Psychology Articles

How often are we surprised at the constructive help and good advice we give to others? Yet, why don’t we help ourselves and follow our own advice? I believe cripplingly low self-worth and self-esteem can lie at the heart of this emotional conundrum. We deny to ourselves that we deserve the help and advice. And fallaciously, we feel it must reward us somehow if we offer our help entirely to others for their benefit! Additionally there can be a dose of creative avoidance at work here too! Does all that make any kind of sense? Yes! And It can be explained even if it is not actioned!

So where do we see this example of human nature occurring? Everywhere! Take wills, you would think every lawyer at least would have made one! Some haven’t! You would think doctors would adopt the healthiest lifestyles! Some don’t! You would think those involved in healthcare would be the same, yet often they too can be marvellous at their jobs but some almost crazily overweight!

Do we not realise this illogical aspect of ourselves where it occurs. I believe we do, but we may prefer not to acknowledge it to ourselves too openly!

However if we analyse this behaviour, interesting angles are unveiled.

We each find it almost impossible to avoid soaking up highly relevant information about our interest, speciality or profession. We become increasingly and, often in our own eyes surprisingly wise in how much we can help friends, clients, customers or patients. More particularly, other than for the very selfish among us, we feel good when are able to impart that good advice or help other people.

Why then don’t we always respect our own wisdom? Why don’t we apply it to better helping and advising ourselves?

I believe there can be a number of reasons.

The first can be that we jolly well know that we ought to apply the advice to ourselves. It is as if by accepting the very responsibility to help others, it means we really ‘have to’ follow our own advice too.

But this ‘have to’ can have a perverse effect. As soon as we perceive something as a ‘have-to’, a contradictory cognitive behaviour can then kick in to sabotage us. This is triggered simply! At that moment that we feed our sub-conscious with a message that we feel we have to do something, it volunteers to assist us! It sets up for us a strategy of creative avoidance. This enables us to put the perceived have-to off.

The second form of sabotage can be a bizarre attitude of mind. We can seek to detach ourselves from our own wisdom, seeing it as universal wisdom rather than our own. We can then tell ourselves that others deserve it more than we do. What causes that? Often it is some emotional behavioural pattern. This was more than likely formed by us as a child or a teenager. It traps us in the ridiculous belief that while others deserve to benefit, we do not.

Next we can consolidate the belief. We can try to make a virtue of this lack of sense of self-worth. We can do this by de-selfing ourselves entirely. We do this to the point where we provide all this help and advice for most moments of our working day. By doing this, we can avoid all opportunity to apply it to ourselves for our own benefit.

At the same time, we can hope that our selflessness is rewarded somehow some day In the meantime we can hope that our activity for others is judged as praiseworthy. The truth is it is self-defeating. In any event, most of the time, the recipient of our help senses the mis-match intuitively.

Even if they don’t, we know the mis-match exists.

So what should we do if we become aware of our behaviour? We should ask ourselves why we feel we can’t or shouldn’t help ourselves? We should then reflect back to try to find the origin of the pattern – that is to say the reason we formed it.

This can be done but may need help. There are some excellent books and programs available to help with this.

With that cause clarified, we can learn to disable the emotional pattern. We can then achieve a better balance between attending to our own needs, fairly and conscience free, while still helping others according to our skill.

Not only do we then secure a better life balance, we improve our sense of self worth and self-esteem at the same time.

Sir Gerry Neale recommends that the reader researches The Hoffman Process and considers reading a book by Tim Laurence called ‘You Can Change Your Life.

Sir Gerry is the author of a cognitive novel called ‘Squaring Circles’ ISBN 9780956868824. More information is available on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and on http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com. He is also a mentor and an artist.

It seems we may not! But what if we use our psychological powers to alter our habits and eat and drink responsibly, surely we would live longer then? Would you believe again the answer may be no? The disappointing news is that it seems the key to all this lies solely in our genes. But need this be taken as proof? I wonder!

If you are endowed with long life genes, then as like as not it seems, you can smoke more than you should, drink and eat more than you should. And, despite that, you will live as long as another with long life genes who has taken care of themselves physically.

Who says so? The Journal of The American Geriatric Society. They report on a study of some 500 people between 95 and 109 which they compared with 3000 others born in the same period. (One 109 year old had even smoked 40 cigarettes a day for 90 years!)

