Heuristic understanding of Consciousness (Copy)

My heuristic understanding of consciousness is braided from the intersectional influences across different disciplines.

There is the study of consciousness derived from my subjective self-inquiry using the lenses and tools applied from the annals of psychology, the experiential practice of contemplative practices, personal dream study and the insights gained through mentalization and the interior sensory and visceral exploration referred to as interoception.

I include also the observations gathered in my understanding of the nature of consciousness gleaned from the direct experience of being the gestational carrier of my eldest child and in the subsequent role as a parent, “withnessing” the development of a human being from conception onwards. I have thought about the mystifying effects of microchimerism on my mind/body since carrying and giving birth to a child.

Intertwined with those experiences is the unique dyadic perspective I receive from serving in the role as a psychotherapist for over 23= years. Practicing as a therapist and being immersed in the intimate chamber of a client’s inner world requires conscious attention and attunement to what is happening both in my intrapsychic and somatic landscape and intersubjective landscape known as “analytic third” conceptually introduced in 1994 by Thomas Ogden. The analytical third represents to me what James refers to as the transition and possibly, although I am not certain, might be referred to in the concept known as emergence.

Reading the writings of William James “A World of Pure Experience” specifically on his reflection that “all experiences have their conditions” and the concept of “transition” (James, 1904, p6) as a way of bringing two things into contact, I immediately thought about how transitions remind me of neuronal synapses. This inspired me to pull Portraits of the mind, visualizing the brain from antiquity to the 21st century  off of my bookshelf. I revisited the first known drawings of an entire neuron by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in which he used Camillo Golgi’s staining method. I was curious about the timing of the drawings of a neuron and whether the drawings preceded the writings of William James which as it turned out to be nearly synchronous and contemporary with the discoveries by Golgi and Cajal. Golgi believed that the brain was a continuous single mesh as it was understood in the organization of the nervous system called Reticular theory. Cajal, his rival, argued that the existence of a neuron as a self-contained entity supported the view of the brain as a network of distinct interconnected units which led to the establishment of the Neuron Doctrine, and the founding of modern neuroscience (Schoonover, 2010). 

Strong intuitions of how science and philosophy ought to approach the topic.  I feel lifted by the invitation to feel into and articulate the cascade of thoughts:  networks of electrical/chemical/ brain wave oscillations synchrony/ transference of energy/ roots and trees/breath/air/alveoli/ C02 and O2 exchange. Complexity and systems theory.  The transmission/communication of the elements that make up the earth, electricity/waves. Coordinated Brain wave resonance or Interpersonal Brain Synchronization and Interoception as launching off points.

Weekes, A. “Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought.” Process Approaches to Consciousness (2009).

Schoonover, C. E. (2010). Portraits of the mind : visualizing the brain from antiquity to the 21st century. Abrams.

Ogden, T. H. (1994). The analytic third: working with intersubjective clinical facts. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75 ( Pt 1), 3–19.