Posted by Eddie Sylvano on November 7, 2003, at 9:00:13
I've just finished reading "Neurodynamics of Personality", which has easily been the most insightful book I've yet read on the mechanisms behind our actions, thoughts, and feelings. Taking the task as a scientific endeavor, the authors utilize all of the current empirical findings on the brain, and formulate a model of how it is that the brain forms the self. The implications of this model serve as a potentially more useful guide to changing the self than do many current lines of thought.
The book divorces our ideas of self from those of the subconscious, elucidating the primary role of the subconscious as the rote architect and core of the self, redefining our conscious activities as largely a method of dealing with novelty in the environment. The sense of self and authorship of our activities is illustrated to be an ongoing confabulation (rationalization after the fact) for the events generated by the subconscious. This explains why it is so difficult to change old habits, form new ones, and generally understand ourselves with any degree of accuracy. The last chapters of the book provide methods for change based on this understanding of the brain (i.e methods to alter our unconscious, "procedural" memory).
poster:Eddie Sylvano
thread:277422
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031031/msgs/277422.html