The researchers deduced we were either born to live longer or we weren’t. Worse, they seem to suggest that if you have not got long-life genes, then not only would you live a shorter life, but you could shorten it still further by over indulging in food and drink, and by taking no exercise!

Now if this is true, why are British people being warned that they will all live longer and instead of having 5000 people of over 100 now, by the middle of this century we will have half a million!

So I ask what is happening? Are we doing more than evolve steadily? Are we possibly mutating to achieve such a stunning change? Or are statistics playing tricks with us?

I recall a British MP in the 1980’s with a wicked sense of humour and a great disregard for statistics. He asked two parliamentary questions. He asked first how many one legged men there were in the UK and second, how many one legged women!

It seemed that employment risks and the liability to men of serving in the Armed Forces meant there were more one legged men in the UK than one-legged women. He then extrapolated that as a proportion of the total UK population that there were 0.00999 one legged men, but only 0.00997 one legged women.

He then felt entitled to draw the conclusion – and proposed its acceptance by Parliament, that it proved that on average British Women had more legs than British Men!

So I feel I can still stay loyal to my belief that a good attitude to life leads to a longer and happier one! And I prefer that any temptation by the reader to point out any illogicality is resisted!

Sir Gerry Neale is the author of a novel ‘Squaring Circles’, a book with a strong cognitive behavioural theme. He is an artist and a mentor on and off line. He may be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and on http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com

How does one square a circle at the best of times? Psychology, spirituality, emotions can so easily conspire to make us go round in circles when trying to analyse ourselves, let alone help us break an inhibiting and constraining emotional pattern. When mathematicians have argued from their standpoint on how it might be done and fallen out over it, it can be no surprise that to square a vicious circle of emotional behaviour can challenge a psychologist or counsellor even more. Yet I believe in large measure it can be achieved.

We are each a bearer of our own behavioural patterning, much of it established unwittingly or ignorantly in our childhood and if uncorrected, it is then borne by us into and onwards through our adult lives. Evidence of it, when it resurfaces, can even puzzle or shock the bearer when he or she experiences it.

Any ten things can leave any one of us unmoved, untroubled, undisturbed. Yet an eleventh can trigger in us unaccountable hurt, anger, fear, depression or a multitude of other emotional responses. Try this exercise in a group and in the unlikely event that two participants apparently will experience a similar response to a stimulus, analysis will soon show that the detail of each person’s response is actually fundamentally different.

Questioning any person experiencing the unusual response can often seem to set in train an increasing circle of a stimulus leading to an unaccountably disturbed reaction to it, then to more emotional contemplation of the stimulus, which in turn heightens the disturbed reaction still more, which further accentuates the effect of the stimulus and so on, round and round.

Sometimes if you try to break the circle and ask the person experiencing the response if they can recall any link back to its origin, they can. But very often they cannot. It can reside in the dimmest part of our childhood only to be identified after detailed personal reflection or professional help. Without that, such emotional patterns remain circular and unresolved, perpetually crippling our self-esteem, self-confidence and sense of self-worth. More weird, is that we are often ignorant of their presence within us.

If we are to try to square any of these emotionally driven circles, to make them less wearing, draining, inhibiting for ourselves – and certainly less disorientating for our partners and friends caught up in this process, then first we really need to want to address the issue or issues. Without that declared choice being made, no amount of self-reflection and will power will change anything permanently.

However with that desire present in us, we will be motivated to find the cause, analyse it, understand it, and then begin to modify its impact on our behaviour.

In conclusion, I have to say three things though.

First, just as the notion of squaring circles emotionally is difficult to grasp, so is it difficult in most cases to achieve more than a substantial moderation of the adverse effect of a behavioural pattern we have borne for years. Yet I am convinced that much can be done, even if it cannot be entirely eradicated.

Second, the more I have studied in terms of the psychology involved, the more of a mistake I believe we make about what each of us actually is as a person. Most will see our obvious and maybe exaggerated response to certain things as evidence of what inherently we are as a person. I now don’t! I have joined the school of thought that says these reactions are not what we really are and they cloud the picture of what we truly are. These apparent personality traits are no more, nor less than patterned responses adopted to try to handle emotional challenges which were beyond us at the time.

And to those who say, ‘Ah! But it runs in his or her family! The father or the mother was the same!’ I would ask this: ‘Yes, so the parent may have been, but couldn’t the child have copied the behaviour rather than inherited it?

