An Apologia for the Human Mind
Patrick de Maré and Roberto Schöllberger
Group Analysis, Vol 41, Nr 1 p 5-33
Introduction
This is the fifth article we have published in answer to the vexed question about the mind.
The first was a paper in 2001 entitled “The Primacy of the Human Mind. The Battle Against
Mindlessness”. This was delivered at the Washington School of Psychiatry.
The second was a chapter in the bock “The Large Group Re-Visited” edited by Schneider
and Weinberg, published by Jessica Kingsley in 2003 entitled “The Larger Group As A Meeting of
Minds”.
The third entitled “A Case For Mind”, published in Group Analysis in 2004, vol.37 Nr 3, p.
341-354.
The fourth entitled “A Theory of Mind” which appeared in Group Analysis in 2006.
Then Malcolm Pines unearthed a publication entitled “Mind” by Foulkes. This was in
Group Analysis 2003, vol. 36, Nr 3, p. 215-221. In this article Foulkes acknowledges the presence
of the mind as the most undoubted of our experiences.
Later Dick Blackwell describes these two articles as very important.
The following represents a diagram of the mind described in triadic terms. Descartes himself
established the Cartesian duality but followed it up by a triad of the intermingling and interaction
between body and mind.
DIAGRAM OF THE MIND
Structure
The Minding Process
Content
Thesis
Body
Anabolic
Res Extensa
Sum
Concrete
Obsessive
Soma
Matter, body, brain
Totalise, wholistic
Project
Speech, talk
Image
Chronos, mechanical time
Logic (numbers)
What
Past
Solid
Circle
Waves
Nature
Noumena
Cognition
Deductive (matter)
Synthesis
Meaning
Metabolic
intermingling, interaction
Whole
Symbolic
Minding
Psychosomatic
Minding, caring, loving, meaning
Symbolise
Projective identification
Dialogue, discourse
Magic
Tempo, temporising, rhythm
Reason
Why
Present
Gas
Crossing
Quanta
Cultivation
Appearance
Intuition
Research, examine, explore, investigate
Antithesis
Mind
Katabolic
Res Cogitans
Parts
Abstract
Talking
Psychic
Spirit, Mind
Analyse
Analyse
Language
Imagination
Kairos, human time
Logos or words
How
Future
Fluid
Centre
Particles
Culture
Phenomena
Intelligence
Inductive, hypothetical
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Mother
Phallus
Sex
Good
Pain (body)
Animal
Placenta
Kin (blood related)
Notation
Social Unconscious
Large Group
Money, gold, deposit
Monologue
Oppression
Child
Eros
Love
Choice
Suffering (experience)
Pan
Birth
Cultural
Melody
Collective Unconscious
Median Group
Currency, distribution, exchange
Dialogue
Democracy, Choice
Father
Kunta
Eros
Bad
Panic (mind)
Human
Lungs
Kith (socially related)
Scales, Arpeggios
Personal Unconsciousness
Small Group
Credit
Duologue
Liberation, Freedom
It is perhaps relevant here to mention the work of F.M.Conford “Before and after Socrates”
(1932) which is a most revelatory exposition about Socrates who also influenced Descartes
particularly in the switch from things and nature to human beings and souls. However interest in the
human mind dates back several thousand years before.
Things or nature were first described by the Ionians e.g. Homer. They are characterised by
materialism and rationality dated round about the 6th Century B.C. . The Melanesians came from
Ionia notably Tales and Anaximander. Anaximander explained wind, rain and lightening by a
naturalist hypothesis and brilliant conjectures. His mentor Tales is described as the first philosopher
of all time! That was round about 585 B.C.
About eleven centuries later Rousseau, the leading light, ushered in the Enlightenment
which was continued later by Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank et al.; they were involved
with the tradition which considers that it the socio-cultural which shapes individual and behaviour
but also that it is vice versa. It is only the single mind which actually thinks, but unfortunately man
creates a prison for himself. One is reminded of Marx’s comment that “man makes history but not
on his own”, but with others when consciousness is created and the flavour and saltiness of meaning
becomes acquired.
If the widely accepted notion that mathematics is the sense of everything that has ‘mass’,
that ‘mass’ was enunciated by the human mind; the mind must clearly have existed long before
mathematics was ever thought of. Hegel has said something similar when he states that all entities
(in that case all what I think) are really the thoughts of a single mental substance: they are
developed by this single substance, namely the mind and this was termed ‘panlogism’. Marx later
turned this upside down which constituted the basis for ‘dialectical materialism’ which conceives of
political purpose. Hegel’s religious propensities represent an odd pantheistic version of Christianity.
The material world in Charles Rycroft ‘Willhelm Reich’ puts the case for the biological sciences,
physics, and chemistry as demonstrating that the structure and behaviour of living organisms was
only explicable in terms of physics and chemistry. This standpoint was strictly deterministic and
assumed that all explanations are in terms of causation but in fact this attitude fails to be adequate in
matters of consciousness, the reflective self, awareness and meaningfulness occurring in humans
and higher animals, namely wisdom.
Socrates’ began with his study of external nature which became a study of man and of the
purposes of human actions in society. In fact nature had first to be established to incorporate what
had previously been regarded as supernatural and outgrown theogony in favour of cosmogony.
The following quotes from Socrates (430-399 BC) are perhaps relevant.
