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The Microgeny of Schizophrenia and the Nature of the Global Mind

Including: Case Report on the Successful Hypnotherapy of Schizophrenia

 by Mark Germine, MD, MS

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

Albert Einstein - (1879-1955)

SUMMARY

          The theory of microgenesis, as described by Jason Brown and others, involves the hierarchical elaboration of the self and object world from a deep core of self, from unconsciousness to consciousness, through a simultaneous interval of time that continuously reiterates the development of the individual and the evolution of the organism.  These features place demands on our view of time, which are addressed and fully formulated here on the terms of dynamical systems theory, and generalized to all dynamical systems, including abiotic systems.  We further formulate microgenesis in the more general physical theories of information and the foundations of dynamical states in physics.  The development of microgenetic theory is outlined, as it has arisen in the hierarchical views of evolution, complexity, and dynamical systems theory.  The neurobiology of schizophrenia is indicative of abnormalities in functional connectivity and activation of the brain.  Psychologically, there is also an apparent disintegration or fragmentation of self, which we describe in terms of the association and dissociation entropies of the self-construct, presenting a simple paradigm of the schizophrenic break as a dynamically enduring process that arises when the dissociation entropy exceeds the association entropy or the self construct.  Heterochronous presentation of a microgenetically primitive construct of a self and object world then arise at the conscious surface of microgenesis.  The dissociative construct of self is emphasized as a microgenetic model where dissociation is, fundamentally, a loss of cohesion and splitting of the self-construct.  A wider view is entertained which examines the social conditions of fragmentation in modern humans, and the conditions of prevention, remediation, and palliation are discussed, with particular reference to a case example of successful hypnotic treatment of a patient based on the microgenetic model of dissociation.   Multiple working hypotheses of schizophrenia, the self, and the broad scientific implications of microgenesis are outlined, and future directions of inquiry are addressed.

INTRODUCTION     

The fundamental premise of this paper is that, according to the microgenetic theory of Jason Brown, schizophrenia can be described as a fragmentation or dissociation of the self as it actuates to from the timeless core of self, imbued with subjectivity ab initio, into the temporally realized conscious self and objects in a real world.  In the normal, sane individual, the microgenetic process moves through a simultaneous interval, which begins as the as the  subjective core where the self/object duality has not yet evolved, and ends at the surface, at the end of this interval of duration, with a separate self, which has a unitary and integral relationship with the object-world.  This end point can be looked at as the surface of a series of layers through which the history of the individual and evolution of the organism are stratified, not is temporal but in a genetic or causal sense.   Figure 1 shows Brown’s simplified diagrammatic representation of the process of microgenesis.

Fig. 1.  Microgenetic process.  The unconscious core of self gives rise to the self-complex, from which an internal self in an external object world arise in perception.  Diagram courtesy of Jason Brown. 

In the theory of microgenesis, this evolution from depth to surface can be conceived, in the life of the individual, as a continuous re-creation of mind, which, not only includes those conscious end point that are perceived in the integral world of consciousness, but as a repetition of the entire microgenetic process.  If we reduce each duration of the microgenetic state to a point, then, we can construct a line in the history of self, as it is reified in the real world, and this line would be singular in the sense that the same self and the same world are continually re-created in time from the non-temporal core of self.  However, the conscious self, as we know it, need not follow this integral process through which self is essentially recreated in the forward direction in time, yet partakes of its entire causal past, both ontogenically, or in development, including embryogenesis, and phylogenetically, in the course of evolution, including the more primitive core of chordates.

The separation of self and object, as we know, was not for “primitive” humans the same as the strict separation that we now perceive as modern humans.  Objects were imbued with a life of their own, which was seen of as continuous with the life of the individual and the community of individuals, who constituted a world that we fully interpersonal and yet intrapsychic and subjective, restricted at first to the life of the group, until, in the relatively recent evolutionary past, as the species propagated from its restricted and perilous past some tens of thousands of years ago, to occupation of contiguous areas in space.

The subject/object distinction, and the subject/predicate distinction, are disturbed in schizophrenia [Arieti, 1974] .  In view of the genesis of these distinctions in the relatively recent evolutionary past, these distinctions lie close to the surface, at the individuation stage of the child.  Schizophrenia is unknown prior to this time, and has its peak onset in late adolescence to early adulthood.  If we consider schizophrenia to involve, essentially, a dissociation of self, a kind of bifurcation in the microgeny of self, then it might be expected to be associated with some trauma, which does not, in most cases, appear to be the case.

The peak onset of schizophrenia is at around the time of individuation from the relative dependency of adolescence to the individuation of adult, independent living.  Perhaps this is a developmental trauma.  The completely objectified object world is emotionally barren, and, to such an extent that this is the case, would represent a subjective apocalypse.  Beyond this, an objectification of self would, in a sense, fundamentally represent self-extinction.  Given our recent evolutionary history, such an objectification may be unnatural to some, and the threat of self-extinction is, in my experience, a battle that many schizophrenics spend a lifetime fighting.

 Silvano Arieti [1974], who formulated a microgenetic theory of schizophrenia based on the earlier microgenetic theory of Heintz Werner, certainly seemed to think that the exigencies of modern industrial culture have a lot to do with the development and severity of schizophrenia, and presented some epidemiological evidence to support this assertion, as well as some more anecdotal evidence.  Arieti [1974] stressed industrialization and urbanization as epidemiological factors involved in the development of schizophrenia.  He concluded that paleological thinking, present in our not-so-distant ancestors, is the dominant mode of thought in schizophrenia. 

In schizophrenia, according to Arieti, paleological thinking is a disorder in the basic functions of language and its underlying logic, inferring that  paleological thinking is prone to a fundamental disorder in logical inference and predicative inference, and leads to the extreme disorganization characterizing “word salad.”  He characterized the normal, modern thinking as Aristotelian [Arieti, 1974].  The logic of Aristotle was based on deduction, and Arieti found this function profoundly impaired in schizophrenic, especially in the area of predication.  Arieti [1974, 230-231] gave examples of such errors in predication in patients with schizophrenia, as, for example: “The Virgin Mary was a virgin; I am a virgin, therefore I am the Virgin Mary.”  Arieti clearly distinguished the self from the self-image, or the self as in a mirror. Here we refer to the larger construct of self as the self-complex, which includes all of its derivatives within the realm of self-image, and the persona or ego as a complex related to a whole to part specification of self, which would be its logical specification in microgenesis.  Arieti [1974] focused on the disturbance of a particular abnormality in schizophrenia of the function of the self-image in the category of self-identity, also called ego-identity, which is the unity and continuity of one’s view of oneself over time.  

The terminological confusion of self, self-image, ego, and persona is unfortunate, as they are commonly used, and often thought to be the same, which is not the view of microgenesis.  The relationship between schizophrenia to self-disturbance seems to be implied by Jason Brown [2000, 110]:  “The reality of the world is linked to the integrity of the self.  A real self does not feel that an imaginary world is real not that a real world is imaginary.”  One might say that the “real self” is lost in schizophrenia.  So, the loss of self, annihilation, in a sense, seems to be at the core of schizophrenia.   As we will discuss later, however, the core of deep self, as Brown calls it, is the basis for all microgenetic process, such that its annihilation would be an annihilation of all mental process, which is clearly not the case.  The “real self” would then have to be lost in the upward microgeny of self, at some level prior to the actualization of the real object world.  It would be impossible to argue, however, that the schizophrenic does not have some self-construct, but fairly easy to argue that there is a dissociated, fragmented self-construct.  This loss of a real self might happen at a much higher level of microgenesis, as seems to be implied by Brown [2000, 110]:  “The feeling that is apportioned to the object, that normally deposits in the object as value and the sense of reality, is now attenuated in its outward trajectory.  The retraction of feeling deprives the object of realness.  The retraction of feeling deprives the object of realness.  It becomes lifeless, mechanical.” 

INITIAL PERSPECTIVES ON MICROGENY

The specifics of self in microgeny are important as we formulate a theory of schizophrenia based on dissociation of self in microgenetic process.  As to the root of microgenesis, Brown [1996, 78-79] states:  “The primitive will is the first actuality of mental process, the instinct to survive that is the unconscious urge to subjectivity.  The inception is with a configuration in upper brainstem or diencephalon that deposits a core of incipient acts and precepts…The deep self is the precursor of concepts and objects and creates the inner life…The primitive will is the origin of drive and affect and creates a subject.”

            Brown (2000) elaborated in the process of the self giving rise to the objects of perception and the temporal world a series of whole-to-part specifications.  The core of self essentially endures through the timeless duration of the becoming of the mental state (116):  “The self at the core of the mental state remains alive with the actual surface to form a whole entity of mind and object.  This is possible because becoming is nontemporal.  A whole entity, a fully unfolded mental state, has to be achieved before there are temporal facts.” 

Brown (2000) elaborated on the neuropsychology of the process of the self realization as being “deposited” with each instantiation of the mental state, and on the microgenetic “truncation” and subsequent “erosion of the self” that, we will argue, as the fundamental basis of the self-disorder or dissociative self in schizophrenia (121):  “…the neuropsychological material demonstrates that the self is deposited in the process of object realization, that it distributes into images and objects, and that a truncation of this process results in an erosion of the self that is similar across the different perceptual modalities.  The self is categorical and relational, achieving autonomy in the context of a complete derivation.  The autonomy depends on the completeness.  The preliminary locus of the self in the mental state entails a holistic or multimodal phase of potential prior to perceptual individuation.  This, together with a relation to feeling, to the personal history and the immediate past, point to a limbic transition in the outward development of the mental state.”  This limbic transition implies a transition to the higher levels of the cerebral cortex.

            The word “deposited” by Brown reveals something of the history of microgenetic theory.  The idea of superposition of deposits of sediments was originally formulated in geology, in the 19^th century, by Charles Lyell, and fundamentally states that younger sediments are deposited in a series of superpositions on older sediments.  Lyell’s principle of superposition led to subsequent scientific process in the elucidation of the progressive evolution of life as recorded in the geological record. It was picked up by Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionary theory perhaps rivaled Darwin’s in popularity in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Spencer, influencing and influenced by the great British neurologist, Hughlings Jackson, viewed the brain as a layered structure similar to an onion, with more recently evolved layers deposited from the center to the periphery, such that peeling away one layer would reveal a deeper layer in the evolutionary history of the brain. 

