great extent. According to his computational theory, a part of mind is human inborn physical imaging, scanning and thinking process of human brain. This part is subjected to imaging, analyzing and restoring the surrounding realities. When a human being faces any problem that evokes his traumatic memory, the mind uses both “broad-based knowledge and reasoning strategies to operate over such knowledge” (Damasio 83). According to Damasio, emotion is the outcome of the biological and physiological function of the brain that regulates and control human bodily functions. For him human psycho-physiological existence is an organic whole of brain process, physiological functions and in this organic whole both brain and body tend to function in a complex and interactive manner. The outcome of this interaction is the revelation of human psychology. In Damasio’s view, brain and body are considered as a single unified organism that cannot separate them from each other. It is remarkable that Damasio’s view of human psychology is determined by his materialistic approach to human bodily existence. One of the salient features of Damasio’s concept of mind is that it consists of three types of nerve systems: 1. Sensory nerves, 2. Brain power and 3. Motor drive. In its entirety, human mind is a set of biological and physiological processes of sensation, restoration and action. The mind is to be considered not as a part, but the entirety of the human existence psychophysical existence. Indeed human brain plays an intermediate role between the sensory system and motor drive. But the presence of brain is not sufficient enough to construct the entirety of human mind. For Damasio, human mind is “the ability to display images internally and to order those images in a process called thought” (Damasio 89). Thus Damasio’s concept of mind is the computation of images that is generated and manipulated by brain. Then the whole process of Damasio’s “mind” is that the brain receives sensory inputs, processes it with the inborn processing system and stores them in order to respond to the motor drive, as in this regard, Christopher D. Pope says, “The brain then selects a possible motor response from a “menu” of existing responses, or it can generate a new motor response. Damasio is quick to point out that those images exist in every sensory modality. There are thus visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory images in the mind.” (Pope 16) Damasio’s refutation of the Cartesian notion of mind revolves around the separation body from mind. According to him human brain does not produce any single composite of the sensory modalities that are sufficient to a single mind of “I”. In other words, as the memories of images cannot be processed into thinking without the brain, mind cannot exist without physical organ. So the “Cartesian theater” does not exist and the homuncular version of mind appears to be the false intuition of Cartesian Dualism. (Damasio 94-96, 100) Though in many cases Freud’s approach to mind is complementary to Damasio’s concept of mind, one of the basic contrasts of Damasio with Freud’s concept of psyche is that Freud skips the physiological function of human brain. Damasio’s concept of mind primarily starts with the reception of the sensory inputs by brain and memory consists of these inputs along the processing of brain’s inborn capability. Some of the images are formed depending on the images formed by the sensory input. These images assist a human being to predict the future and to determine his socio-cultural role in the society. Thus Damasio’s concept of mind implicates socio-cultural existence of human being. For Freud, the images play a crucial role in the formation of the psyche. But the difference between Freud’s and Damasio’s is that Freud’s images are considered to be the part of human psyche, whereas Damasio’s is for the storing system of brain. It is evident in Freud’s consideration of physical trauma. According to him, traumatic experience first interacts with the conscious region of mind as foreign body, which in the later course of development turns into an agent to remain hyperactive, as he says, “We must assume that the physical trauma –more precisely the memory of the trauma- acts likes a foreign body which long after its entry must continue to be regarded as an agent that is at work” (Freud 6). Complementary Role of Freud’s Dream-Image and Damasio’s Representational Images Freud’s view of dream relates much of his concept of “mind”. Indeed Freud’s dream-images are similar, to a great extent, to the sensory image of Damasio. According to him, dreams are of the longings and disturbing manifestation of the Id that are suppressed by the ego and the superego, as Freud says, “We should not have dreamed if some disturbing element had not come into play during our sleep, and the dream is the reaction against this disturbance” (38). When the desire of the Id is suppressed by the Ego and the Superego, the preconscious Id finds its way out of the restriction of the Ego and the Superego during the sleep through the compromise-formation, as Freud says in this regard, “The dream had to assume such a form as would accommodate both the expressions of self-depreciation and exaggerated self-glorification in the same material. This compromise-formation resulted in an ambiguous dream-content.” (144) But the relation of dream with the hysterical symptoms is somewhat different from the dreams in the normal state of mind. The traumatic experience forms a dream image of trauma within the unconscious region of the mind. If most of the traumatic experience or feeling subsides with the “reality principle” of the Id. However if the Id fails to draw a solution for the traumatic cause, it is subsumed within the unconscious region of mind that often rises at the conscious level of mind to release the hysterical symptoms. Hence it is evident that Freud’s dream images are the manifestations of the memories of the preconscious and unconscious mind, Freud refers to Radestock, “Dream-images for the most part contain that of which one has been thinking in the waking state” (Freud 5). As to the fact how the sensory images are integrated with the conscious, Damasio asserts that the images are represented with the early sensory cortices of the brain and then these “topographically organized” images are embodied into the conscious (Damasio 99). Indeed Freud’s “thinking in the waking state” can be considered as the representation process of human brain. When Damasio says that images are the staffs of consciousness, these images, according to Freud, are those that are formed due to thinking during the waking sate of a human being. Conclusion This inborn inheritance of brain process is similar, to some extent, to Freud’s concept of the Id. According Freud, the Id is the most primitive part human mind. It is the part that drives a human being to satisfy the pleasure principles. Freud never explicitly mentions that the Id regulates and control human being’s bodily function, but the reality principles Id refers to the functional role of Id. The Id is the inborn tendency of human mind to maximize the pleasure factors and minimize the discomforting ones. Though Freud does not consider the biological function of brain, the irrationality of the Id necessarily refers to the remote relationship with Damasio’s inborn functioning biological capability of brain. But this Id is suppressed -though remain reflexive- by the Ego and Superego in the later development of the psyche. What Damasio considers as “the ability to display images internally and to order those images in a process called thought” (48) is traced by Freud as the conscious and preconscious states of mind. According to Freud, a human being thinks of the memories and images that he is aware of at the conscious state of mind. But the preconscious state of mind from which the brain recalls the images is considered by Damasio as the storing system of brain. Works Cited Breuer, Josef and Freud, Sigmund, “On the Physical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication”, Studies on Hysteria, 1893, translated by James Strachey Breuer, Josef and Freud, Sigmund, “Case Histories”, Studies on Hysteria, 1895, translated by James Strachey Damasio, Antonio, Descartes’ Error, Penguin Books Pope, D. Christopher, Somatic Computationalism: Damasio’s Clever Error, Mississippi: State University, 2007 Sigmund, Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900, 20 Oct. 2009 Read More