Third and last, I suspect that until further cognitive research is completed, squaring circles will be as difficult for the psychologists to master as it is for mathematicians to crack completely!

Sir Gerry Neale recommends those needing help with constructive introspection read a book by Tim Laurence called ‘You Can Change Your Life: A future Different from Your Past With the Hoffman Process.’

Sir Gerry is a mentor, an artist and an author of a cognitive based novel called “Squaring Circles: From The Dark Into The Light.’ More information can be obtained from http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk or the publishers at http://www.pearlpress.co.uk.

For those fascinated by developments in our awareness and understanding of human emotional intelligence, what about this! On LinkedIn, as with many social networking sites, new groups are and can be formed. Yet surely none can be like the recent launch of the Emotional Intelligence Network which blasts through many misconceptions. From its launch only months ago, some 20,000 LinkedIn members have joined it and more flood in. So which misconceptions are hit?

One is: ‘Emotional Intelligence is not globally relevant and applicable!’ That has been rubbished by worldwide comments and support from members.

‘Interest in it will be job specific.’ Now, self-evidently that is a nonsense, for seemingly every walk of life has joined and expressed interest.

‘Isn’t it relevant only to specific races and creeds?’ That appears to be shot to pieces!

‘Isn’t an issue or interest in this limited to the Developed World?’ No, that seems untrue too from the most cursory check of location of members joining.

The reality is the human emotional apparatus as a phenomenon appears common to all across the world. What is also true is that some ignore it and others, like those LinkedIn members, cherish and nurture its presence within us.

Late twentieth century research into Intelligence first by Howard Gardner and his team at Harvard, particularly on Multiple Intelligences, opened eyes and minds to the full human condition. Then in the1990’s, acknowledging Gardner’s work, Daniel Goleman published his ground-breaking and best-selling book called Emotional Intelligence. This unleashed an unquenchable thirst for more and more information and tutoring. It has since become an essential primer for anyone interested in this subject and for many satellite cognitive initiatives which have been spawned or strengthened.

But it is not just our growth in understanding that is significant. What LinkedIn participation graphically has illustrated is something very special. It is the willingness – and even the joy, of people across the World to share the belief that we can enhance the way we all interact with each other in relationships as partners, as parents & grand parents, as friends, as employers and employees, and as suppliers and customers.

The greatest prize will be to banish the most ill-founded mis-conception of all: ‘that our emotions have no place in our judgments and decisions!’ All aspects of our Intelligence need harnessing. It is clearly a multi-faceted asset we have and includes not just the Intellect, nor just the Emotions, and nor even just the human spirit, but much else.

And who knows what its joint exploration by like-minded and like-hearted people across the world could achieve! The more its study and practice becomes incorporated into the Curriculum of Life the more likely it is that it will benefit us all. Maybe one day we will even be able to detect and treat people successfully before they commit atrocities like that witnessed in Norway.

The extraordinary worldwide response to this group augurs well for us all.

Gerry Neale is the author of a cognitive novel called ‘Squaring Circles’ published by Pearl Press, a personal mentor on- and off-line and an artist. He can be reached at http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and http://cognitivementors.blogspot.com.

The ‘Old school – New school’ divide on smacking will be heightened by the research findings of a joint project conducted by the McGill University in Montreal and the University of Toronto. The study was made of two groups of West African children of five to six in age, one group from one private school and one from another. 63 youngsters were involved. And did smacking cause more psychological problems than it cured? Yes. And here’s why.

The six year olds did much better if they avoided corporal punishment, scoring ’significantly higher’, than those who were smacked. It is even claimed that a harshly punitive environment could have downside effects on young childrens’ verbal intelligence and their executive functioning ability.

To compare effectively, one school used corporal punishment for a range of misdemeanours, whereas the other used verbal warnings and time-outs. Significant too was that all the children came from the same home background, same area and their parents actually were in favour of corporal punishment.

The monitoring of the children surrounded tests of their executive functioning skills in relation to some tasks set them.

The report claims too that the study demonstrated that corporal punishment does not teach children how to behave or to improve heir learning.

Interestingly from a cognitive standpoint, it was found that smacking reduced the child’s ability to think on the spot and change their behaviour, as against those given verbal correction. And sustained smacking made it more difficult for them to control their behaviour in terms of any rules or to get them to understand the justification for them.