“The unexamined life is not worth living”. “Imagine now that there are two ruling powers. One of
them is set over the visible or physical world and the other over the invisible or mental world”.
“Understanding and reason belong to the invisible or mental world”, “there abides the very being
with which the knowledge is concerned, that colourless, formless, intangible essence visible only to
the mind. The divine intelligence of souls is nourished from this pure knowledge”.
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The ‘bridging’ between minds is facilitated by certain stimuli such as aesthetics, capacity for
expansion, wisdom, intelligence, meaningfulness, creativity and the experiences of flavour, colour,
taste, smell.
In “Critique of Dialectical Reason” (1960) Sartre abandoned “Being and Nothingness”
(1943), and he exchanged Existentialism for an ideology of people being controlled by a scarcity of
raw materials.
For us the age of scarcity is over as a result of technology: we no longer live in a world of
universal scarcity but are in the position to be selective about what is scarce and what isn’t. The
present economic system is based on a faulty banking which operates under the effete assumption
from the past age of scarcity: a power group of compulsive obsessing which controls credit and
rations wealth which is under their control, a sort of toll gate system, a reductionism not of the real
wealth which results in compulsive poverty, wars, genocide, torture and terrorism.
Sartre continues (p.531) ‘This is the crucial point: what we are touching on here is that
essential structures of communities suffer from an epistemological idealism called the agreement of
minds. There are no such things as minds any more than that there are souls’. Does Sartre mean
things don’t have minds or is he suggesting that minds don’t exist at all? So even Sartre abandoned
existence for a misinformed monopoly of credit by banking, by evading it.
We propose that memory can be deposited into the body, into society, into the computer,
into God and into the mind. When deposited into the body it is conceivable that this brings about
physical illness.
“In civilisation and it’s Discontents” (1929) Freud comments ‘We may be justified in
reaching the diagnosis that under the influence of cultural urges some civilization or some époque
of civilities, possibly the whole of mankind, have become neurotic’. ‘We may expect one day
someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities’.
In our understanding of Hoppers publication ‘The Social Unconscious’, Hopper considers
there is no social unconscious until 50 members are present and that the interim between 0 and 50 is
a void. For us it is precisely here that the Median Group operates in the meeting and sharing of
minds and is where consciousness first emerges (by definition from the Oxford University
Dictionary consciousness means: knowing things with other people). Hopper’s void is our
consciousness. It is here that the unconscious mind meets social reality and by the subsequent
activity of thinking is able to confront and disentangle the obfuscation that is occurring in society.
In our experience the optimal size of the Median Group is around 17 members.
Melanie Klein
The Kleinian unconscious of the infant is generally speaking considered to be deeply
embedded in a phantasmagoria of infancy. But this is only half of the story since it is likely that the
infant gets some of the reflections coming from the external world which is by no means a
phantasy. In our opinion here unconscious is a reflection of our ongoing social reality. The child is
sensitive to the surrounding environment and is able to pick up some of these realities with the help
of what one might describe as outsight. Infants therefore do receive a great deal of information
about the external world which suffers from famine, torture, killing, murder, wars, catastrophes,
terrorism which is actually happening around them; they are well able to reflect.
Normality is a word that is often banded about but is in fact constituting a duality with social
norm on the one hand and individual, personal on the other. The norm can be either highly
destructive or creative. When it is individual, it is a single and unique substance. There are as many
substances as there are unique minds.
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Reneé Descartes
The first principle of Descartes’ philosophy (1596-1650) lies in the aphorism ‘cogito, ergo
sum’: I am thinking therefore I exist: ‘je pense, donc je suis’. He wrote “The physical world is made
up of one single substance but each human mind is unique and so each one is a separate
substance”, “I can’t be certain that I exist when I am not thinking; my existence depends on my
thinking”. Therefore in essence ‘I am’ is a thinking process, a soul or a mind or an intellect.
Descartes uses mind, soul, and intellect interchangeably. For him the soul was an immortal entity
for thinkers. So human beings are primarily made of two substances: one mortal and the other
immortal.
He suggests that his existence is indubitable, but that his body is dubitable. “My existence is
independent of my body. From this I know I am a substance, a whole essence whose nature is
simply to think, which does not require any place or time or depend on anything in order to exist.”
Accordingly this ‘I’ is entirely distinct from the body. This is a startling conclusion namely that our
existence depends entirely on our being conscious. Once we stop thinking we disappear. We
suggest that this puts us under an obligation to think even in sleep. Our mind and soul continue to
exist when our bodies die. For us soul is best reserved for that part of the mind which relates to
God. In other words the terms soul and self are primary and therefore have no further derivation,
and are elemental.
Mathematics
Pythagoras (550-500 BC) surmised that numbers have a life of their own and should
therefore be worshiped. The visible world is merely an illusion that hides the real mathematical
reality of things. The mathematics exists separately from human beings and is prior to the Creation
of the universe itself. The word mathematic is derived from the Latin, meaning learning or lesson.
Plato (427-347 BC) followed Pythagoras and agreed that mathematic pre-exists the real
structure of the universe and that random events follow a fractal geometric pattern. All knowledge
can be mathematised.
Descartes used algebra to bring letters together with geometry, for instance the letters x, w, z
represented the unknown and a, b, c was already known. He noted that parallel lines never meet and
that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that axioms and physics entails
constructing mathematical models.