Spencer’s evolutionary theory has been said to resemble that of Lamarck, but can also be interpreted microgenetically, as the social and physical history of the species is recapitulated in the microgenetic process, not by inheritance of acquired characteristics in the concrete sense, but in a more abstract way, which is perhaps how Spencer intended it.  The modern theory of internal time, which we will discuss shortly, seems to vindicate the utility of such a view.  Spencer’s idea of the “instability of the homogeneous” was carried over by Ilya Prigogine [1980, 84, italic emphasis added], whose work on dynamical systems won him the Noble Prize, as one answer to the principle the apparent contradiction between the principle of Rudolf Clausius, [Prigogine 1980, 78], that the “entropy of the universe tends to a maximum,” and the evolutionary theory of Darwin.  It is perhaps significant that Prigogine cites Spencer’s “First Principles” [1892] and not Darwin in has classic treatise on dynamical systems theory {Prigogine 1980, 262].

Looking back to Spencer’s “First Principles” [1892], we find the concepts to which Prigogine refers, and given Prigogine’s importance in supporting the notion of time embodied in microgenesis, we will quote the passage from Spencer at some length [418-419]:

Should it be shown that slight modifications wrought during life on each adult, and

bequeathed to offspring along with all like preceding modifications, are themselves

unlikenesses of parts that are produced by unlikeness of conditions; then it will follow

that the modifications displayed in the course of embryonic development, are partly

direct consequences of the instability of the homogeneous, and partly indirect

consequences of it…It remains to point out that in the assemblage of organisms

constituting a species, the principle enunciated is equally traceable.   We have

abundant evidence that each species will not remain uniform, but is every becoming more

multiform; and there is ground for the deduction that the lapse of homogeneity to

heterogeneity is caused by the subjection of its members to unlike sets of circumstances

            (emphasis added).

            Spencer seemed to presage the dynamical systems principle of amplification of initial and boundary conditions, as a mechanism, as per Prigogine [1980], of the fundamental behavior of dynamical systems.   We quote the relevant passage from Spencer [1892] along with a footnote on Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” [1892, 447]:

            …it must now and then occur, that some division of a species, falling into circumstances

            which give it rather more complex experiences, and demand actions somewhat more

            involved, will have certain of its organs further differentiated…multiplication of effects

            which has been a part-cause of the transformation of the Earth’s crust…has

            simultaneously led to parallel transformation of the Life upon its surface.*

[footnote]

            *Had this paragraph, first published in the Westminster Review in 1857, been written

            after the appearance of Mr. Darwin’s work on the Origin of the Species, it would

            doubtless be otherwise expressed…As it is, however, I prefer to let the passage stand

            in its original shape: partly because it seems to me that these successive changes of

            would produce divergent varieties of species, apart from the influence of “natural

            selection”…Let me add that though these positions are not enunciated in the Origin of

the Species, yet a common friend gives me reason to think that Mr. Darwin would

            coincide with them; if he did not indeed consider them as tacitly implied in his work.

Many of Spencer’s ideas are now outdated, but his evolutionary theory and theory, perhaps, still has some merits, sufficient, at least, in the establishing the idea of instability of the homogeneous as a dynamical principle, which, we argue, is part-and-parcel to the breakdown or dissociation of the self-complex in schizophrenia, from a homogeneous whole to a non-cohesive complex of fragments.  Our purpose here is not to advocate for any specific model of evolutionary process, but merely to point to those features of evolutionary theory that have historically underpinned early microgenetic theory.

Spencers’s theory of evolution was the basis for his evolutionary psychology, and deeply affected Hughlings Jackson, who quoted him far more times than he quoted any other author [Wallesch, 1993].  Jason Brown, in turn, frequently cites Jackson [e.g. Brown, 2000].  On this basis, it could be said that Spencer and Jackson were the germinal microgenetic theorists in psychology and neurology.

Hughlings Jackson made enormous contributions to neurology with his discovery of the function of the precentral convolution as primary motor cortex, and with his elucidation of seizure origination and spreading in the brain, as still reflected by the terms “Jacksonian seizure” and “Jacksonian March.”  Jackson made a deep contribution to neurology and the mind/brain sciences with his theory of vertical integration of mental process in a hierarchical fashion.  Jackson went against the grain of the growing strictly-localist theories of brain function, inherited from phrenology, and fueled by Broca’s finding of the “center” of speech production in the frontal cortex, by describing a more distributed basis for brain function. 

In Jackson’s theories there were positive and negative symptoms of brain dysfunction, with negative symptoms reflecting a global loss of function in caused by localized damage or dysfunction in the brain.   His concept of positive and negative symptoms became the basis for the concept of positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia – where positive symptoms are fundamentally hallucinations, delusions, and conceptual disorganization; and negative symptoms reflect the profound disability caused by loss of the basic subjective drives and the resulting impairment of function in the personal, occupational, and social spheres. 

Sigmund Freud was, at least initially, strongly influenced by Jackson [Wallesch, 1993], and, long before any of his major psychological works, which he divested of any underlying neurological basis after his failed attempt to formulate a theory of neuropsychology in 1895 (Germine, 1998), he wrote “On Aphasia,” published in 1891.  Freud’s book on aphasia is surprising unavailable now in English translation except in fragments [Wallesch 1993, 22], among which is the following passage that acknowledges Jackson’s influence:

In assessing the function of the speech apparatus under pathological conditions we are adopting as a guiding principle Hughling Jackson’s doctrine that all these modes of reaction represent instances of functional retrogression (disinvolution) of a highly organized apparatus, and therefore correspond to previous states of functional development.  This means that under all circumstances an arrangement of associations which, having been acquired later, belongs to a higher level of functioning, will be lost, while an earlier and simpler one will be preserved.   

This is an amazingly microgenetic passage, but now is just a footnote to a century of the dominance of Freudian psychodynamic theory, much of which persists to this day.  Freud at first embraced and then rejected the dissociative model of “hysteria,” which, at that time, applied to a broad group of psychiatric disorders.  This dissociative model was based on his training with and influence by J. M. Charcot, and the influence of the prominent French psychiatrist, Pierre Janet, who’s dissociatve model of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders are now largely forgotten.  Freud did not originate the theory of the unconscious, which was highly developed by the French school, which included Theodule Ribot and Pierre Janet, by the 1880s [Wallesch, 1993].

Freud’s theory of “drives” was based on aggression and sexual libido.  His replacement of self with id, an untamed psychological realm of libido, with its incestuous desires rooted in the “Oedipus complex,” ever in conflict with a punitive superego, wanting nothing more than sexual union with the opposite-gender parent or parental figure, and his replacement of self with ego as moderator in this conflict, has been widely accepted, even to this day, in certain circles.  The ego is far removed, in Freud’s process, from the core of self, and is now generally equated with self, causing great confusion.  Brown’s important drive toward subjectivity, in fact, has far more explanatory power, and it is the manifestation of this drive in microgenesis that is the main theme of this paper, as applied to schizophrenia.

Freud’s enormous influence changed the course of psychology and related sciences.  His abandonment of dissociative models in favor of the concept of repression and the ego’s mechanisms of defense persists to this day.  Had he followed his initial microgenetic insights on aphasia, we might now have a neurologically-sensible theory of psychodynamics, as he was a gifted writer with the capacity to bring case studies alive in writing, to formulate theoretical models, and to exert great influence on other thinkers and practitioners.  The fundamental failure of his psychoanalytic theory to become an effective basis for treatment of the major mental disorders has led to the wholesale abandonment of psychodynamic theory in general, and there is still a very wide gap between neurobiology and metapsychology, which has assumed the status of being unscientific, rather than that of an integral model that is confluent with neurobiology.  Here we will attempt to bring neurobiology to bear on the very basis of microgenesis, which demands a holistic view of the mind/brain and some definition of the paramenters of the dynamical interval of duration of the microgenenetic state, the conditions of ordering of such a state, and their properties of recapitulation, but this we come later. 

Dissociation, with respect to the mind, is a deficit in the action of association of an integral perception of a real self in a real world.  It refers to various feeling and perceptions of an unreal or altered reality of self (depersonalization) and the object world (derealization).  Jason Brown [2004] describes the dynamic of association in terms of proto-desires and proto-intensions, in the deeper microgenenic process of instincts and drives, and surfacing through the process of neoteny [Brown 1996, Brown  & Pachalska, 2003).  Neoteny is a reversion in evolution to an earlier stage of development.  Thus, proto-drives and proto-intentions reflect a deeper process of drive and intention, in evolutionary terms.  Brown describes the association process along these lines, with a particular emphasis on inwardness [2004, 117]:

The progressive accentuation of subjective phases in drive and the increasing prominence given to the drive aspect of instinct signal a trend toward further inwardness, i.e. the heightened emphasis on preliminary (“pre-processing”) phases.  Inwardness retards action in the prominence of feeling, and retards object development in the prominence of images and ideas.  Feeling is the dynamic in ideation.  Ideas are the embodiments of feeling tones.  What appears as an interaction or association of disparate mental objects is the outcome of drive-representations distributing into conceptual feelings in the evolution of proto-desire or proto-intention.  The lack of immediate discharge in instinctual drive, and the retardation of contact with drive-objects, is a neotenous effect [Brown1996, Brown & Pachalska 2003] that permits greater diversity and individuation of cognitive targets, and the elaboration of a more complex interior life.”

This passage is quoted at some length, as this manner of association of disparate mental objects, through a neoteny of proto-drives and proto-intentions, along with the individuation of cognitive targets and elaboration of a complex interior life, is a fairly recent, cultural change in humans, and the diversity of cognitive targets and complex interior life that results from this process involves a neotenous association process.  The diversity of cognitive targets and complex interior life, being so associated, reflects our individuation at a fairly advanced stage of cognitive development, that signaling our development as free functioning adults with a complex interior live.  Should this neotenous change fail to occur, or occur in an aberrant manner, the disparate associations would be dissociated, and the drives and inwardness be directed in such a way that they do not move outward into an actual and real world derived from an actual and real self. 

The result of such a dysfunction in what seems like a very delicate process could then lead to the schizophrenic syndrome as described by Eugen Bleular, which we will discuss later, which is fundamentally a dissociation of self and world.  Autism would then become an inwardness not connected to proto-drives; ambivalence would be a failure to differentiate the targets of the proto-drives; associations would be disparate; and blunted or restricted affect would reflect the absence of a foundation for the proto-drives that provide the feeling-tone of ideas, self, and objects.

The microgeny of dissociation has already been described [Germine, 2004] in the context of Dissociative Identity or Multiple Personality disorder, as a kind of branching in the conscious self, originating in the potentially polyvalent core of self.  The core of self, fundamentally, is not individuated – this process occurs higher in the microgenetic process – and the attainment of a singular self is a process in microgenesis that demands a singular valuation of the object world – unique to the individual, through the process of individuation. 

