The word “consciousness”
For the Fifth International Congress of Unitary Perception and Holokinetic Psychology, in Mexico DF, 10th to 12th April 2006, I want to present this theme for the dialogue.
Reading “Psychiatric News” of 3rd March 2006 (Volume 41, Number 5) I see that this theme has just been discussed in a meeting of psychiatrists in New York.
The word “consciousness” is not definable, because such a definition presents a serious epistemological problem.
We do not know the relationship of consciousness with the observer and with the observed, or with the accumulation of knowledge, something that is basically unconscious. Also, Unitary Perception shows us that there is knowledge that is not accumulative, maybe better to say “conscious”.
They concurred in New York that consciousness is not definable yet, but it allows the avoidance of behaviours, the manipulation of images of thought, and the solving of unpredictable problems.
Antonio Damasio M.D. (USC) and Arnold Modell M.D. (Harvard Medical School) dialogued there about the emotions and were able to agree that they are automatic reactions to internal and external stimuli.
The temptation to classify, which is an effective substitute for understanding, dominated the dialogue: fear, anger and sadness are the primary emotions.
Compassion was called “social emotion”, even though some individuals are compassionate and society is not.
It is hard to free oneself from the classification of emotions into “negative” and “positive”.
Fear for example, is “positive”, because it has permitted, being so primitive, the survival of humanity for more than one million years, despite its constant suicidal and homicidal activities.
But fear is “negative” because it leads to those suicidal and homicidal activities, above all, constant war.
The areas of the brain committed to the emotions are the amygdala, the basal nuclei, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex.
The emotions that are not very intense stimulate attention, the very intense emotions do not.
They have persisted in differentiating “sentiments” from “emotions”, based on common phrases, such as “today I don’t feel well”.
A sentiment like this would be a complex perception about things, people, ideas, nature or situations.
The Webster Dictionary defines consciousness in this way:
“The state or quality of being aware, especially of something within oneself”.
If consciousness is in part, “the sense of being I”, with all the epistemological problems that go with saying this, then in coma and somnambulism there is no consciousness.
It appears consoling that in the so-called “Multiple Personality” there is only one consciousness.
The writer, has had a very busy psychiatric practice for 40 years, but has not had a single patient with that diagnosis.
Maybe Multiple Personality is only a form of psychosis.
But Dr. Demasio has confessed that what he knows of “consciousness” comes from Lady MacBeth.
What I know of consciousness is by having seen it in Unitary Perception.
Ruben Feldman Gonzalez
rufegon@percepcionunitaria.org