For us mathematics has not discovered so match as being invented by the mind which was
introduced by the Euclidean’s as ‘formalism’. Descartes noted that business, accountancy,
astronomy, optics and navigation were improved when mathematics was applied. For us it is the
mind that carries out these functions. However mind is very rarely referred to directly and seems to
be a taboo subject. For us the mind pre-empts the brain, it is not the brain that creates mind but
mind also creates the mortal brain. Minds do not seem to be investigable in physical terms. The
behaviourists and cognitivists deny the presence of mind altogether.
The unconscious is the result of two unconsciousness: one is social and the other is
individual. They become fused and confused and it is only when they are processed by the mind
disentangling them to become distinct that integration, not fusion, takes places in consciousness in
the same manner that in which two integers become integrated.
Even in mentioning the word ‘mind’ we find ourselves in an infinity and diversity of
concepts: we are unable to cover the situation or do justice so much so that we eventually concluded
that the level has reached the point in which quantity effects a change of quality. In some ways we
have not got the words to describe this new quality other than the word psychotherapy which cannot
be covered by any of the laws that we have so far encountered. We are entering the human sphere of
a new order in moral science.
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The word substance originally referred to things and was synonymous with matter.
Descartes’ use of the word therefore is somewhat confusing which such philosophers as David
Armstrong has exploited in suggesting that consciousness is a physicalistic substance and is derived
from the Latin meaning ‘underneath’ and ‘what is standing’. The idea of substance has been used
differently by various philosophers from the beginning e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Look,
Spinoza, Kant and originally it meant something that was robust and solid, Aristotle distinguished
between matter and substance. So one is impelled to divide things into the duality of substance and
attribute which was the original dualism existing in the real world, both concrete and abstract. This
confusion does seem to mess up mind and meaning which is constantly being exploited for political
purposes. The word capitalism is derived from enumerate assessments of the heads of cattle. The
anti-capitalists are protesting against the confusion between brain and mind. Abstraction is derived
from a word ‘pull away from’ and we could reflect that language itself can often be really
ambiguous. The idea that mind itself is a drawing away from the brain as a disparate object,
constituting Plato’s interchangeable thought of ideas with forms, runs through geometry, numbers,
figures, propositions, properties and relations. Aristotle denied the independent existence of abstract
entities and defined a diluted sense of Plato’s forms as being secondary substances that adhere in
primary substances or spatio-temporal particulars. This dispute persists in medieval times between
realists and metaphysicians. Augustine and Aquinas accept the existence of abstractions and
nominalists, e.g. Ockam (1285-1347), who maintained that similar objects may simply be referred
to by the same name without participating in an abstract form. This controversy has given rise to
our opinion that the compulsive obsessing with details is mindless. We would suggest the word
‘premise’ rather than substance and leave substance to the interchange ability of matter.
Philosophy of psychotherapy
We as psychotherapists have constantly being bemused by an area which has not been
articulated but remains conceptualised in the form of constantly obsessing.
We postulate a universal law of human mind that has to be recognised and acknowledged, a
law which if broken creates savage and severe reprisals. The first of these laws is the law of
opposite dualities. For instance the term minding has two distinct meanings namely that of caring
and looking after and the second in the sense that things do matter to oneself and can hurt and one is
not indifferent towards others. If we do not acknowledge this we are not able to bother about other
people, since we are unable to care for ourselves, by the same token we cannot care for others
which relates to the phenomenon of autism. The phrase ‘love others as you love yourself’ is part of
the law of universal duality and can only be broken when it causes insecurity, anxiety and the law
of the subhuman jungle prevails, and we proceed to destroy each other without compunction.
We might add here that the history student Karen Armstong ( “The Great Transformation”.
2006) has written that the Golden Rule of the Perennial Philosophy: “Love the other as yourself”
was universal from China to Greece and Palestine between 900-300 BC.
The double law constitutes the essence of humanisation and without it we behave like
subhuman where there is no distinction between good and evil. Each one of us is in a position to
make decisions and choices and this faces each one of us personally and individually at every
moment of our lives even in our sleep and in our dreams: i. e. take responsibility.
Another duality which has to be recognised namely that there are the rights of society and
the rights of the individual which, if ignored, have a disastrous effect in the form of vengeance by
the individual against the culture of society.
This apologia is true apology for the situations we have created and which we disguise by a
mask of indifference and obsessionalising which poses as thinking. There is an interesting
derivation we would like to mention namely that of the word tragedy which comes from the Greek
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meaning ‘goat and song’. The god Pan is half goat, half human and the clash of this is to result in
the making of music by the pan pipes.
The word obsession is derived from the Latin meaning ‘to sit on’ which is part of a mindless
process of dehumanising and is interpreted as a punishment which cannot be sorted out except by
the disentangling of neurotic guilt from real guilt and which is abstract. The rights of mankind and
personal rights lead to a type of litigating which is characteristically obsessional and can only be
sorted out by the mind which has a characteristic quality of having to use or loose. In effect
litigation is unreliable and it is the mind which finally has to refer to a different law which relates to
logos and a Universal Law that has been termed divine.