Episodic memory is always related of an individuated self, and adheres at limbic and cortical levels of microgenesis, not at the deeper levels of the core of self.  The association of episodic memory and individuation is reflected by the dawn of episodic memory in early childhood, around the period of potty-training, and when we have learned to feed ourselves.  These basic functions of feeding and elimination occur far earlier is most mammals, and thus exhibit a remarkable neoteny in humans – which is further reflected in the extended period of development, up to 21 years, when the cranial sutures are fully ossified - and brain growth is completed after a period of dendritic pruning that establishes the fundamental connectivity of the adult brain.  Plasticity of the brain is progressively reduced in the process, and the personality can be said to be fully established only in adulthood.  An aberrant integration at his point is thus likely to occur, and to be relatively difficult, although perhaps not impossible, to change.  One of the principle aims of this paper is to define the parameters of such an aberrant integration in schizophrenia, thereby helping establish the conditions of prevention and perhaps remediation.

As a dissociation of self, schizophrenia has certain affinities to the dissociative disorders, of which the extreme exemplar is Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID].  The changing of this name “Multiple Personality Disorder” was a retreat from the idea that more than one personality can occupy the same brain, and thus have different memories, which clearly shows the relationship between an individuated self and episodic memory.  Such a process defies the strict reduction of mind to brain, to the extent that different personalities may operate with some autonomy in the same brain.  DID may be thought of as a central enigma that needs to be solved for a fully integrated mind/brain theory. 

A microgenetic approach to hypnotherapy in DID has been described [Germine, 2004], and, as it involves the theory of the dissociated self as a microgenetic bifurcation, perhaps with each part-self derived from the core, prior to its deliverance to consciousness, as the fragmented alters.  Successful treatment by fusion of the dissociated “alter” personalities was achieved, as well as the extinction of hallucinations, we will describe it briefly here.  There is quite a large literature on multiples and hypnotherapy of multiples, but fusion generally takes far longer than the 3 months reported here [Germine, 2004].

What is remarkable in this context is the successful hypnotic integration of two or more “alter egos” at the level of the core of self is described, along with successful anamnesia by hypnotic regression and redirection by age regression to the time of the microgenetic split or dissociation, and the successful treatment of functional hallucinations by hypnotic phylogenetic placement of the hallucinations at the level of silent fish in water, deep in the core of self.   Hypnotherapy has not been found useful in schizophrenia, and is highly discouraged.  The following case is an example of, at minimum, some usefulness of hypnotic technique in schizophrenia, in an example of a dissociative psychosis, apparently unrelated to what would be considered trauma for an ordinary person, or to any signs and symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

CASE REPORT OF HYPNOTHERAPY IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

What we present here is an unusual case of successful hypnotherapy as a treatment for psychosis due to schizophrenia.  Dissociation and fragmentation of the self or ego is a frequent phenomenon in schizophrenia, which might, in some cases, be amenable to this kind of treatment. 

For the purpose of confidentiality, some of the details of this case report have been changed.  The first person in this report is the second author (MG). 

Harold was a 38 year old man with a history of paranoid schizophrenia back to age 23, when had had a severe psychotic break requiring hospitalization.  He had successfully completed high school, and was of normal intelligence.  He was employed from age 18 to 22 in a convenience store, and had lived with his mother continuously since birth.  He had been hospitalized 6 times for psychosis and command suicidal hallucinations, with his last hospitalization about 1 year prior to the time described in this case report.  He had no known history of drug or alcohol abuse or dependence and no known history of clinically significant trauma.  He had some history of depression, but it was in the context of severe psychosis, delusional beliefs, and command hallucinations telling him to kill himself.

Harold had been tried on many typical and atypical antipsychotics, but his psychosis was relatively refractory to medications.  Various antidepressants and sleep aids had been tried.  At the time of this report he was taking risperidone, 2 mg twice a day and mirtazapine 30 mg before bedtime.  He had no significant medical illness.  I had been seeing Harold every 4 weeks at a county government psychiatric clinic for about four months.  He was receiving no other psychotherapeutic services.  He had no friends and rarely left his home.  He generally attended to his self care, but was otherwise dependent on his mother.  He had no friends and rarely left his home.

Harold had been fairly stable at a baseline with considerable delusions and auditory hallucinations, but no visual or other hallucinations.  At the onset of this report he had been brought in on an urgent basis as he was decompensating, with increased delusions of possession by “spirits” or “people,” and increased auditory hallucinations, with some command suicidal hallucinations.  He had been sleeping well, per his own report. Harold said he was hearing several voices inside his head, to whom he referred as "people."  Some of these "people" or “spirits” had been continuously telling him to kill himself. He said that "they want you to kill yourself so they can go somewhere else."  What was decided was to hypnotically have these “people” go somewhere else, outside of the fragmented self-complex.

I asked him to close his eyes, and to take deep, slow breaths. I had never hypnotized Harold before, and I did a fairly rapid, indirect hypnotic induction.  I did the induction rapidly as I did not feel he could be in a sustained state of relaxation and focus long enough for a slower induction.  I guided him through visualization of a pleasant scene, having him notice all the sights, colors, sounds, and smells, as well as his own hands and clothes. I guided him through another place, by a pond. I suggested that the people would come out of his head when he opened his eyes. Harold began holding his head. After I instructed him to open his eyes, it was clear that he was still in a light trance. He said that the people had left his head and were hovering about the room. I then suggested I open my office door and let them out, which I did, and he said the hovering spirits, some of whom he said were demons that had been tormenting him, had left the room.  He then said, "I am inside him," followed by, "That was Tom, if Tom leaves my head he'll die," apparently fearing that this would happen.

A week later Harold returned to my office. I asked him if his suicidal voices had been bothering him. He said that these "people" had left his head during the last visit, and that he had not heard them since because "they don't exist anymore." Harold was still hearing the voice of "Tom," and was still delusional about this. He told me "Tom didn't come out when you asked him to come out." Harold would not let him, since he was a "good" voice.

A month later Harold was still doing well, with no return of the "bad voices." He was still hearing the benevolent voice of “Tom.”   He said he felt he had "crossed a boundary" during hypnosis, and was still on the other side of that boundary. I gave him a cassette tape with a recorded voice of an indirect induction and suggested that he follow the instruction on the tape, should the voices return.  A month later his condition was fundamentally unchanged.

The following month he said that some of the people and voices had returned, but used the tape with good results.  Thereafter he learned self-hypnosis, and found it affective, and it remained so over the following 18 months that he was under my care.  Harold stated that the hypnotic exercise was far more effective for him than antipsychotic medication.  He said this kept him “on the right side” of the boundary he had crossed after the first hypnotic session.

I did the hypnotic intervention it in this case because I felt that Harold's voices were dissociated fragments of his own identity. There are a variety of ways, similar to the one used here, of making such fragments "go away," and this is sometimes used as an alternative to fusion in hypnotherapy of dissociative identity disorder [Germine, 2004].  In the latter case, fusion of a fragmented self involved a microgeny-based treatment aimed at the event of dissociation through age-regression, followed by several self-unifying hypnotic sessions utilizing the patient’s belief that she had only one soul, and bringing her and her alter into “the garden of the one soul,” and doing therapy there.  The “garden of the one soul” was, in this instance, a metaphor for the core of self in microgenesis, and is not meant to be applied concretely or literally.

This case history illustrates the potential value of hypnosis or other forms of therapy based on the dissociative model of schizophrenia.  Microgenetically, the “real self” prior to fragmentation of “dissociated selves,” as people or spirits, is fundamentally restored by externalizing and then symbolically releasing the dissociated fragments.  This shows, importantly, that the real self is still present in an earlier phase of microgeny, and may be restored, to some degree, by disposing of the fragments. 

TOWARD A SCIENCE OF MICROGENETIC DISSOCIATION

            Dissociation of ions, receptor/ligand, antigen/antibody, and other chemical complexes is well known, but generally not thought to bear any relation to dissociation in the mind sciences.  However, there does seem to be a kind of correspondence.  Fundamentally, there is a dissociation entropy, which, depending on its relationship with association entropy, determines the degree and stability of the dissociated versus the dissociated states.  The rule of thumb is that entropy, or disorder, increases over time, such that an association, in this case the association of self as a single complex across successive re-creations in microgenesis, will be stable if it has a relatively low dissociation entropy.  Such a low entropy, in this case, implies that the self is an ordered function, that must be maintained as such, and that any increase in the dissociation self-entropy would lead to its dissociation.  If dissociation entropy of the self-complex exceeds its association entropy, a catastrophic dissociation of the self-complex would occur, and, as such entropic processes tend, in general, to be irreversible [Prigogine, 1986].  Thus this catastrophic process may be enduring.  Perhaps there is a deep pacemaker in the duration of the mental state, and the process is truncated before full actualization of self and world as separate and real phenomena. 

There may be many factors involved in such an increase in entropy and decrease in stability of the self-complex over time.  This has important microgenetic implications, as well as therapeutic implications aimed specifically at prevention of the catastrophic dissociation of the self-complex either in high-risk individuals or in the schizophrenic prodrome.  For example, certain drugs that enable dissociation, which might include stimulants, hallucinogens, alcohol, and marijuana, would be clearly contraindicated in such high-risk individuals. 

The core of self, as it arises out of the lower order centers of the brainstem and diencephalon, would be essential to conscious function. The reticular activating system (RAS), at these levels, is essential to conscious process, and its dissociation would be unlikely without a diminution or loss of consciousness.  Furthermore, this core is a network of neurons that does not share the functional organization of higher order centers, where dissociation is thought to occur.  It is thus that, in the microgenetic model, the RAS does not just play a permissive function in conscious process, as it does in most neurological and neurobiological theory, with consciousness clearly associated with the cerebral cortex, but is actually the root of consciousness, even though it is, itself, unconscious, to the best of our knowledge. 

There are, however, areas of the tertiary association cortex, in particular the temporo-occipito-parietal (TOP) cortices, which are wealkly coupled with the RAS [Arieti, 1974].  The TOP cortices, and other tertiary and supratertiery areas, synthesize auditory, visual, spatial, and other forms of  perception, and, as stated by Brown [2000] such multimodal perceptual complexes are essential to the contruct of a real self in a real world. 

In general, the higher one gets in the caudal to rostral trend of microgenetic process, with the RAS being caudal, the further one is removed from the RAS, and conscious attention in these areas is largely subserved by focused attention, as opposed to the default mode of diffuse or divided attention.  Attention seems to be progressively focused by activation from the primary to secondary to tertiary and supratertiary cortices [Posner & Dehaene, 1994].  As we well see later, the default or divided mode takes precedence to the focused mode in the schizophrenic brain relative to the normal brain.  So, it seems that the theory of dissociation entropy fits with both the microgenetic theory the microgeny of self and the object world, as well as the neurobiological principles of activation and attention.