The research reported by the Daily Telegraph would suggest that smacking – and even moderate smacking at that- is far more than just an issue of the human rights of children. It has serious implications for the psyche of children. If it leads them to set up behavioural patterns to defend themselves, such as lying or other hidden anti-social activities, then these could dog them for the rest of their lives were they to continue uncorrected.

What can be seen by adults as minor incidents in a child can fester ominously if the youngster was disproportionately stung by the experience. So much research points to the need for educators to completely review the place and priority they give to the application of psychology in schools. Without this, we shall merely continue to replicate practices which encourage too many children to opt out of the learning process to every one’s cost, not least theirs.

Sir Gerry Neale is a mentor, the author of many articles on psychology and cognitive behaviour and his first novel has just been published with a cognitive theme. It is called “Squaring Circles – From The Dark Into The Light” and can be found on Amazon

He can be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com

Why do some people succeed at this and some not? What is the trick which makes some people good at learning pretty well anything and everything? Particularly when we find we can try and fail so easily! Isn’t that an annoying feature of Life for the rest of us? Aren’t there some tricks or rules which can help solve this human predicament? Would you believe it if I told you that I think there are?!

Perhaps I should make a confession first. For love nor money, once I couldn’t have drawn or painted you a decent picture. Now I can. Most definitely I couldn’t do respectable portraits. Now I can.

I couldn’t possibly have written a book and got it published. Annoyingly – purely in the context of this article – I have proved myself wrong again! My first novel was published this summer in my 71st year!

I can’t read music or play any instrument, l certainly couldn’t write a song, for Goodness Sake. Yet now I have written lyrics to existing music and had vocalists record them.

Do I tell you this to annoy you? Definitely not! I do so for three reasons; partly because I have mentored people to achieve what they believed they could not accomplish as a challenge. Partly because I told myself some while ago that if I was teaching and vindicating this approach, then perhaps I should prove it would work for me also.

The third reason was the challenge to try to establish why some people succeeded and some didn’t. In other words, learn the way myself.

I have concluded there are at least ten key tips to acquiring a new skill. Given the constraints of time and space in an article like this, let me headline the tricks involved. I believe them to apply no matter what skill you want to acquire.

Tip 1: Ask yourself this simple question: Do I really, really want to have the skill I have in mind? Because one thing is for sure, if you don’t really, then accept you will never be much good at it and you might as well quit before you start.

Tip 2: Is never forget how much you want to have the skill, because that enthusiasm and commitment will drive you through the set backs – and there will be some!

Tip 3: You need to develop the love of learning new tricks, rather than just relying on the ones you have. So! Discard the “I can’t” mentality and adopt the mantra, “I Can. It’s Just Right Now I Do Not Know How, But I will!”

Tip 4: Visualise yourself vividly as having the new skill already, feeling great about that and in no way surprised you have accomplished it.

Tip 5: Remind yourself that you already do some things well. You do them seemingly naturally and don’t even have to think about them! I have in mind such basic functions as, walking, running, jumping, riding a bicycle, talking, and singing, driving. Never forget you did not get any of them right first time!

Tip 6: Is to keep in mind any skill you have previously acquired and tick off the Tricks you applied regarding them to evidence for you how it works!

Tip 7: Remember this: most new skills improve the longer you do them. Enjoy the journey as you improve and keep a record of how far you have come since you started. You will only ever be the best at it you can!

Tip 8: Be Patient with yourself. Drop the attitude if you have it of “God Give Me Patience, But Give It To Me Now!” Certainly don’t give yourself a hard time.

Tip 9: Which you may find the most disappointing! Accept that if the skill is worth having, there is no easy way or short cut. Get good instructional DVDs and books, attend a good tutorials (always taking the first 8 tricks with you in your mind) Develop a thirst for hints and tips. And most of all, be persistent and never stop practising!

Tip 10: Always – and only – listen to that part of you that wants to do it and believes you can, and never to that part which says you can’t.

I have no doubt that the very first person likely to stand in the way of accomplishment is oneself.

I wish you well in every thing you take on. I firmly believe that each and every one of us has the capacity to excel at things we really want to do.

Sir Gerry Neale is an author of a cognitive novel called ‘Squaring Circles, a mentor, a lyricist and an artist.

He can be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk and http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com

One may ask, why don’t self-improvement systems always work for me? Aren’t they most often well- reviewed books or courses and don’t they clearly work well for many people? Then why doesn’t a particular one I have bought work for me, when I really, really want it to work? Is the invisible killer lurking in that book or course? No! I would wager it is lurking within yourself.

Does it mean my wish to adopt the new skill or process is lacking?

Most often, no, because clearly you do want to change.

Could there be some obvious reason guaranteeing my failure which only I have not recognised?

Again, most often, No! It is likely that no-one else has spotted the real reason either.

Then, you might ask, is it simply because the key to achieve the change does not lie in the book or the course? Doesn’t it lie in my head and my heart? And what has been lacking previously is the full hearted and total intellectual commitment to it. Without that, isn’t that why I have not succeeded in past attempts?

Yes that is closer to the hidden truth!

But before you rush back to the self-improvement material with not only a new-found zeal but with your will energised to make it happen this time, there is a formal caution. Please do not think applying all the will you can muster will do the trick. It may briefly, but as soon as you relax the will, your particular normal behaviour will return and the possibility to sustain change will slip through your fingers. So, personally, I would not recommend that approach!

So let’s look at where that leaves you? I suspect that you believe you have acquired the detailed tutorial system as to how to solve a current emotional or financial issue. More to the point you believe you have satisfied yourself that that system involved is effective and workable. And now you really want to solve your issue in order to rid yourself of the inhibitions your current situation causes you. So, you might go back to square one and say that all I need to do now is read it diligently and then apply it

But haven’t you tried to do just that before and it didn’t work?

The surprise is that the invisible killer to self-improvement techniques most often resides within us; it has been harboured by us very often for years and relates to one or more cognitive issues of self-image, self-worth, self-esteem, or even believe it not spirituarity.

So how can one best address this?

As acknowledged, intellectually, we can see our current problem perfectly clearly. Equally we can see how, if adopted by us, the self-improvement technique would work and provide us with a solution. But emotionally or spiritually it is different. Deep inside, we could have a different problem which is handicapping us.

It is this. To acquire the self-improvement technique could put us so far out of a largely sub-conscious comfort zone. We were barely aware of its existence until the current situation unearthed it. No matter what, and no matter how hard we read or study, we are somehow neutered by this.

Consider this! Suppose the new technique is a wealth creation system. Maybe our family was never wealthy, in fact it eschewed wealth creation and counselled a frugal life. So, maybe consciously as a young person we wanted to change all that, but sub-consciously we did not. Why? Because we did not want to be seen to be disloyal to that long-standing family culture.

Maybe the self-improvement technique we have obtained is in itself a self-improvement technique which can be made available to others. Nevertheless we have this sub-conscious doubt that if we cannot learn it then nor will they. So as we study, we are actually always doubting and questioning.

Maybe it is admitted by the creators of the technique that it is very profitable largely because so many people buy it although very few actually apply it. While for some that is no issue, ( they say: it is not for me to make a judgement about whether the purchasers adopt it or not’) for you it may be different. Maybe you are not comfortable about that. So your actual buy-in and commitment to the technique is muted and fails.

Of course it could be more simple still. It could be that you want to change, but you have a nagging doubt and lack of any sense of self-worth to pull it off.

I would suggest that you reflect quietly and honestly at the outset. Imagine you have completed the self-improvement. Visualise it completely and in your mind and your heart assess how you feel about that. Notice how little emotional indicators will pop as feelings you can identify. They could be intense or minor.

My advice is that you feel those feelings and decide on one of two outcomes.

First, if the feelings are not all-enveloping or traumatic, then take a deep breath and get cracking on the new technique, silencing yourself when the negative feelings reappear.

Or second, accept the feelings amount to a real emotional block. On that basis, it is best to investigate the origin. So take the preliminary step of seeking out advice or a book on that block before embarking on your main solution.

One amazing feature of our age is that there is not one single narrow aspect of Life that there isn’t at least one book written on it. So obtain it and first enjoy the sense of self-discovery as well as the later and more likely acquisition of your new skill or solution.

Good luck with it.

Sir Gerry Neale has mentored and conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with groups and individuals in person and on-line. He is the author of a novel called “Squaring Circles” recently published in paperback. ISBN 9780956868824 This is a story of self-discovery with echoes likely for most readers in terms of their own lives.

He can be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk or on his blog at http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com

The philosopher David Chalmers has drawn a distinction between “easy problems” of consciousness, and the “hard problem” of consciousness. According to Chalmers, the easy problems – directing attention, concentrating, etc. – can be solved by finding a cognitive mechanism by which they could occur.

In contrast, the hard problem is: “why do we experience anything?”. In other words, how does a skull full of firing neurons give rise to the rich tapestry of external and internal experiences that we respectively refer to as the world and the mind?

Chalmers believes that this problem cannot be solved by talking about cognitive mechanisms or brain activity. However, I suggest that the hard problem is essentially one of sensation; it is the problem of explaining why we possess an immediate sensory awareness.

If this can be explained, then all the other functions of consciousness – abstraction, reflection, self awareness, etc. – can be explained as further levels of feedback on top of sensation (for more on this see my book, Being and Perceiving).

The Hard Problem of Sensation

The hard problem of consciousness can be reframed as the hard problem of sensation. Consider the visual system: when I see an object, light reflected by that object is detected by my eye, turned into electrical impulses, and converted into a neural representation in the form of a pattern of neurons firing.

That pattern of firing neurons in some way corresponds to the image of the object projected onto my retina. But in addition to the neural representation, I also experience a visual image; I see the object. Why is it that that a neural representation creates a psychological, sensory representation (the percept)?

Why is it that this process gives rise to the subjective experience of sight? Explaining this gap between neural representation and psychological representation is crucial to understanding the relationship between neuroscience and psychology – between the brain and the mind.

Decoding Sensory Constructs

There are two possibilities: either any representation which encodes information gives rise to a phenomenological space, or phenomenology arises from functional interactions within representational systems. The former seems implausible, lending itself not only to dualism but also to panpsychism. The firing of neurons in a specific pattern may give rise to vision, but there is no evidence to suggest that a series of light bulbs flashing in that same pattern would also produce vision.

Furthermore, if phenomenology were to directly arise from the very existence of a physical representation, why should any arrangement of physical matter changing in a pattern not give rise to a sensation or perception which is subjective to that physical arrangement?

The words “subjective to” indicate that a physical representation is not sufficient to generate a phenomenological space – awareness of that representation is a necessary component of subjectivity; of phenomenology itself. I suggest that sensory awareness is not just dependent on the ability to encode information, but also on the ability to decode that information. It is a mistake to think that a percept is somehow created through neural representation – the phenomenological world is created by interpreting representations as percepts.

Deriving Qualia

The phenomenological world is made up of qualia, which are units of sensation (greenness, hardness, loudness, etc.). Phenomena are conglomerations of qualia (e.g., an apple may be a combination of roundness, greenness, firmness, smoothness, etc.). Objects do not exist independently of their qualities. It should also be noted that I am not ascribing objective existence to qualia – softness does not exist independently of soft objects, for example. Qualia are the phenomenological units from which our sensations are composed, and as such they are entirely psychological.

I suggest that the process of decoding neural representations consists of deriving qualia from sensory input, and is thus the process by which the phenomenological world is constructed from brain activity. The biologist Gerald Edelman hypothesizes that the brain decodes sensory input by comparing it to categories of perception which are built up from memories of past experience. However, I suggest that sensory input is in fact matched to the archetypal matrix.

Imagine a computer program which can scan visual input (e.g., from a camera) and identify faces in that input. In order to perform this function, it must possess a template of a face which the input can be matched against; this is the archetype of a face. The computer thus has both a limited perceptivity (the ability to scan its visual field) and the ability to see faces in the data. Together, these two things constitute a limited level of sensory awareness; the computer must be able to literally see faces.

If the ability to scan were increased to take in the whole visual field at once, and the computer was also endowed with the ability to identify geometry and perspective (and thus objects and their position in space), motion (direction, speed, etc.), light and dark, and so on, it would be endowed with the ability to derive qualia from visual input, and would thus possess awareness of a phenomenological space. It would be able to interpret visual input as a phenomenological world, and would thus be able to see.

The same goes for all of the other senses. In contrast, to be unable to distinguish between shapes, sizes, distances, etc., would be blindness. The existence of archetypes is crucial for this process: without an archetypal matrix it would be impossible to interpret sensory input as a phenomenological world. The phenomenological world thus arises directly from the mechanics of the mind as described in the previous sections.

Edelman’s theory that categories of perception are built up from memory has the implication that newborn babies do not perceive a sensory world. By explaining phenomenology through a recourse to archetypes, which are innate, I have provided a mechanism which explains how babies and animals appear able to sense immediately upon birth, and most likely even whilst in the womb.