It is often difficult to decide where philosophy ends and psychology begins. Leo Vigotsky
and Wundt developed a physiological psychological reduction to simple elementary physiological
components and were unable to deal with conscious behaviour such as motives, abstract thinking,
active memorising, and voluntary actions. This marked another way of looking at things and was
called descriptive psychology, experiential, phenomenological, and with the stark distinction being
the logic of numbers and the phenomenological aspect of appearances.
We find that Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the Swiss linguist is revealing when he
speaks of ‘la Langue’ is as a social fact of language and ‘la Parole’ is representative of speech. He
makes a sharp distinction between signifier and signified and he invented the discipline of
semiology which refers to the science system of signs.
We suggest that when there is a union between dualities there is a state of tension that
constitutes the base for consciousness. Freud hoped to be acknowledged as scientific but he
discovered the new phenomenon that symptoms and dreams have meaning which marks a
thoughtfulness which is entirely distinct from scientific obsessing: logic versus logos. In
relationship to this Sartre displaces a monism but at the same time has created such dualities as ‘on
soi’ and ‘pour soi’ and has even created a third intermingling that of ‘being for the other’, ‘myself
as subject’. Descartes described intermingling which is surely a third premise which for us
embodies consciousness. We have reached the conclusion that Freud, Wittgenstein, Sartre and
Foulkes et al. are essentially dualists. Perhaps it may seem strange that in keeping with so many
others who have written about the mind we would like to say that we have differentiated ourselves
from all these references and we have embarked on one simple notion: namely we have attributed
primacy to the mind itself above all other considerations. There is in the first place a curious
paradox in that in order to grasp the full significance of mind: we have each one of us to look at the
mind with the help of mind itself. We would suggest that the fundamental function is to disentangle
materialism from spirituality; what is body and what is mind creates a thesis, an antithesis and a
synthesis which is therefore a triadic rather than dyadic phenomenon.
There is a provocative publication ‘The Wisdom Paradox. How Your Mind Can Grow
Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older’, by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg, Free Press
2005. Three quarters of this book is a description of the brain, the last chapter however describes
very well the approach similar to ours “But vigorous life of the mind should not come to a halt at
any time. It can and must continue well into advanced age. The longer it goes on, the longer it will
continue to bestow own rewards in the form of stimulating various growth processes in the brain
and by so doing protecting it from the effects of decay. The concept of lifelong mental fitness, with
better odds for keeping a sound mind for life as its reward, should become part of popular culture. I
believe it soon will.” “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labour of
thinking” (p 291).
We would not deny of course but would not regard this as the only aspect since it concerns
human beings who mind and care and humanize and wonder. As Socrates stated ‘Wisdom begins in
wonder’. Teresa of Avila, the mystic, wrote ‘the way in which this what we call union comes and
the nature of it I do not know how to explain. It is described in mystical theology, but I am unable to
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use the proper terms and I cannot understand what is meant by mind or how it differs from soul or
spirit. They all seem the same to me, though the soul sometimes issues from itself, like a fire that is
burning and has become wholly flame and sometimes this fire increases with great force’. Plato on
the other hand believed in a soul with tree parts, reason, noble passion, base passion, proceeding
from head, lungs, heart, liver and guts. Soul and mental faculties were located in the spaces known
as ventricles.
We would regard psychotherapy as providing a unique philosophy of its own but with
certain Platonic roots as exemplified in the ‘Republic’; Aristotle did not agree and considered Plato
was mistaken. This presupposes a new approach to the whole of philosophy, and therefore alters
forever and ultimately all previous philosophical assumptions and therapy therefore reshapes the
whole of philosophy since the Mind is based on the primacy of Mind itself. Never has the Mind
been taken as so central to healing and by the same token participation in the Median Group is self
evidently therapeutic. It is perhaps relevant that Marcus Aurelius (121 to 180 AD) who considered
the concept of meaning is every bit as problematic as the concept of mind. Another of the pagans
circa 585 BC, Tales, stated God is the mind of the universe.
So therefore it can be said that there are at least five modes of Mind namely monism,
dualism, triadic, quaternal and pentalgramatic.
Monism occurs when the foetus inside the womb receives oxygen and nutrient supplies
established through the placenta and this state of affairs consists the essence of monism such as the
Garden of Eden or Paradise, before the Fall, at one with God with the oceanic feelings of the
amniotic fluid totally materialistic in relationship to the derivation for the Latin word ‘mater’. The
foetus appears to smile in a state of nirvana, an Atlantis. Atlantis, by the way, was a phantasy of
Plato.
Throughout history there have been many images of the Mind, ranging from the Hindu
concept of mind as a mandala and tantric mandalas with drawings as a space containing circle and
square used in initiating ceremonies. The lotus as a flower represents supreme reality and is always
present in Buddhist statues.
In the chapter of Genesis the earth was described as being without form and was void and
darkness was the face of the deep. In St. John this beginning was described as logos or the word.
The word was with God and the word was God. In Genesis, when God spoke, ‘Let there be light.
He saw that this was good.’ In Genesis God is described as ‘I AM, I AM’. God and the initial being
had later to be humanised by a human being, the Sun of Man.