            This kind of dissociated and fragmented self and world thus implies a dissociation entropy, which needs to be understood in the wider terms to which entropy is ordinarily applied.  One of the central problems of the life sciences has been to square the observation of order and form with the principle that disorder increases over time according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Things have a tendency to decay, or increase in randomness or disorder.  Randomness and disorder are described as entropy.  The order that is imposed on randomness is described as negentropy.  Entropy relates to the physical concept of energy.  In the simplest, thermodynamic terms, heat energy is transformed into entropy as the system acquires more states through the possible distributions of energy.  For a closed system, it is very unlikely for the final entropy of a system to be less than the initial entropy. 

The brain, however, it not an open system.  Energy is continuously being added to the system in the form of activation of electric potential differences, and this energy is continuously being dissipated, primarily as heat and other electromagnetic radiation.  Entropy is also increased metabolic processes, which, fundamentally reduce the entropy of glucose by oxidation, and by “noise” in the system, which includes the ever-present energy coming from the quantum vacuum.  Fundamentally, entropy is created through the expenditure of free energy, and information is derived by the order that the system imposes on its entropy.  The energy, entropy, and negentropy or information of consciousness may be derived from metabolic energy, but also may be derived from the spatio-temporal non-local quantum vacuum, which energy might otherwise be considered noise.  The brain is a self-organizing system that operates under the constraints of critical dependence on initial conditions [Kahn, Krippner, Combs, 2000] and some predictability is necessary for order to occur.  Functionally, brain process is fractal [Kahn, Krippner, Combs, 2000].  Self-similarity of dendritic receptive fields is the rule, making the system globally holonomic [Pribram, 1991].

            There is a deep correlation between information theory and thermodynamics.  In essence, information is negentropy – the difference between the most probable state or maximum entropy and the actual entropy of the state of the system.  Probability relates to uncertainty.  Information is the reduction of uncertainty, since the probability of the final state is uncertain with respect to the initial state and boundary conditions.  Entropy must always increase over time.  In the macroscopic behavior of systems, initial order gives rise to increased order and complexity over time, and boundary conditions give rise to increasing complexity and organization as entropy increases over time.  This explains the otherwise inexplicable increase in diversity and complexity in evolutionary systems [Brooks & Wiley, 1986; Ayres 1997], in which order and complexity increase as a function of increase in entropy.   As we move into dynamical or far from equilibrium, dissipation systems, such as the brain, self-organization becomes the rule.

            The critical dependence on initial conditions makes self-organizing systems inherently unpredictable.  The operant word here is self.  In the brain, this self becomes conscious, and orders the brain further than its intrinsic production of negentropy or information and unpredictable states.  Self-consciousness is a reduction of this a specific function of uncertainty, described here as the dissociation and association entropies of the self-complex, and so may be called a secondary reduction of uncertainty, dependent on an agent or self that observes or measures the state of the system.  The self is, by definition, a source of order, and a disordered self leads to a disturbance of this order.  The self must be one, or this order is disturbed, and must have a holonomic purview of the brain in order to carry out this function.

            With this initial definition of terms, we see the broad applicability of thermodynamics and information theory, the concept of negentropy as order or information, and consciousness as the product of a self that is an agent that makes observations or measurements of the brain system, which can be called secondary information.   When we use the terms “order” “disorder” and “self” we will implicitly have these concepts of negentropy, entropy, and self-reference in mind.  Activation is understood as free energy, which gives rise to entropy, and negentropy as an ordering function applied to entropy.  Attention involves both activation, or energy, and focus, or order. 

In the next section we will describe the theory of information as it relates to time over successive brain states [Germine 1993].   We implicitly consider order within the brain state with regard to initial conditions and boundary conditions, which include sensory inputs, as well as order between brain states, which include the ordering process of brain states within an interval of time.  We then go on consider the ordering parameters of self as it relates to the microgenetic theory of Brown [1992, 1996].  Primary information is understood in terms of ordinary clock time, and secondary information, the information of conscious process as well as self-energy, self-entropy, and self-organization are understood as occurring in a holistic sense within the duration of temporal thickness or internal time, within which organization in non-local, with no possibility, within this dynamical process, of defining “before” and “after” [Prigogine 1991].

  These dynamics clearly apply to the brain, such that this interval of temporal thickness can be theoretically and empirically defined.   Atmanspacher and Filk [2003] estimate this interval, across all sensory modalities, to be thirty milliseconds, which, taken as a period of oscillation of brain waves, would be about 33 Hertz or cycles per second, placing the gamma oscillations, at about 40 Hertz, well within this interval.  Not only is it these oscillations that that are most clearly correlated with conscious process, but, based on the frequency/energy relations, they account for most of the energy expended by the conscious brain. Based on the association of energy with entropy, their dynamics are likely to be the most important ordering parameter in the brain, since ordering of the process is always applied to energy, particularly polarization energy.

Furthermore, the dynamical system involves a non-local or atemporal internal time which applies simultaneously to the entire system, and which involves its entire causal history [Prigogine 1991].   Influences from future would also be entirely possible in such a non-local internal time, except that they are damped according to dynamical systems theory [Prigogine 1991].  This is of considerable importance to the question of time in the microgenetic theory, as applied to the spatial and temporal parameters of the dynamical brain system.

Regarding past and future in dynamical systems such as the brain, the dynamical process is represented schematically in Figure 2.  Prigogine explains the process as follows, with reference to the Figure [1980, 213]:

The distinction between past and future is a kind of primitive concept that in a sense

precedes scientific activity… We start with the observer, a living organism who makes

the distinction between future and past, and we end with dissipative structures,

which contain, as we have seen, a “historical dimension.”  Therefore, we can now

Fig. 2:  Fundamental process of a dynamical system, after Prigogine [1980, 213].  Explanation is in text.

            recognize ourselves as a kind of evolved form of dissipative structure and justify in an

            “objective” way the distinction between the future and the past that was introduced at

            the start…Note that the transition from one level to the other involves “symmetry

            breaking”; the existence of irreversible processes on the microsocopic level...and

            dissipative structures may in turn break the symmetries of space-time.

In the context of dynamic systems, the line that we described in our model of microgenesis is repeated over time, and may be called a “world line” of the system.  It is quite clear that such a “world line” is artificial in that the systems are open, and the distinction between “worlds” is itself artificial, and so, must not only initial conditions but also boundary conditions.  These boundary conditions include, but are not limited to, the information that we take in through our senses.  However, even if we had an arbitrarily large amount of information concerning the initial conditions and boundary conditions, we would still, in principle, be unable to predict the behavior of the system, but only, perhaps, a statistical average or stochastic trajectory of possible trajectories.  The stochastic properties become stronger and stronger in hierarchies of dynamical systems, to such extent that they cohere or are cohesive as a single, dynamical system [Prigogine, 1980]. 

So, a hierarchical dynamics of the kind expressed in Jason Brown’s microgenetic theory is essential, a matrix system of interconnecting sub-systems will not give us the statistical level of predictability of a hierarchical system.  Some level of predictability would seem to be necessary for a system that must, itself, make predictions and be predictable within reasonable parameters, as well as for a system that is able to generate a system of realizing a logical and coherent picture of self and the object world.  This would involve a long range connectivity of structure and function.

The observer, consciousness, and measurement are fundamental problems that lie at the very heart of dynamical systems theory.  The problem is not the determination of a single wave function of a dynamical system from amidst the possibilities that are inherent in the stochastic Schrodinger equation, and collapsing them into a single possible wave function or “world.” Rather, as recognized by Von Neumann, the very act of observation of a single wave function entails transforms a pure state, with a single density matrix or statistical distribution of possibilities, into a mixed state, which causes an irreversible increase of entropy.  It is thus that observation must enter into the picture if we are to have an irreversible process proceeding in one direction – past to future.  Prigogine [1980] states: “This is in line with the general philosophy already mentioned that irreversibility is not in nature, but in us.”  Indeed, the controversial idea of Jason Brown (1996) that consciousness or mind fundamentally “deposits” or “creates” time has been long vindicated, but no one has noticed. 

Similarly, dynamical systems such as the brain go through “bifurcations” in that they branch into alternative sets of states.  It is this process that requires a knowledge of the history of the system, and, as most known dynamical systems are not conscious or even mind-like as we understand it, this knowledge can only be a reiteration of prior bifurcations.  In lay terms, if path A bifurcates into paths A or B, it is not possible arrive to arrive at C unless there is knowledge that it has already gone through bifurcation points A and B.  The stability of the system then becomes contingent upon the stability and orderliness of bifurcations, and such a stability entails the irreversibility of  its bifurcations.  Such irreversibility seems to occur, not in nature, but in us.  Bifurcations are very sensitive to macroscopic variables in environmental or boundary conditions [Prigogine 1980], thus the appeal of the “instability of the homogeneous” derived in nature.  A conscious process or observer involves the irreversibility of the increase in entropy that follows observation, which alone, as per Fig. 2,  and the accompanying explanation, marks the time of the irreversible breaking of the inherent symmetry of time. 

Dynamical, bifurcating systems also display the property of self-organization and fractal self-similarity, thus the extraordinary order that can arise out of mathematical chaos.  There must also be an ordering process, which alone could transform a dynamical system into a mind, and which would entail the generation of negentropy generated along with the entropy of the irreversible process.  As negentropy, or order, is, physically, the same as information - the information involved would be in knowing the state of the system and its history, an ordering process that belongs to conscious realization.

            What we are discussing with the ordering process of consciousness is specifically related to the ordering derived from self, as a unitary agent.  We have called this secondary information, and it is such information that is proposed to give rise to the content of consciousness, or to the totality of the unconsciousness/consciousness continuum.  We need, however, at least a provisional mechanism by which such information may be generated.  In Brown [1992, 1996], this mechanism would involve a temporal thickness of the process of microgenesis of the mental state, such that time within the mental state is not, in a strict sense, sequentialized.  In dynamical systems, this corresponds to internal time, which is a non-local time involved in the generation of the final state from the initial state [Prigogine, 1986].  In this representation [245]: “Past and present are separated by a kind of transition layer,” which is proposed to be the temporal thickness of the brain state in Brown [1992, 1996].  Process within this temporal duration cannot be subdivided into “before” and “after,” and so involves a separate kind of causality where integration occurs within a duration, rather than a succession of immediately adjacent past to present in “clock time” [Prigogine, 1986].  This sort of process is demanded by the structure of dynamic systems process [Prigogine, 1986].  Although such process has been emphasized as key to the understanding of psychology and microgenesis [Germine, 1997], there seems to have been little application in the field.

