Daniel J. Siegel - Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human

MIND

A JOURNEY
TO THE HEART
OF BEING HUMAN

Daniel J. Siegel, MD

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS SINCE 1923

NEW YORK LONDON

For Caroline

CONTENTS

EXPANDED CONTENTS

MIND

H ELLO. A simple communication offered from me to you.

But who is it that knows I greeted you with hello?

And how do you know?

And what does knowing really mean?

In this book well explore the nature of the who, how, what, why, where, and when of the mind, of your mind, of your self, the experience you have that knows I am welcoming you with hello.

Some use the term mind to mean intellect and logic, thought and reasoning, contrasting mind to heart, or mind to emotion. This is not how I use the broad term mind here, or in other writings. By mind, I mean all that relates to our subjective felt experience of being alive, from feelings to thoughts, from intellectual ideas to inner sensory immersions before and beneath words, to our felt connections to other people and our planet. And mind also refers to our consciousness, the experience we have of being aware of this felt sense of life, the experience of knowing within awareness.

Mind is the essence of our fundamental nature, our deepest sense of being alive, here, right now, in this moment.

Yet beyond consciousness and its knowing within awareness of our subjective felt sense of being alive, mind may also involve a larger process, one that connects us to each other and our world. This important process is a facet of mind that may be hard to measure, but is nevertheless a crucial aspect of our lives well explore in great depth in the journey ahead.

Though we may not be able to quantify in numerical terms these facets of our mind at the heart of the experience of being here in this life, this internally felt subjective phenomenon of living, and the ways we can feel our connections to one another and the world, are subjective phenomena that are real. These non-measureable facets of the reality of life have many names. Some call this our essence. Some call this our core, soul, spirit, or true nature.

I simply call this mind.

Is mind just some synonym for subjectivitythe feeling of our emotions and thoughts, memories and dreams, inner awareness and interconnectedness? If mind also includes our way of being aware of this inner sense of moment-to-moment living, then mind would additionally involve the experience called consciousness, our way of being aware, of knowing what these aspects of our subjective life are as they unfold. So at a minimum, mind is a term that includes consciousness and the way we are aware of our felt experience, our subjective lives.

But something also happens beneath awareness that involves what we usually refer to as mind as well. These are our non-conscious mental processes, such as thoughts, memories, emotions, beliefs, hopes, dreams, longings, attitudes, and intentions. Sometimes we are aware of these, and sometimes not. Though we are not aware of these at times, perhaps even the majority of the time, these mental activities happening without consciousness are real and influence our behaviors. These activities can be seen as a part of our thinking and reasoning, as some process that enables information to flow and transform. And without awareness, it may be that these flows of information do not evoke subjective feelings, as they are not a part of conscious experience. So we can see that beyond consciousness and its awareness of subjective experience, the term mind also includes the fundamental process of information processing that does not depend upon awareness.

But what does mind-as-information-processor really mean? What is information? If information drives how we make decisions and initiate behavior, how does mind, conscious or not, enable us to make willful choices on what to do? Do we have free will? If the term mind includes aspects of subjectivity, consciousness, and information processing, including its problem-solving and behavioral control, what makes up the essence of what mind is? What is this mind stuff that is a part of this spectrum of mental processes from felt sense to executive control?

With these common descriptions of the mind involving consciousness, subjective experience, and information processing, and how these are manifested in ways that you may be familiar with, including memory and perception, thought and emotion, reasoning and belief, decision-making and behavior, what can we say ties each of these well-known mental activities together? If mind is the source of everything from felt sensations and feelings to thought and the initiation of action, why are these all subsumed under the word mind? What can we say the mind is?

Mind as a term, and mind as an entity or process, can be seen as a noun or verb. As a noun, mind has the sense of being an object, something stable, of something you ought to be able to hold in your hands, something you can possess. You have a mind, and its yours. But what is that noun-like stuff of mind actually made of? As a verb, mind is a dynamic, ever-emerging process. Mind is full of activity, unfolding with ceaseless change. And if the verb-like mind is indeed a process, what is this dynamic stuff, this activity of our mental lives? What, really, is this mind, verb or noun, all about?

Sometimes we hear a description of the mind as an information processor. (Gazzaniga, 2004). This generally indicates how we have representations of ideas or things and then transform them, remember events by encoding, storing, and retrieving memory, and move from perception to reasoning to enacting behavior. Each of these forms of mind activity is part of the information processing of the mind. What has intrigued me, as a scientist, educator, and physician working with the mind for more than thirty-five years now, is how common these descriptions of the mind are, yet how a definition of what the mind actually is, a clear view of the minds essence beyond lists of its functions, is missing from a wide range of fields that deal with the mind, from clinical practice and education to scientific research and philosophy.

As a mental health professional (psychiatrist and psychotherapist), Ive also wondered how this lack of at least a working definition of what the mind might actually be could be limiting our effectiveness as clinicians. A working definition would mean we could work with it and change it as needed to fit the data and our personal experience. A definition would mean we could clearly state what the essence of mind means. We so often hear the word mind yet rarely do we notice it lacks a clear definition. Without even a working definition of mind in scientific, educational, and clinical professional worlds, and without one in our personal and family lives, something seems missing, at least in my own mind, from our understanding and conversations about the mind.

With only descriptions and no attempt at even a working definition of what mind is, could we even define what a healthy mind is?

If we stay at the level of description, of mind as being made of thoughts, feelings, and memories, of consciousness and subjective experience, lets see where it takes us. For example, if you reflect for a moment on your thoughts, what is your thinking truly made of? What is a thought? You might say, Well, Dan, I know I am thinking when I sense words in my head. And I could then ask you, what does it mean to say I know and to sense words? If these are processes, a dynamic, verb-like aspect of information processing, what is being processed? You may say, Well, we know that it is simply brain activity. And you may be surprised to find that no one knows, if this brain-view is indeed true, how the subjective sense of your own thinking somehow arises from neurons in your head. Processes as familiar and basic as thought or thinking are still without clear understanding by our, well, our minds.