In China the Tao, the Way was motionless characterised by nothingness, absence of finality
and which Plato originally described as ventricles, as primal being and space an abstract idea,
subsequently described as archetypal by Jung. When nothingness developed colour, meaning,
melody, universal mind, it was also universal and good which became impersonalised as The Primal
Good. When Buddha was asked what he was he replied ‘I am Awake’. At the same time this
invisible magic intangible flowing being has been described as Dasein by Heidegger. Since these
words are difficult to define, the truth is regarded as secret, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’. The Hindus
considered the mind is a substance that can take on the shape of any object. Beyond the three
aspects of the divine, beyond the trinity, there is a fourth dimension which, so far, has no definition
and has not jet been defined and we suggest the four quadrants of the symbol of the Cross (see p
16).
We suggest the Universal Mind is a fourth dimension and a formless substance. The
mandalas of Hinduism and Buddhism are attempts at illustrating mind pictures.
In the second chapter of the Tao The Ching various dualities are described such as beauty
and ugliness, good and evil and by the same token existence would also suggest non existence, as
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an example the circle of the circumference exists but at the centre mathematicians describe as being
too small that it doesn’t exist but has a locality.
There are two sorts of religion: the first is historical and ranges over thousand of years such
as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism as distinct from primal religions such as
shamanism and paganism which are between 40 and 100 thousand years old. Ethics, the
philosophical study of morality along with logic, metaphysics and epistemology constitute the four
main branches of philosophy. Moral ethics which studies goodness and right action is a powerful
issue in psychotherapy. Should we as psychotherapists mind about our clients, should we care for
them and mind what they say in enabling them to help and heal, which concludes that we do have
minds, that self evidently we do mind. Of course if we deny mind as the behaviourists and cognitive
psychologists do, we very much limit our therapy.
The pre Socratic philosophy begins with nature but Socrates was involved with the
discovery of the soul. The Greeks had a passion for the state and Plato wrote in the dialogues of
Socrates that he would prefer to be dead rather than live in a city, which was corrupt. Plato, the
greatest philosopher of all time examined the study of mind which ‘orders all things and may justly
be called wisdom and mind’ (Drake, H. 1959 ). We ourselves, consider that the most significant
feature in the concept of Mind is that it is a process of awareness which disentangles what is human
from what is scientific. To summarize the situation there are four modalities of thinking: the first is
monistic as in monotheism which is materialistic as in behaviourism and cognitive psychology. The
second is dualism such as Cartesian. The third is triadic, thinking itself and involved with
disentangling such as melody, meaning, humanity, choosing and koinonia. The fourth dimension
that of totalisation: the universal intelligence which is inspired and creative, visionary, timeless, anti
depressant and divine. The fifth is the universal.
The single word the ‘mind’ itself covers such concepts as nothingness, space and lack and
pause. The Hindus and Buddhists void was termed ‘shunyata’: Plato named it ventricle, all of which
are like the facets of a mirror ball with a single centre, e.g. Nothingness, the mind which runs like a
red thread through the history of mankind.
David Hume deprived thinking of all certainty except logic and mathematics which Kant
(1781) rescued us from this dead end by the notion of synthetic a priori, which does not depend on
inductive experiential proof but is replaced by the mind itself which contribute various ordering
elements to our sensations of space, time, causality, relieving us from chaos, reclaiming
metaphysics, human freedom and ethics. The ‘Critique of Reason’ (Kant) has been described as one
of the monumental works of all philosophy.
In recommending the concept of mind two main issues are evident, the first of which is the
presence of the Universe itself and the second is the reflection of that universe by the human mind.
The pentalgramatic universe consists of all that there is to reflect on, which consists of a vast
array of concepts such as the conscious and unconscious mind.
Essentially the mind constitutes the outcome of a triad. First there is monism followed by
the opposition of the dyad and which is followed by a new synthesis. This means maintaining a
nothingness of the mind. Most religions recommend fasting, abstince, celibacy and a general
freedom from identifying with things, refraining from addiction, commoditisation and
finacialisation. The triadic supposition is essentially a process leading to meaning and the human
mind. The concept that the whole consists of more than the sum of its parts, for instance: a good
melody has nothing to do with the actual notes and scales and arpeggios, namely a third dimension
that of melody.
One of the earliest symbols of the universe was represented by the Chinese and consisted of
the circle or circumference. Then the circle with the centre was introduced which had no
dimensions but did have a location, described by the mathematicians as too small to exist at all.
This could be seen as the essence of the concept of the mind itself. Whilst the circumference is
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multifaceted like a mirror ball, the centre is a single dimension which reflect and is equidistant from
all the billions of the facets. This entails maintaining a nothingness.
Dualism can become monistic in the notion of two aspects of the same thing so that dualism
is either monistic, but triadic when two things interrelate.
To interpolate, consciousness is a word derived (Oxford University Press) as a knowing
(scio) with (con) other people. To declare that brain and mind are the same thing denies the
presence of the space between brains or that the pauses in music is the same as the sound.
Mind therefore cannot be defined since it is a central nothingness which reflects everything,
the void only expressible in terms of nihilistic negativity and can only be defined by encountering
another mind or by relating to the universal mind of God described as ‘I AM I AM’.
It is interesting to regard the oldest of all religions, namely shamanism, which searches for
the lost souls of sick people by reclaiming the soul. Sickness, physical or psychological, is in the
shaman doctrine due to a loss of soul or ‘soul loss’. The methods applied are by feasts of various
paraphernalia, states of trance, such as trance or ecstasy created by the beating of the drum and
remarkable phenomena such as ropes in the sky or fires of unknown origin. All this had been shared
by various peoples over the world which are pre Christian, such as the Lapps, Eskimos, the Red
Indians of the Planes north America, the Australian aborigines, the African Voodoo and various
hunter gatherers in the past.
We have surmised and would like to interpolate here that there exists in every one a
condition of primal terror or panic which is so severe but is heavily repressed and therefore
unconscious. It creates a state of mindlessness which renders humanity helpless victim of an
inherent cowardice resulting in a universal loss of morale, courage, and a prejudice against in the
least trace of mind, of meaning, of caring. It is only as a result of pain, suffering and corruption that
the conscious mind can be pressured into existence. The very word Sin is derived from an Aramaic
term (the language Christ spoke) which means the loss of the power to focus and therefore a loss of
consciousness in the form of the repressed unconscious.
There are two quotations worth referring to, namely one by Silvia Plath, who committed
suicide, in the Poem Apprehensions (1974) and the quote is a question: “is there no way out of the
mind?” The other is by W.B. Yeats, in The Second Coming (1921): “Things fall apart: the centre
cannot hold”.
Giovanni Stanghellini (Oxford 2004) entitled ‘Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated
Bodies’, writes “the last few years have witnessed a remarkable explosion of study between
philosophy and psychiatry. Psychiatry raises problems of meaning with empirical difficulties: as a
consequence there is a growing need for clear thinking in our discipline.” Stanghellini has shared
in an international network of psychiatrists, psychologists and philosophers collaborating in a
rigorous understanding of human subjectivity. (Phenomenological Psychopathology). The notion
has emerged that it is social disturbances which become introjected into the individual causing
madness and moral idiocy. It is interesting that all Husserl’s work displays a tension between Ego
and Society.
It is perhaps relevant to mention that it was Carl Jaspers who first described phenomenology
as the science of experience. He was the first “existentialist”.
What does existence actually mean?
For us it is the mind that creates the meaning of existence and of being. It creates the story,
the narrative which is the relatedness of facts which therefore become ficts.
Phenomena of consciousness is to find the essential laws of consciousness such as dualism
or of thinking itself. The computer, for instance, does not think but computes. It treats abstract
meaningful words as if they were numbers, which constitutes the distinction between first logic and
mathematics and second logos. If the Word does not exist, it results in nausea or depression. The
discovery that it does exist is existentialism which entails minding, caring, thinking and abstracting
and therefore assumes the presence of a minder who focuses, involving the deficiency disease of
such illnesses as schizophrenia and in the case of depression a loss of sense of value and inspiration,
9
and a loss of ability to express because of oppression and fear. To take all these abstractions into
account constitutes psychotherapy, healing and miracles. The schizophrenic creates magic not
imagination since he is uprooted from actuality which becomes replanted in the case of dialogue
with other minds e.g. the therapist or group.
David Hume in ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’ (1739) wrote “In pretending therefore to
explain the principles of human nature we in fact propose a coupled system of science built on a
foundation almost entirely new and the only one upon which we stand with any security it is
founded on experience and observation ‘a new footing’ referring to recent philosophers coming
from England”. He calls this science “human nature”, and the only one upon which we stand with
any security and which we would refer to as the Human Mind. He writes “The essence of mind is
unknown to us” and which he proposes a science superior to any other human comprehension. He
wrote ““All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds which I
shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS. The difference betwixt these consist in the degrees of force
and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind and make their way into our thoughts or
consciousness.” which we call the Human Mind. He writes “For me it seems evident that essence of
the mind being equally unknown to us. Is to establish a science which will be superior in utility to
any other human comprehension”. He further proposes another division of the impressions into
original and secondary. He further goes on to say that there is a further division between impression
and sensation.
We note that these are all dualisms and would simplify them to a central dualism of
reflections and the things that are reflected. This is only the beginning that goes into several more
implications. Suffice to say that reflection is fundamental to the quality of the concept of mind
which is part of a dualism of the body mind problem. We feel supported by the “Treatise” though
we are confounded by the extent of the obsessional verbiage.
Hume talks of the soul by which we suggest he refers to the mind.
The whole of the ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ circles round references to a concept of mind.
A related significance must be attributed to Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ and later Heidegger’s
talk of ‘Dasein’. We would use the word mind to cover all three terms and they can be said to cover
the obsessional obfuscations of words like ideas (Plato, who also talked of Forms) or Nothingness
(Sartre) and ‘the case’ of Wittgenstein, also the soul in religion and the spirit in philosophy. These
are terms which seem to go round and round in a verbiage which indicates compulsive obsessing
and is often mistaken for thinking. For us only the individual, single human mind actually thinks
which is cultivated in relation to other minds. As we have said, the mind, therefore, runs through the
history of mankind like a red thread and is subject to a curious taboo. This renders the study of the
mind all the more significant.
We would like here to turn to some of the writings of Jean Jacque Rousseau who was
inspired by the ancient Greek City State and was himself the leading light of the Enlightenment: he
questioned the self serving monarchic social system which reduced the common people to a state of
enslaved servitude. In his masterpiece “The Social Contract” (1762) it remains relevant to today’s
problems with widespread wasted interests; essentially this concerns two modes, one which is
lateralisation and the other a vertical dimension. These two, if they cross each other constitute a
cross and the point of crossing is a centre of localisation and in Christianity is symbolised by the
thorns and twisted presence of Jesus Christ, the sufferings of the human race. (see The Symbol of
the Cross, p )
A loss of social contract causes a condition of falling apart which the individual becomes
introjected as madness. What is an actuality in society which is accepted as normal and is
thoroughly Kleinian.
Dasein was a notion suggested by Heidegger and referred to a state of mind which has a
peculiarly elusive character, denoting being in the world. Dasein describes his approach and
10
requires no science or philosophy since it is that way and cannot be reducible to either body or
mind, is a science of authenticity. It seems that Heidegger is the philosopher of psychotherapy. It is
interesting that neither Heidegger nor Husserl nor Sartre are mentioned by Bertrand Russerl’s
“History of Western Philosophy” (1946).
The idea of phenomena is derived from the ancient Greeks which eventually became basic to
phenomenology (Timon 235 B.C.) He wrote “The Phenomenon is always valid” and ”that honey is
sweet, I refuse to assert, but it appears sweet I fully grant” One should mention that the
“Phenomenology of Mind” by Hegel in 1807 constantly refers to the mind itself and the term
phenomenology itself was first described as a system of philosophy by Husserl in 1900. In other
words 93 years later.
Roberto and Patrick are, in this article primarily concerned with the beginnings of a mini
philosophy for psychotherapy emerging from psycho and group and sociotherapy. On the whole
philosophy in psychotherapy is ignored in favour of being scientific. For us it is clear that the
concrete presence of the brain is in sharp contradistinction to the abstract presence of mind which
entails relating to other minds.:
We are adding a new list of dualities and which are more philosophical in nature namely :
Concrete
Abstract
Worldly
The how of causal
Explanation by science
Symptoms
The Reflected
Substance
Simiotics
Subject
Res Extensa
Matter
Unworldly
The why of reason
The understanding of the mind
Meaning
The Reflecting
Attributes
Semantics
Predicate
Res Cogitans
Energy
Although it was Descartes who is known for the Cartesian duality, he actually introduced the
triadic dimension in terms of the relationship between body and mind known as intermingling or
interaction.
Galileo (1564-1642) was the greatest of the founders of modern science, Newton came later
(1642-1727) and Descartes (1596-1650), Copernicus and Kepler. Descartes is also regarded as the
founder of modern philosophy which also included the progress of the exact sciences including
psychology which he termed the first philosophy.
Previously Aristotle had taught that one of the laws of formal logic was that of the excluded
middle which suggested that ‘a’ is equivalent to ‘c’ and that the middle ‘b’ was excluded. This is
the domain of what is the mind (for us), which echoed in computers by digital and analogue
thinking which is more or less as distinct from the ‘either or’ of digital.
The biggest and most corrupt hoax the world has ever known is the simple trick of naming
things such as money as a commodity and as distinct from the abstraction of being a facilitating
agent for exchange, which creates what has been called the National Debt, which has to be repaid
by the labours who sold their labour in the first place, which therefore becomes slave labour. This
constitutes the basis of the two dualities of the ‘class war and capitalism’ and communism.
11
Classical physics saw the universe as a giant machine in a framework of space and time
which cannot be visualised. In Newtonian synthesis all motion has a cause and effect relationship
termed determinism. Energy and motion are represented by two models, one a particle impenetrable
the other a wave which are mutually exclusive: energy must be one or the other. The properties of
light was described by Maxwell as the electromagnetic wave theory.
A yogi called Patangeli wrote the original complete of classical yoga somewhere around 500
BC which was probably concurrent with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Buddha. This textbook
consists of four booklets containing 196 aphorisms or sutras in Sanskrit describing the first serious
concept of the mind and is composed more strongly in Buddhism than any other form of traditional
teaching, regarded as a true expression of the subjective self, consisting in our innermost thoughts
and desires, the light of life. Mind attains peace by associating with the happy compassion of the
soul appearing as the good and avoiding the evil or vicious.
The Sanskrit word for mind is Chitta, the mind as a whole, the state of consciousness of
Nama, attention, reflection, mental vitality, focusing or concentrating, inseparable mental factors in
any state of consciousness. This is in contrast to corporality or body named Rupa, the Rupa-Chitta
as the body-mind duality.
The Dharma is the totalisation of all the sorts or objects of the mind as distinct from the
mind itself, the total content of mind.
Turning now to the term ‘science’ is a name derived from the Latin for ‘to know’: originally
any systematised knowledge but later became limited to a more exact approach involving the body
of facts systematically arranged in the natural physical world with the precise application by logic,
mathematics, numbers, measurements, rules, principles, laws, axioms, which are predictable and
repeatable.
With the specificity of exact science and induction, hypothesis experiment, causality.
Newton set the modern agenda, conciliance of induction where several pieces of evidence convened
to make one true explanation. Solidity, tangibility, visibility, physicality, concretisation. The word
substance has become extended to cover concretisation to abstraction, the two substances of duality.
Mental disturbances usually manifest defences are indeed deficiencies diseases such as
Beriberi, which was a disease caused by deficiency of vitamin B, the first discovery of vitamins in
1922. In the case of psychological disturbances there is a deficiency of mind. Schizophrenia for
instance was originally labelled dementia praecox with thought disorder characterised by
mindlessness. In the case of depression mind is an antidepressant and expresses itself symbolically
as obsessing as distinct from thinking which is compulsive. In the case of phobia the mind is
antiphobic but is often characterised by verbiage so often displayed by philosophers and scientists.