            Here we follow the microgenetic view of the core of self, that manifests progressively from the unconscious through consciousness, with consciousness lying, in effect, at the surface of the process, but capable of being exposed at deeper levels that are normally unconscious.  This is, in fact, the fundamental theory of schizophrenia as a deficit-syndrome in the microgeny of self and world, and, neurobiologically, as a disconnection syndrome [Takahashi et al., 2010].

FURTHER NEUROBIOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In our probing of the physical foundation of the fundamental tenets of microgenesis, we have found a remarkable confluence with dynamic systems theory, which validates the following elements: 1) a global, simultaneous interval, “internal time” corresponding to the temporal thickness or period of simultaneity in microgenesis, 2) a demand for historicity in the evolution of a dynamical system, which can only be framed in terms of the recapitulation theory of the microgenetic state,  3) the demand for a hierarchical functional process in order to maintain stability and some measure of predictability, and 4) the fundamental role of self in the process, in the form of the observer that deposits or creates time at the end of the temporal duration of internal time, and 5) the generalization of basic microgenetic theory, as outlined in the previous points, to inorganic, dynamical systems.  In the generalization of the theory, we find it more fundamental than its neurological underpinnings, and, in fact, to precede and perhaps make possible the very existence and evolution of the human mind.  However, our exploration of the neurobiology of microgenesis, and how it now applies to schizophrenia, demands further development.

We have briefly mentioned the physical basis for information as it related to energy, entropy, and negentropy – three closely related concepts.  In a simplistic formulation of the information processing of the mind/brain [Germine, 1993] conscious information processing is a linear function of time.  Linearity lends further support to microgenetic theory, as the order of a single state must be fully reiterative for such temporal binding of information to occur.  This reason for this is that it is only in this way that the complexity of the system exponentiates, and the log of an exponential function is linear, as demanded by the basic physical relationship between the log of complexity or number of constituent possible states, entropy, and information.  This linearity is supported by experimental data in terms of processes perhaps up to ten seconds in duration [Germine, 1993].  Schizophrenia is postulated to be the result of a disordered process, relating to the terms of ordered complexity over time [Germine, 1993].  Information is further a function of the ordered complexity of the system, which is dependent on the energy and energy distribution of the system.  We find this reflected in the neurobiological literature, and with particular reference to the EEG, so we must examine this literature, particularly as it applies to schizophrenia.

Firstly, and most importantly, we must examine the entropy, or potential information, of the microgenetic process as it relates to the developing brain, which establishes the terms of microgeneny.   What we find is that, in the theoretical model of development [Bergstrom, 1969], the genetic span extends from a primitive core, represented by the reticular network in the brainstem and thalamus, with has a relatively random geometry, and that this core is surrounded by [139]: “more highly developed shells with increasing structural order in the connections between structural units.”  The brain process is then hierarchical in the development from low grade to high grade entropy, with higher grade entropy containing a higher proportion of negentropy, negative entropy, or information [Bergstrom, 1969].  It is important to note, at this point, that the total entropy is divided into positive and negative entropy, both derived from the relative disorder and order inherent in the amount and distribution of energy, with the order or negentropy arising as a result of the order of initial conditions, boundary conditions, and conscious process itself.   This model is fully coherent with Pribram’s holonomic theory of brain dynamics and Jason Brown’s theory of microgenesis [Germine, 1993]. Most importantly, the overall increase in entropy is a function of the act of observation, which sets the parameters for increased entropy and the localization and movement of time, as we have seen in our review of dynamical systems theory.  It is also important to note that the core, through activation of higher levels, is the essential governor of ordered energy.  Bergstrom goes on to explain [1969, 139]:  “This implies that the genetic span in the brain is represented as a nonstable domain, which extends structurally from the reticular core to the cerebral cortex, and functionally from the maximum entropy to the maximum negentropy of the system.”  Thus information capacity increases in the developmental hierarchy of the system [Bergstrom, 1969], in a bottom-up hierarchy.  The converse process, from the top-down, would, in this model, lead to an irreversible loss of information and instability of the system.

Complexity is a function of entropy and negentropy.  Entropy arises in the “number of states of a system that result from interactions among its elements” [Tononi & Edelman, 1988].  The log of the potential of this number of states, or microstates, directly relates of information, such that exponentiation through changes in state will be a linear function.  Microstates cohere through the observation of observationally equivalent states, which are grouped together as macrostates [Germine, 1993], and are inherent in the parameters of observation [Prigogine 1980].  In this view, time is an operator, not a dimension, as is entropy.  These operators are functions that constrain the states of the system, but the observation of entropy and time is complementary, meaning that precision in the parameters of one leads to uncertainty in the parameters of the other.  This is a remarkable confluence between dynamical systems theory and quantum theory, which includes the fundamental non-locality that we have already discussed [Prigogine, 1980]. 

This informational model is, in essence, schematic, and much more complex informational models have been developed for experimental purposes [Lee et al., 2003; Takahashi et al., 2010].  Such models, however, do not seem to involve the log-exponentiation, or time-linear component that is inherent in empirical studies of actual conscious information studies [Germine 1993], and which are implied in the reiteration process that is inherent in microgenesis [Brown 2000].  This reiteration process is inherent in dynamical systems theory [Prigogine 1980], and can only be addressed in the inherent generalization of microgenesis to the lawful properties of dynamical systems.  However, the view of internal time, which this generalization entails, does not seem to be carried over to empirical research, in which view time strictly in the classical sense of “clock time.” 

The problems presented by any theory of mind that does not include the “observer” are inherent in the actual role of the observer in any formulation of dynamical systems, as we have outlined.  As described by Walter Freeman [2001, 33], brains are “chaotic, unstable, nonlinear [dynamically], non-stationary, non-Gaussian, asynchronous, noisy, unpredictable in fine grain, yet undeniably they are among the most successful devices that billions of years of evolution has produced.”  This is quite a paradox, which can only be explained in the view of microgenesis as a general theory of dynamical systems preceding biotic evolution, and, in essence, being its pre-condition.  Regarding the EEG, Freeman [2001, 44] explains:  “The EEG is the noise made by the millions of neurons that constitute it.”  As Freeman [2001] has aptly noted, the EEG is, for all practical purposes, a record of dendritic currents in the forebrain.  Freeman postulates that it is the noise the essential to the global, mesoscopic and collective ordering parameter, with self-organization emerging from background noise perturbed by sensory stimuli, thereby giving rise, on the mesoscopic scale, to perception [2001]. 

Whether or not the EEG oscillations are accorded to “noise,” or not, the empirically-derived relations of the gamma oscillations are none-the-less relevant.  Synchronous gamma activity on the EEG, ranging from thirty of ninety Hertz, seems to be most the most clearly associated corollary of the binding of cortical areas, and has been described as the multimodal foundation for all information processing in the brain [Lee et al., 2003]. The gamma oscillations seem to be a product of thalamo-cortical arousal, and the Hebbian synaptic plasticity of the brain, or long-term potentiation, has been postulated to be a result of gamma synchrony [Lee et al., 2003].  Some studies have shown a decrease of gamma activity in schizophrenia.  Abnormal synchrony and intensity of the gamma oscillations has been found in the brains of schizophrenics, as compared to controls, has been speculatively related to a kind of “cognitive dysmetria” [Lee et al., 2003], and it has been proposed that that impaired reality testing in schizophrenia is the result of frankly impaired connectivity due to disconnection of synchronous gamma oscillations [Lee et al., 2003].

The gamma oscilliations seems to be modulated or carried on the much lower frequency theta, four to eight Hertz, oscillations [Lee et al. 2003; Huchzermeyer, 2010].  The theta modulation of gamma oscillations has been proposed to provide the temportal organization of higher brain functions [Huchzermeyer 2010}.  It has been noted that the gamma oscillations are exquisitely sensitive to oxygen, and expend near-maximum mitochondrial energy producing capacity, which is through oxidation of glucose and production of ATP [Huchzermever 2010].  Fundamentally, neuroimaging technologies, which have been used to describe the disconnection and aberrant connectivity of schizophrenia, including fMRI, PET, and SPECT scanning, largely reflect the energy utilization of gamma oscillations in dendrites. 

The origination of the gamma oscillations and synchronization have clearly connected to cholinergic inputs [Huchzermeyer, 2010].  The cerebral cortex seems to contain no acetylcholinergic neuronal cell bodies.  Such cell projections to the cortex seem to arise primarily from the upper brainstem, although there also may be inputs from other regions such as the striatal complex and septal region (Mesulam et al., 1984).  Acetylcholine is released to the cortex at relatively high levels in waking and REM sleep, but at very low levels in slow wave sleep, and it has been suggested that memory consolidation involves a sequence of release of cholinergic inhibition of feedback from the hippocampus to the cortex in slow wave sleep, followed by a facilitated process of input from the cortex to hippocampus during REM sleep [Power 2004].  The primary psychopharmacological palliation of schizophrenia is thought to act by D2 dopamine blockage in the mesolimbic projections, especially to the nucleus accumbens, but this effect may be mediated by disinhibition of acetylcholine release, which is otherwise inhibited by the activity of dopamine. 

Hyperactivity and hyperconnectivity of the default network in the brain under fMRI have been established in rest versus working-memory task performance in schizophrenics with early-phase schizophrenics and their first-degree relatives.  Versus controls, schizophrenic patients showed task-dependent suppression of activation of the default network, including the medial prefrontal cortex (MFFC) and posterior cingulated cortex/precuneus.  Patients and relatives had significant reduction in task-related MPFC suppression, and greater activation of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.  During rest and task, patients and first degree relatives showed high functional connectivity and hyperconnectivity in the default network. Hyperconnectivity characterizes a system with high entropy and compromised processing capacity relative to highly-ordered small world networks.  Psychopathology correlated with default network hyperconnectivity during rest and task performance in the patients.  Patients also exhibited reduced anticorrelation between MPFC and DLPFC (Whitfield-Gabrieli et. al., 2009).

MICROGENETIC CONSIDERATIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

The microgenetic theory of schizophrenia has been outlined by Pachalska et al. [2004].  A fundamental deficit of self and agency exists in that [Pachalska et al., 2004, 2040]: “When the mental formation of the self and the world is perturbed by schizophrenia, action and perception become confused, fully interchangeable [Brown, 2002].”

The microgenetic model is based primarily on observations of neurological deficit syndromes such as aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia [Brown, 1972, 1988].  The progression of the process generally runs from primary, secondary, tertiary, to supratertiary cortices.  So, for example, if we have a total loss in the function of the primary visual cortex, all subsequent processes of visual processing of consciousness of the object are lost, as well as the associated process, running roughly in the caudal to rostral trend of the neuroaxis, through functions of the multimodal association areas, such as naming the object, evaluating the object, and reaching out and grasping the object.  Attention is focused progressively as the object is actualized, and this attention remains attached to the core of self.  In the passive or default mood activation through the successive levels of process is not sustained by activation, attention is not progressively held through higher order process, and feature recognition is compromised [Posner and Dehaene, 1994].

In the context of schizophrenia, we will focus on two key areas, which are interrelated.  Recently, the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder, have been recognized as an aggregation of self-disorders, as defined by abnormities in self-awareness [Raballo et al., 2009].  There is a wealth of earlier literature along these lines [Raballo et al., 2009; Sass and Parnas, 2003].  Dementia praecox was described by Kraepelin as like “an orchestra without a conductor” with a “loss of inner unity” of consciousness, and this  “was echoed in the writings of nearly all prominent classic researchers”  including Eugen Bleuler, as well as many recent authors, including the popular author, Ronald D. Laing [Raballo et al., 2009].

A Self-Disorder Scale has now be developed and validated, and is reproduced here [Raballo et. al, 2009].  It is noteworthy that many of the items on this scale could be considered dissociative, particularly reflecting a dissociation of self.  Each item is score 0 none, 1 doubtfully present, and 2 definitely present.

______________________________________________________________________________

Table 1:  Self-disorder Scale

1. Gender identity problems/anxiety of being homosexual (refers not to homosexuality but to pervasive lack of identity)

2. Identity disturbance, does not know who he/she is (like a sense of being extraterrestrial)

3. Often feels self is different at different times (as numerically different)

4. Frequent shifts in opinion about how he/she should live life (loss of natural engagement, hyperreflexivity)

5. Feels perplexed or confused or has lost feelings of the world’s naturalness or meaning

6. Has lost leniency and needs to reflect on the simplest things (hyperreflexivity)

7. Feels he/she has no feelings for him/herself and/or the world

8. Feels that he/she is not really alive

9. Thought block

10. Thought emptiness

11. Feels that he/she is disappearing

12. Feels that there are no boundaries between him/herself and the surroundings

13. Feels he/she has lost all feelings of pleasure (anhedonia)

14. Feels like a stranger to him/herself

15. Loss of thought control

16. Thought pressure

17. Thoughts are felt strange and anonymous

18. Thought can be apprehended by others

19. Feels that his/her appearance changes when he/she looks in the mirror

20. Feels it is necessary to concentrate on body movements that normally are completed automatically and without reflection

_____________________________________________________________________________

Using DSM-III R diagnostic criteria, a total of 305 subjects were scored, 29 with schizophrenia, 61 with schizotypal personality disorder, 102 with other mental disorders, and 56 normal controls, with normal controls as a reference category:   Scores and p-values relative to normal controls were as follows:  1) schizophrenia  5.6, <0.001, 2) schizotypal personality disorder 4.2, <0.001, 3) other mental disorder  1.2, 0.018.  Score with respect to no mental disorder were 3 times higher in other mental disorder, 11 time higher in schizotypal personality disorder, and 21 times higher in schizophrenia.  On Bonferroni correction the scores were schizophrenia  = schizotypal > other mental disorders = normal controls.  Using a logistic regression model predicting the presence of absence of self disorder, goodness of fit in schizophrenia spectrum disorder was significant at p < 0.0001.  It seems this self-disorder is characteristic of schizophrenia spectrum, and holds considerable promise for early detection and for further research.

Many of the items on the scale reflect default or passive-mode thinking.   An example of default mode or passive attention is described in the self-ordered statement “Thinking is simply going on in my head, with me as a spectator” [Raballo et al., 2009].

In a further study [Raballo and Parnas, 2010] self-disorder scores were compared on the basis of candidate vulnerability phenotype in 218 individuals in non-psychotic, high risk subjects.  An incremental, significant increase in self-disorder score versus controls was found ranging from no mental illness to schizotypal personality disorder, through the intermediates of no mental disorder with schizotypal traits and other personality disorders.

            In summation, then, self-disorder symptoms are important variables in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but also are significantly increased to various degrees in genetically-high risk cohorts, including individuals with no mental disorder and no mental disorder with schizotypal traits, as well as other personality disorders.  Deficits in suppression of the default mode of attention are present in schizophrenic patients as well as their first degree relatives.     Dissociation, including the important aspects of derealization and depersonalization, has been emphasized in the theory of schizophrenia [Markowitz et al., eds, 2008, Scharfetti 2008], and this phenomena may be important in the development of schizophrenia, sharing some features with the personality disorders and with DID or Multiple Personality Disorder, as shown in Figure 3.

  Phase                         1                       2                      3                     4a                     4b

Fig. 3.  Schematic representation of the dissociative model of schizophrenia and other mental disorders, after Scharfetti [2008].  The ego here is taken as the self-complex.  The oval represents the cohesion or association entropy, with fragmentation reflected by smaller ovals (phases 1 to 4a) and irregular fragments (phase 4b) occurring as dissociation entropy increases.  Phase 1 is the cohesive, fully integrated self-complex, phase 2 is the dissociated but cohesive self-complex, phase 3 is the phase of diminished cohesion of association entropy and increased fragmentation, phase 4a shows a loss of cohesion of the self-complex with ordered fragmentation seen in DID or multiple personality, and phase 4b the alternate pathway with loss of cohesion and incomplete irregular fragmentation seen in schizophrenia, represented by irregular shapes.  In certain cases, one or more alters, represented by ovals in phase 4a, may be psychotic and incomplete, as shown by the irregular fragments in phase 4b [Germine, 2004]

PSYCHODYNAMIC SYNTHESIS

Directed attention, which suppresses the default or passive attention mode, is a key feature of schizophrenia which relates to the dissociation, which is represented by many elements in the Self-disorder scale, such as thought block and emptiness and strangeness and anonymity of thoughts.  Apart from this, the self-absorption or autism that is one of Bleuler’s cardinal symptoms of schizophrenia is a reflection of loss of self direction to the object world and would seem to relate to deficits in suppression of the default mood.  This would follow from the microgenetic model in that the perception of object world arises from an intact self and its differentiation in consciousness to self-complex and object world.  The arrested and fragmented self-complex, in microgenetic terms, leads to a profound disturbance in the process. 

            One may question how the many genes that seem to be involved in schizophrenia have been propagated in the human genome.   The answer to this question may be that a certain self-deficit or lack of a feeling of agency is ingredient to creativity and imagination.  Jason Brown [2005:233] has described the feeling that many creative geniuses have experienced in the process of creation as a lack of a feeling of agency, resulting from the expression of  the preliminary layers of the microgeny of the self and object world, which are tapped by the creative mind:

Creative people often feel that they are passive vehicles of their art, which seems to pass through them to the world…The sense of agency is less pronounced because the creative ideal         calls on meaning-laden or dream-like images that retain a feature

of preliminary cognition. One could say, the feeling of passivity for a creative idea is a mark of its imaginative depth.

It is likely that these signs of self-disorder can be meaningfully and adaptively engaged in creative activity, leading to the selection of elements of the genotype.  It might be proposed that engagement in creative activity can be a mitigating factor in the neurodevelopmental expression of the phenotype, such that high-risk individuals may maintain an integral self construct through creative engagement.  Other development factors may ultimately be defined in the possible mitigation of expression of the phenotype, and the elucidation of these factors demands further research.

The emergence of consciousness involves progressive ordering, or reduction of uncertainty, such as to create levels of consciousness, well known in the fields of neurology, neuropsychology, and anesthesiology.  This reduction of uncertainty translates into ordering and information, and this information is the content of consciousness.  Its connection with self starts at an early stage of microgenesis, in the caudal portion of the brain’s neuroaxis, in the early part of our development, and in the early course of evolution, all of which are reiterated in microgenesis.  The agent is associated with the content of consciousness because the ordering process of the brain state is reflective of the ordering process through which the agent individuates, continuously and reiteratively.  Losing agency from one moment to the next, through fragmentation, ultimately, of the conscious self, leads to disorganization and derailment, hallmarks of psychosis.  The narrow boundaries needed to maintain a self-complex that unfolds over several mental states are boundaries of the integrity of the self and of the self-complex.  Thus there is an association of psychosis and concreteness, or lack of abstraction.  The association of consciousness with a conscious self-complex is quite clear in cases of multiple personality or dissociative identity, where conscious information is divided between two or more self-complexes acting within the same brain [Germine, 2004].

For further guidance we will now go back to work of Eugen Bleuler, who coined the term schizophrenia, replacing Kraepalin’s term dementia praecox.  Schizophenia was derived from the Greek schizein (σχίζειν, "to split") and phren- (φρήν, φρεν-, "mind").   Perhaps nowadays this derivation seems antiquated, however, in light of the recent resurgence of the self-disordered model of schizophrenia, the term is perhaps apt.  Bleuler observed that “the most manifest alterations” in schizophrenia were products of splitting of the self and loss of the sense of agency [Raballo et al., 2009].  Bleuler was highly influenced by Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet, but parted from Freud’s theory in 1911.

For the purposes of this paper we will examine his work, “Consciousness and Association” [1918].  Firstly, Bleuler was led to conclude that we cannot draw a line between the unconscious and consciousness, as opposed to Freud’s concept that the ego is the gateway and filter of consciousness.  Bleuler described rather eloquently how, in looking for a certain plant, upon seeing the plant conscious attention is drawn to the plant, and all other mental processes are inhibited.

This description is remarkably like the current notion of suspension of the default mode of brain process, and this is not an accident.  Bleuler goes on to state (273):  “In such cases the adaptation is directed to what we call, in the conscious, the attention.  There is an ‘unconscious adjustment of attention.’”  This unconscious adjustment of attention must take place in the unconscious depths of microgenetic process, in order for the brain state to change from the default mode to the active attention mode.  However, Bleuler goes on to say, there is a continuous unconscious process that continues to go on, as when, in seeing the plant, one is unconsciously drawn to a flower.  The lower orders of microgenesis are never suspended, any more than the activity of the consciousness in the cerebral cortex suspends the deeper, unconscious levels.  However, by drawing a continuity between the unconscious and consciousness, the flower is first apprehended in experience unconsciously, and then becomes the object of conscious attention.

The unconscious proceeds through a continuous process of associations, which are equivalent in the unconscious, but which are not equally salient to the ordering parameters of unconscious process.  This direction towards salience that leads to the focus of attention, which serves to modify and expand the unconscious progress, passing through degrees of increasing attention.  Bleuler [1918, 274] writes:  “The equivalency of unconscious presentations is best shown in the course of associations which jump from presentation to presentation, quite unconcerned as to whether the individual associations are conscious or not.” This type of association would then, perhaps, represent a default mode of consciousness where the associational process is not ordered or informed by the focused mode of attention.

Bleuler’s progression from unconscious to conscious process is described on different terms by Llinas [1997, 351]:  “These internal function states are then homomorphic with external reality.  The sensory input feeds and modulates an internal state, of origin, that is, perception is a dream modulated by sensory input.”

GENERAL REMARKS

We experience our difference from and conflict in a world of objects – and even mother can then become an object.  This is the separation between self and world, the split between existence and essence.  Mythologically, it is a time when each child re-enacts the “fall” of Adam.

                                                Rollo May [1969, 284]

There are likely to be multiple factors or variables, to some extent interrelated, in the microgenetic etiology of schizophrenia.  Moreover, as we have seen, the schizophrenic syndrome involves a continuum and, to some degree, neurobiological and other differences in function occur in a spectrum, and some of the same abnormalities seen in the spectrum are shared by first degree relatives.  Beyond this, schizophrenia is not monolithic, but may include a number of types, among which some may be more or less dissociative.  Further, within the general microgenetic paradigm of schizophrenia, we are entitled to employ multiple working hypotheses, as the deep questions that we must address may not admit to an easy solution.

  We should not take Walter Freeman’s [2001] view of “noise” lightly, as it is derived from extensive experimental and theoretical research, and he is a reliable and reputed source.  Such a phenomenon of noise, in order to be global and potential coherent and subject to ordering, would have to involve the energy and particles arising out of the quantum vacuum, as there is no coherent thermal or other electromagnetic noise in the brain.  In this case, each mental state would have the non-local spatial and temporal properties occurred to it in dynamical systems theory within a single vacuum, which would then have the fundamental property of holding within in all preceding vacua, giving rise to a historicity and recapitulation of the type afforded by dynamical systems theory, confluent and integrated with quantum theory and thus with the important concept of the observer.  This would allow a kind of radical microgenesis going all the initial vacuum of the nascent Universe. 

Perhaps, within the tenseless ground of the Higgs, temporal symmetry within the dynamical system of its interactions breaks each time and in each system a little differently, as the system settles into the minimum of its vacuum phase space.  In this case, the movement of time itself replaced by the continuous cycle of a reiterative now, in the individual mind, where Prigogine seems to find it, and, perhaps in the Universe.  What appears to be the movement of time might be the simple genesis of the actual past from the potential future accompanying the irreversible act of observation. 

The theory of and nature of the qauntum field, which includes the Higgs, is shown in Figure 4 and summarized in the caption.  The theory is described in detail by Auyang [1995}.  Of particular note is the concept of time and permanence [Auyang, 1995, 170]:

            Permanence means the inapplicability of the concept of change and hence of time…The

            primitive spatio-temporal structure is permanent; it is independent of temporal concepts.

            It contains the time dimension as one aspect and makes possible the introduction of a

            time parameter, but is itself beyond time and change.

            Auyang describes the primitive spatio-temporal stutter M as the individuation of events in the field.  She goes on to state [1995, 170}: 

M is a continuum of points, which are the numerical identities of events in the world. 

The number of points in M and hence the number of events in the world are as permanent

as M….The permanence of numerical identities should not to be mistaken for a

conservation law of some kind; it is more fundamental.

Fig. 4:  Phase diagram of the of the local of the local or non-spatial-temporal symmetry and symmetry transformations of a dynamical system in quantum field theory.  V(ψ) is the effective potential prior to symmetry breaking, and ψ is an operator, which modifies the entire dynamical system in a global fashion.  In quantum fields, position is not an observable, but a parameter with the same status as that of time.  The Higgs field restructures the ground state of the system, creating the elevation or hill in the center of the bowl-like phase space, called the local degenerate vacuum of the system.  Interactions with the system cause the rotational symmetry leading the ground state, represented by the black dot, to move from the center of the rotationally symmetrical phase diagram to a minimum or ground state.  As the ground state represented by the black dot is not symmetrical with the phase space, symmetry in broken or hidden.  Diagram after Auyang [1995, 54].

It is explained that past, present, and future are tense words inapplicable to Quantum Field Theory, which overrides and replaces Quantum Mechanics.  Only the relative concepts of before, simultaneous, and after apply.  These terms specify sequence, where time is a parameter mapped onto the tenseless or permanent manifold of M as a line or curve.  There is no inherent notion in the physics that sequences on the line or curve are temporal.  They are, in fact, permanent, and space and time are parameters that are associated with events and the notion of change.  The curve itself formed by events in four dimension space, M⁴, which are permanent and do not involve the notion of change that underlies our perception of time [Auyang 1995].

If the breaking of symmetry of the vacuum due to the movement toward some perhaps unpredictable minimum in the energy valley of the Higgs is at all analogous with the initial breaking of symmetry in the beginning of time in the Universe, thought to be caused by the same phenomenon, we reach some startling conclusions.  One is that the dynamical system is time-creating.  The other is that each moment, while being just another point on a permanent world line, has yet another intrinsic unpredictability, in that the point of the ground state that the system assumes with each event can be variable.  Prigogine [2002] has emphasized the role of unpredictability in dynamical systems as a key factor in time-symmetry breaking, in that initial conditions cannot, in principle, predict final conditions.  All of these multiple lines of evidence seem to converge on the fundamental tenets of microgenesis, as previously outlined.

The binding of the system of the mind/brain, a mysterious problem that is not fully answered by the concrete notion of gamma coherence, would, according to this theory, be fully realized by the terms under which the system evolves in the non-spatio-temporal phenomenon of the breaking of symmetry in the dynamical system, which would integrate the simultaneous duration.  This process, its reproducibility, its order, and its properties may underly the conditions that allow the binding of gamma oscillations in such manner as they become the basis for the Hebbian strengthening of interconnected networks of coherent gamma oscillation to evolve.  In this case, the apparent disconnectivity of the brain in schizophrenia, as well as the self-disorder caused by a lack an abiding self-construct, might have its origins in properties of the self-replication that adheres in the order of this reiterative process.

The prevalence of self-disordered perception and cognitions has been recently revived as a central feature of schizophrenic process, and characterizes patients with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, including early schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder, from patients with other mental disorders and no mental disorders.  Applying the theory of microgenesis, with its deepest roots in the unconscious core of self, the self-disordered process seems to apply to the loss of selective attention and the failure to suppress default or passive attentional processes in working memory tests, as evidenced by the hyperactivity and hyperconnectivity of default processed of the associated regions of the brain.  Here we have drawn attention to the holonomic theory of brain dynamics of Pribram, which suggests that the uncertainty that is reduced in conscious process could be ingredient to the conscious process itself, and to the representation of such information could be expressed on a global basis to the reduction of such uncertainty in polarization energy of the brain state through a basic to energy, entropy, and negentropy of the brain state and its concatenation over time. 

Parcellation of experience from whole to part in the upward genesis of mental process from the core of self to the conscious self and object world in the microgenetic theory of Jason Brown is offered as a unifying basis for both self-disordered signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and aberrations in the structure of directed attention among schizophrenic patients and their first degree relatives.

The general model of Bleuler for a continuity of unconscious and unconscious process is adopted, with unconscious materials surfacing in microgeny of psychotic process through lack of cohesion of the self-complex, most likely occurring at the limbic level, and attenuated upward in a kind of heterochrony which preserves other cognitive processes.  Associational processes appear to be ungoing in the unconscious, and the ordered process of a self-generated conscious process conforms to both the informational model and microgenetic model of conscious agency.  The deep and neglected insights of Bleuler are brought to the fore, as well as the wider application of the general theory of microgenesis.

The dynamical properties of holism or nonlocality and the individual duration of time in internal states are offered as an underlying physical mechanism for microgenesis, which must be established for further theoretical elaboration of the concept.  A case study is offered as evidence for a dissociative etiology of schizophrenia, and it is shown that this dissociation may be amenable to treatment.  Dissociation of the self-complex in the unward movement of microgenesis is connected to the self-disorder evident in schizophrenia, the aberrant dominance of the default mode of attention, the dynamics of internal time and nonlocality in dynamical systems, and the development elements of the schizophrenic break from reality. 

The important concepts of dissociation and association entropy of the self-construct are introduced here for the first time, to our knowledge, and a simple formula for the schizophrenic break from reality is proposed.  This formula is that, where dissociation entropy exceeds association entropy of the self-complex, the self-complex will itself be dissociated, leading to the schizophrenic break.  Due to irreversible features of dynamical system, this break will be catastrophic and tend to be enduring.  Therefore, remediation must involve prevention of such self-dissociation in high risk and prodromal individuals.  There are many other social and developmental variables that may be involved, which can be elaborated in the microgenetic model, and which may involve overall social cohesion within the cultural milieu and use of substances that may enable the catastrophic dissociation and apparently traumatic loss of a “real self” in an adequately valuated object world.

Further work is certainly needed for the fuller description and explanatory model of schizophrenic processes and types.  Philosophic biases seem to have led us to a very concrete view of the mind that is based on signals transmitted through “wires” and thereby constituting the basis of experience as an epiphemenon, rather than a real theory of the information content of consciousness and its connection to a genuine self-complex.  Hopefully, we have made some progress here in basing mental function on the actual physical underpinnings of information science.   The absence of a clear information theory of psychodynamic processes has led to an explanatory gap between metapsychology and neurobiology, and, hopefully, we have made some progress in closing this gap, which seems to have led to very little real progress in the overall conceptualization of consciousness and mind.  

Current neurobiology seems to ignore or devalue the existence of the unconscious.  The artificiality in the Freudian concepts of id, ego, and superego has led to a false construct of the self-complex, which fundamentally arises de novo at a relatively late period in the evolutionary and developmental history of so-called ego-consciosuness in modern humans.  The grounding of the self-construct in microgenetic terms is aboriginal in nature, and provides a much more coherent and consistent theory of mentality than still dominates in the vestiges of Freudian theory.

A GLOBALIZED SCIENCE OF COLLECTIVE MIND

The conceptualization of the super-ego as the punitive parent in Freudian theory has led to a devaluation of the important features of social life and social cohesion, which are likely to be ingredient to the kind of cohesion needed to maintain a strong, enduring, unitary self-complex.  The artificiality of a strict division between conscious and unconscious process, recognized long ago by Bleuler, has long been held, leading to a perceived relative opacity of relatively unconscious functions in theory and in practice.   By basing the theory of schizophrenia on microgenesis and the self-complex and the parameters of its dissociation, it may become possible to do contructive psychotherapy on the basis of reconstruction of these variables, as has been reported in the dissociation seen in DID of Multiple Personality Disorder [Germine, 2004].

The inseparability of minds, as in the opening quotation of Albert Einstein, is ingredient to the inseparability entailed in modern physics, and the problem of fragmentation was a major theme in work of David Bohm, and to his theories of the implicate order, culminating in his posthumously published book with Basil Hiley, “The Undivided Universe” (Bohm & Hiley, 1993).  In the view of Einstein, in the oft-quoted passage in the beginning of this paper, our separate selves are “an optical delusion” of our consciousness.  “Delusion” psychologically interpreted, would imply a sort of psychosis, as opposed to “illusion,” which would imply a process of normal perception.  Einstein, we may presume, knew the difference between the two, and meant to say “delusion.”  Be that as it may, it is a delusion that most if not all of us share, and thus would not meet the psychological definition of the word, but may meet the lay definition, which is defined in Webster as “something that is believed to be true or real but that is actually false or unreal.”  It is clearly the latter context that Einstein implied.  If we view consciousness in the microgenetic sense [Brown, 2000], we see it only arising as the core of self gives rise to the self, or what we are calling the self-complex.  The word “self-complex” is used to connote the aggregate functions of self as it evolves from the deep core of self, which is unconscious, to a self - conscious aggregate of perceptions and properties, that differentiates outward to a real self in a real object world.

The core of self is potentially polyvalent, in that it may have the potential to give rise to more than one “I-persona” or “ego-persona,” which we may reasonably equate with Freud’s ego.  In effect, then, what Einstein seems to have been saying, along with Bohm, is that the ego-persona is dissociated or fragmented from a larger construct.  In microgenetic terms we can only carry this down to the deep core of self, and may then imply that the ego-persona is a fragment, a partial derivation, of a deeper self that is in some sense common to all of us, and that, in its differentiation, it becomes a “kind of prison” restricting our interpersonal circle.  Freeing ourselves from this prison would then be a “liberation” and “foundation of inner security.”

Looking at it from the perspective of dissociation of the self-complex, then, we might say that such dissociation is our normal condition, in the differentiation of a fragmentary “ego- persona” or “I-persona.”  We would then consider this fragmentary dissociation, in a sense, unreal, and this would square fully with the derealization seen in psychopathology.  Such fragmentation may then be considered to be the interpersonal equivalent of DID or multiple personality, which, although fragmented, may remain connected or potentially connected to the core of self [Germine, 2004].  The same sort of fragmentation, however, could be dissociated as it emerges from the undifferentiated deep core of self, such that a false or partial self is elaborated, in the “I-persona” or “ego persona.”  This would seem to be a reasonable exegesis of Einstein’s quotation and reflective of the holism implied by modern physics.

Applying such a formulation in the conceptual framework of this paper would imply a wider, cultural dissociation of self, which would then be an initial condition or a dissociative syndrome which elaborates in the process of progressive individuation from the cultural whole.  The cohesion of the cultural group would then become a relevant variable in this dissociation, and the divisions of culture and sub-cultural groups a further symptom of such dissociation, along with the reality of the belief-systems that are not only inherent in such groups but also give rise to the divisions between them.  Altogether, the schizophrenic fragmentation of self, the unreality of the schizophrenic object world, would then be an amplification of these initial conditions and boundary conditions.  Such amplification occurs variably and unpredictably in all dynamical systems, which must include the group as well as the individual.

This is not to say that schizophrenia does not have other conditions and variables, including those that are particular to the individual and the individual genetics and neurobiology, but only that the “divided mind” may involve as-yet poorly recognized variables in the very process of individuation, as it elaborates the “ego-persona” from earliest development, and in the cultural and evolutionary derivation of the ego-conscious condition.

We do, in fact, find this sort of psychological formulation in the neglected work of Trigant Burrow [Galt, 1995], who was the founder of group therapy.   Burrow, in his book, “The Structure of Insanity” [1932] specifically identifies the “I-persona” or persona as a partial, distorted fragment of the self-image, which does not encompass the organism in its totality, and which is a “social interfact” of evolution and development.  He fully frames schizophrenia in the social context, and concludes [1932, 71]:

The social symptoms of worldwide pain and futility, of economic distress, of industrial

desperation, together with the endless repetition of insignificant palliatives that represent

purely peripheral, symbolic and dialectic intermediations – all these are evidences of

generic social pathology and plainly attest the community’s kinship in a community-wide

disorder.

We will not get into Burrow’s theory and therapeutics here.  He began his career in psychoanalysis, but became disenchanted with the Freudian metapsychology.  With his characteristic anger towards those who departed from his theoretics, Sigmund Freud, who reportedly did not think analyses could be practiced in groups, wrote to Burrow in 1926:  “I do not believe that we should be grateful to you for the fact that you want to extend our therapeutic task to improving the world” [Galt 1995, 28].

Burrow is said to have coined the terms “neurodynamics” and “group therapy,’ and his work with neurodynamics and eye-movements has been said to presage the fields of neuopsychotherapy and trauma therapy using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).  After being President of the American Psychoanalytic Association from 1925-1926, he was dropped from membership in 1933, soon after publication of “The Structure of Insanity.”  He founded the Lifwyn Foundation in 1926, and this small organization is still active today, although its work now seems largely disconnected with that of Burrow.   The remnants of his work have been said to be pillaged and plagiarized [Galt, 1995].

Freud’s condemnation of “improving the world” seems at odds with the profound effect he had, through his ideas and theories, on the history of psychology, psychotherapeutics, and the role both have played in shaping the modern mind and culture.  Burrow’s theoretics implied a kind of instinctual unity of the species, which may now only exist in early infancy and the early mother-infant relationship.  Thus, has therapeutics would imply a rather radical neoteny, developmentally, but perhaps not in the cultural history of the human species, as suggested in the opening quotation of the Introduction.  The “I-persona,” which he viewed as a fragmentation of self, is fostered and enabled in most current psychotherapeutics. 

Burrow viewed this fragmentation of self into the “I-persona” as a fundamental, destructive alteration in our native species attentional structure, such that [Galt 1995, 32] “interest does not flow directly to the objects and people around us, it is diverted back upon the self-image (how am I doing? do these people like me?  what’s expected of me in this situation?  what am I getting out of this? etc.)”   These interests of the persona would then, from a very early age, be rewarded when successful, and punished when unsuccessful, thereby maintaining it its “association entropy” in the self-complex via conditioned learning.  The introversion or “involution” of the object world involves a fundamental disturbance of the normal microgenetic movement from self to object world, which is show in Figure 1, creating the kind of disturbance mentioned in our opening quotation of this section from Rollo May [1969].  It would seem, then, that individuation at the level of adulthood would have to be a progressive development of this persona, in a social setting where it is required and demanded.  Perhaps such a self-image is not readily developed in some individuals, and otherwise can be easily damaged and fragmented.  This might manifest from a very early age, and, in fact, is manifest in the typical schizoid prodrome of schizophrenia, where there is a withdrawal from the object world.  As the persona collapses, its expectations are progressively compromised, such that the expectations of the external milieu give way to paranoia, then perhaps delusions of persecution, then perhaps a grandiose persona that is divorced from reality but obtains continuance from its grandiose perspective.

Theories are ultimately judged on the basis of their usefulness, coherence, and ability to make predictions.  Psychology and neuropsychology are predicated by a classical physics that is outdated by more than 100 years, and are unlikely to be effected by a future physics that is now in the realm of speculation.  We have explored the possible foundation of microgenesis, long ago formulated by Jason Brown in an entirely new way, in dynamical systems theory.  The physical concepts of the self-construct’s dissociation and association entropy, clearly underpinned by established physics, and generalized in a way such that the dissociation of self in the schizophrenic break can be clearly defined, have placed within the theoretical construct of microgenesis.  Beyond this, perhaps our case history, explanatory evidence, and generalization of microgenesis may add to its usefulness and validity. 

A science has to evolve and change, and to stand up to new applications, in order to maintain its vitality and integrity.  Alternative schemes have been divergently non-integral, and their currently is no viable alternative to microgenesis that is firmly founded in neurology and is at the same time broadly applicable in psychology and neuropsychology.  Our hope is that in understanding the microgenetic underpinnings, some further prevention and palliation of this devastating and common mental disorder will become possible.  While cosmologists grapple with the fate of the universe, perhaps fifteen or more billion years in the future, we envision a planet that will exist in peace, security, and unity, perhaps a million years from now – a relative instant in geological and cosmological history, during which time no planetary or cosmological catastrophe is likely to occur – and during which time we are under no threat of extinction. 

As Jason Brown and others of the microgenetic persuasion have seen, human evolution and development often proceed by a process of neoteny, and it may be, socially and culturally, we have been evolving in the wrong direction, and need to return to something more akin to our native condition, as a species.  We no longer live in geographic isolation, which is the social condition over which we have evolved.  Our deep fears of self-annihilation and our expectations of an apocalyptic demise are merely projections of our own fears of self-annihilation or species-suicide inherent in an aberrant ego-persona on the verge of fragmentation. 

In our case example, Harold did not need to commit suicide in order for his fragmented selves to be dispelled so that might take residence in another person.  In fact, they didn’t need to take residence in anyone at all, if we don’t accept the pre-scientific notion of possession.  There is a theme of suicidality seen also in our case report of DID or multiple personality [Germine 2004], where the executive personality was on the verge of suicide as a means of getting rid of her self-destructive alter.  In fact, many suicides of individuals are likely to be aimed at extinction of the aberrant, incomplete, and tortured persona. 

There may be some greater lessens to be learned, which will become part of the developmental microgenesis of future human beings and social systems - cohensive, whole, and rid of the insecurity caused by separateness, so eloquently described by Albert Einstein in the opening of this paper.  Perhaps than, and only then, will we be able to look back and see that we have a singular life which involves our entire microgenetic past, and this, perhaps, will be the most important prediction and verification of microgenetic theory.  Until then we can only carry the torch with the firm belief that our species has a life beyond the life of the individual, a microgenetic heritage that perhaps has something of its past to be preserved and revived.

I thank Dr. Jason W. Brown for review of the draft manuscripts.  I also thank Drs. Harold Atmanspacher, Eschel Ben Jacob, Jacob Beckenstein, David Bohm, Dick Biermann, Amit Gaswami, Eschell Ben-Jocob, Eric Kandell, