The conclusions I have drawn about the reptilian brain have been my own. In effect I have made my conclusions as a by-product of writing my PhD. If you want to find out more about how the reptilian brain functions, you could do worse than look at some of the psychoanalytic writings dealing with the early stages of childhood development. If there is a sense in which 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' it is evident in the way that children move away from operating from a 'desire oriented ego' to a 'reality oriented ego'.
The former seems to be related to the earlier stages of our evolutionary development, and has quite a different orientation on the world than that of our more complex thinking processes. It is oriented towards the world on the basis of need (including need for nurturing and a need for a sense of control) and desire for pleasure. The early childhood ego mentally distorts reality in order to give it a sense of satisfaction when the material elements it seeks to satisfy itself with are missing. This is how it defends itself against fear, or the sense of abandonment. By distorting reality. So distorting reality is a 'primitive' ego defence.
Adults continue to use the primitive part of brain to deal with power relations and issues of dominance and submission -- especially in moments of anxiety and extreme fear. Anything that threatens one's survival, even symbolically, will tend to evoke this mechanism, which enables one to adjust to power relationships as they exist at the expense of rational thinking.
Melanie Klein is the founding investigator concerning this level of consciousness.
A shaman symbolically faces his own 'death' and survives it. On that basis, he is able to conquer R-complex, which works in the subconscious mind to force compliance to existing power systems. Having faced his own 'death', he is an exception to the rule of normal human behaviour (which is ruled, subconsciously, by R-complex). As an exception, he often becomes very aware of how influential R-Complex is, in the overall society.
The former seems to be related to the earlier stages of our evolutionary development, and has quite a different orientation on the world than that of our more complex thinking processes. It is oriented towards the world on the basis of need (including need for nurturing and a need for a sense of control) and desire for pleasure. The early childhood ego mentally distorts reality in order to give it a sense of satisfaction when the material elements it seeks to satisfy itself with are missing. This is how it defends itself against fear, or the sense of abandonment. By distorting reality. So distorting reality is a 'primitive' ego defence.
Adults continue to use the primitive part of brain to deal with power relations and issues of dominance and submission -- especially in moments of anxiety and extreme fear. Anything that threatens one's survival, even symbolically, will tend to evoke this mechanism, which enables one to adjust to power relationships as they exist at the expense of rational thinking.
Melanie Klein is the founding investigator concerning this level of consciousness.
A shaman symbolically faces his own 'death' and survives it. On that basis, he is able to conquer R-complex, which works in the subconscious mind to force compliance to existing power systems. Having faced his own 'death', he is an exception to the rule of normal human behaviour (which is ruled, subconsciously, by R-complex). As an exception, he often becomes very aware of how influential R-Complex is, in the overall society.
2 comments:
OK, you are now truly convincing me about shamanism.
OK, you are now truly convincing me about shamanism.
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