Finally we would like to summarise some of the basic characteristics of the mind:1.
2.
3.
it is axiomatic that the mind involves the perennial Cartesian duality of the bodymind problem
this fundamentally entails the duality of concrete and abstract, the mind is abstract.
To treat abstract as if it were a concrete commodity is a disaster and results in the
biggest corrupt hoax of all time namely finance capitalism. The medium of
exchange namely money is exploited by being transformed into a private
possession. The Bank of England, for instance is a private company only
accountable to itself and by law is entitled to 10 times that amount of credit which
they have as deposits in addition to the interests on the loan. The British National
Dept to its own bankers is more than there is gold in the world and can newer be
paid back but the interests amounts to about 50 pounds per person per year in tax.
the mind than is at the triadic centre of matte-spirit duality which was first
suggested by Descartes as interaction and intermingling (unio substantialis)
12
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
this triad is the Trinity of all time, namely the Holy Ghost and it is the mind that
disentangles this conundrum. A similar significant distinction is exemplified by
the conflict between capitalism and socialism “public ownership of the means of
production” and the class war. The mind than is in opposition to slavery which is
caused by the labourers having to repay the credit they loaned in the first place.
above all distinctions is that of the process of thinking on the one hand and
obsessing on the other which is verbiage. This often passes as thinking but is
mechanical and repetitious.
mind, above all, minds and cares and humanises which renders it therapeutic
the array of these dualities is enormous, it entails abstraction or nothingness,
‘nature abhors a vacuum’.
The mind explores the hiatus between ontology and phenomenology
there is therefore a need for the mind to distinguish psychotherapy and counselling
from the psychoanalytic attitude.
The mind is like the centre of the circle which mathematically is regarded as being
too small to distinguish
so that it turns out that it is only the single individual mind that actually thinks
whilst institutions only obsess, termed democratic
In order to try and simplify matters people have resorted to symbolisation. Symbolic
formation is as old as history and the first of such symbols amounted to four, namely the
circle, the centre, the cross and the square, essential vehicles for focusing the mind of which
the cross is particularly clear.
The following diagram is an example of the cross symbol which is over 16.000 years
ago. There are many more symbols that have been elaborated.
In the diagram of the cross the vertical dimension symbolises the single autonomous
ranging the hole gamut from alpha to omega, from beginning to end, from good and God to
bad and Satanic. This vertical dimension is halved by being cut across in the middle by the
horizontal which is sociocultural dividing the mind into consciousness and the unconscious
which creates four quarters. The top left area is that of universal material reality and the top
right is the symbolic transformation in a state of consciousness. The bottom left is the social
unconscious and the bottom right is the individual unconscious mind both of which cross at
the centre representing the collectivity of the four quarters and constitutes what we have
named the Mind with a capital, a highly complex constellation of totality, both concrete and
abstract, both commodity and symbol, sexual and erotic, cause and meaning, obsessing and
thinking, both verbiage and logos. Throughout history typical manifestations of the cross
have included Zen, Taoism, Mandalas, the Christian Cross of the New Testament. Like the
Passion, the exercising of the Mind involves acute pain and suffering, which in fact leads to
transformation to the healing process. (See the Symbol of the Cross)
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Patrick de Mare, F.R.C.Psych., worked with Bion, Rickman and Foulkes at Northfield Military Hospital and is a founder member
of the Group-Analytic Society, the Institute of Group Analysis and a founder of the Group-Analytic Practice. Currently, he
convenes the Median Group Seminar which has just introduced the Median Group into the UK Prison Service. Author's address: 5
Holly Place, Holly Walk, London NW3 6QU, UK.
Roberto Schöllberger, B.Psych., is a training analyst at the Institute für Psychoanalyse Zuerich-Kreuzlingen in Germany, also
currently working with the Mental Health Centres, Azienda Unica Alto Adige, Comprensorio Sanitario Bolzano in Italy. He has
worked with Psichiatria Democratica, the movement that helped get asylums closed and made community psychiatry possible in
Italy. Supervisor of teamwork in clinical and social psychology, he also leads training sessions in group therapy and group work.
Author's address: Corso Libertà 53, 39100 Bolzano, Italy. roberto.schoellberger@asbz.it
SYMBOL OF THE CROSS
Alpha
Ver
Go
Go
Sun of
Sin
Material reality
Concrete
Body
Brain
Sex
Causal
Objective
Group Matrix
The beginning
tical
od
d
God
gle
SECONDARY PROCESS
t
h
i
n
k
i
n
g
f
r
e
e
Symbolic Reality
(Circle, Centre, Cross, Square)
Abstract
Spirit
Mind
Eros
Meaning
Subjective
Individual Person
choice, decision making
auto nomous
horisontal
lateral
conscious
unconscious
cen tre
Mi nd
conscious
unconscious
horizontal
lateral
sin gle
15
Social
Political
O
B
S
E
S
S
I
N
G
c
o
m
p
u
l
s
i
v
e
m
e
c
h
a
n
i
c
a
l
Individual
Cultural, cultivation
mul tiple
coll ective
uncon scious
PRIMARY PROCESS
Son of
De
Da
Ba
Ver
Omega,
man
vil
rk
d
tical
the End
16