Edelman also suggests that only higher mammals and possibly some birds possess the ability to actually perceive the world. In contrast, I assert that the fact that any organism with a nervous system more complex than that of a jellyfish can generate specific motor output to specific sensory input suggests that most organisms can discriminate between sensory phenomena, and thus possess an awareness of a phenomenological world.

Sprigge’s Bat

The philosopher Timothy Sprigge attempted to refute the idea that the physical processes of the brain could produce psychological phenomena by arguing that a complete description of a bat’s brain – down to the last neurons and even the interactions of its constituent particles – is insufficient to provide the experience of “seeing” with sonar; in other words, a total description of the bat’s brain still does not give us the experience of being the bat.

Sprigge believed that this demonstrated that there was still something missing from the complete physical description, and that therefore physical processes alone could not give rise to psychological experiences. The question “what is it like to be a bat?” was later used by the philosopher Thomas Nagel to demonstrate that a purely scientific understanding of the brain was insufficient to understand consciousness, which necessarily involves a subjective component.

In fact, Sprigge’s thought experiment has no significance, since it deals with the limits of language, not the limits of physical processes. It is absurd to suppose that a complete description of some thing should give us the experience of that thing. The problem is that the thought experiment has been framed in terms of “information” and “knowledge”, rather than language. In truth, we can only ever possess a linguistic or conceptual model of physical processes; this is the only sense in which “knowledge” or “information” has any meaning.

Science thus provides us with descriptions, not experiences. Knowledge and information consist of descriptions, not experience. “Physical processes do not produce phenomenological experiences” does not follow from “descriptions of physical processes do not produce phenomenological experiences”.

Mary’s Room

A similar thought experiment, known as Mary’s Room, was proposed by the philosopher Frank Jackson, and runs as follows: Mary is raised in a black and white room, in which there are no colours. However, while in the room, she learns from books everything there is to know about light, the human brain and its visual system. She learns everything about the physical process of how different wavelengths of light produce the experience of colour. After gaining this knowledge, Mary leaves the room and sees coloured objects for the first time; does she experience something new?

The obvious answer is that she does – she experiences what it is like to see red, green, etc., for the first time. However, this does not imply that physical processes are insufficient to give rise to psychological phenomena; as with the bat example above, it only demonstrates that descriptions of a physical process do not give rise to the same phenomena that the process itself gives rise to.

However, although Sprigge and Nagel’s bat and Jackson’s room do not demonstrate that physical processes are incapable of giving rise to psychological phenomena, they do demonstrate that (1) a scientific description of physical reality tells us nothing about the phenomenological world, and (2) there are certain kinds of knowledge which can only be gained through experience, and not communicated with language.

It is possible to say, therefore, that a complete description of the physical processes of the brain and its interactions with the physical world is not a full description of consciousness or phenomenal experience, because a subjective description of what it is like to be a conscious being experiencing a phenomenal world would be missing, and in fact impossible to formulate. However, this is not an argument against physicalism – it deals entirely with the inability of language to convey subjective experience and the fact that descriptions of physical reality are not reality itself.

Copyright © Dan Haycock 2011. For similar articles and information about Dan’s forthcoming book, Being and Perceiving, visit http://www.DanHaycock.co.uk/writing.html

For many of us, our true emotional selves can lay trapped within us like a time-warp. Certain emotions can seem highly available to us but totally unmanageable. In many cases, they represent the embodiment of our child within. Yet when that childhood becomes eclipsed by our adulthood, they seem completely inappropriate as feelings. So what do we do? One way or the other, we simply screen them out.

And the emotional price we pay for this as grown-ups is extortionate. We remain disconsolate when we should be happy. We are unfeeling when we should tender and loving. We over-intellectualise rather than temper it with emotion. In fact we perform rather than feel. Worse we behave like human doings rather than human beings.

The greatest tragedy is that we can become ever-ready to eschew fun. Youthful exuberance and joy is banished. Gone with it too is any sense of grace and peace, as we wrestle with ourselves to justify our having fun. We seem all too often stressed, tense, and unable to break free of work.

What exactly has happened and more particularly, when did it happen to us? How does it still have such a profound effect on us? What can we do about it?

Being willing to re-visit our childhood years is a pre-requisite. Being prepared to relate back to the fun and joy we had as well as the traumas and even horrors we endured is vital to see how we patterned ourselves to live with the contrasting feelings we had. And I don’t just mean Ha! Ha! Fun. I mean spiritual enjoyment as well.

We can with patience and care, go back and rediscover how these patterns were spawned in us. By re-playing in our minds the ways those who looked after us often triggered these situations, we can see how they then sought to feed us with instructions on how to behave and how to react, is fundamentally important.

Our development as people will have been conditioned heavily by these parental or teachers’ instructions. Philosophically, psychologically, spiritually as well as of course emotionally – and physically, we will have been stunted by the way we were encouraged to behave.

If we are ever to free ourselves now of any of the emotional patterns of behaviour which undermine our peace and happiness as adults, we need to have the courage to probe our young years.

We need to identify the way those, who acted almost always as well-meaning parents and teachers, effectively indoctrinated us with their own opinions, attitudes and habits. We need to see through what we experienced, to see how we came to pattern or protect ourselves. We need also to remind ourselves how we reacted and responded to others as children and admit that we carried those patterns into adulthood when need for them no longer existed.

The truth is, that until many of us adopt this approach and learn how to divorce ourselves from our childhood behaviours, then we will not allow ourselves to form attitudes and behaviours more happily and aptly fitted to our life as adults.

Mercifully there are effective processes available to us to achieve this. Good books exist now. Counsellors are much more aware of these features within us and how they can guide us to change the ways we come at things.

However in the final analysis, it comes down to one simple but fundamental fact if beneficial change is to occur. Do we really want to overcome and change some particular behaviour? If we do, then it is a racing certainty that we will. If we don’t, then surely we won’t.

Sir Gerry Neale has mentored and conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with individuals in person and on-line. He is the Author of a recently published cognitive novel in paperback called “Squaring Circles”

He can be reached on http://psychologysimplified.blogspot.com and http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk.

A team from Lund University in Sweden using EEG brain scans to study the brain have produced some interesting provisional findings. Their claim is that it is possible for a person to have a selective memory. With that would come the ability to screen out memories for a sufficient period of time for them then to be forgotten completely.

I Am Sceptical! But I Believe The Research Is Worth Following

The thrust of their claim is that tests on volunteers who took part allowed the team to detect the moment a memory was apparently forgotten, and that it was possible that by burying the memory for long enough it could be permanently erased from the brain.

The author of the study, Gerd Waldhauser, admitted however that aiding the forgetting of a traumatic event would be a more complex task. He does believe though that if memories have been buried long enough they could be very difficult to retrieve and the more often that a particular memory is suppressed, the more irrecoverable it may become.

For anyone with traumatic emotional memories wanting to take this information literally, I would urge them to exercise caution. It still seems to me that the brain’s ability to respond immediately when faced with a dramatic event unfolding in front of us remains unchallenged. What happens is that our brain instinctively conducts its own memory scan, trawling for any relevant memory which could help us in any way to decide what to do in the face of the current challenge.

I would rate the chance very high that it would not matter how much we have tried to suppress an unpleasant memory and even seemingly forgotten it – or whether we had seemingly screened it out successfully to achieve the same apparent effect. Faced with a sudden threat or event, our automatic brain scan could still unearth it from the deepest parts of our sub-conscious, given its relevance to our current predicament.

So I would also say that if this scientific study is to help those who have undergone traumatic experiences, then counsel them first to deactivate and defuse the most toxic parts of their memories. Only then with the memories re-framed help them to bury those images, so if ever the brain still succeeds and instinctive recall of the past event does take place, its impact on them is likely to much reduced.

Failure to do that would leave them vulnerable to suffering from the hideous mental and emotional recall of their original trauma on any coincidental re-occurrence..

Also, if all manner of behavioural strategies were adopted naively after the first experience in order to protect future feelings, they will remain in the brain to act as a continuing inhibitor even if the actual event causing them has been forgotten. Only by personal or professional review could these be neutralized.

Let’s keep an eye out for the further research, but not behave as if we can be spared the hurt of our worst memories, certainly for the time being.

Sir Gerry Neale has mentored and conducted counselling and life coaching programmes with individuals in person and on-line. He is the author of a cognitive novel about Self-Discovery

He can be reached on http://www.squaringcircles.co.uk or on his blog http://squaringcirclesbygerryneale.blogspot.com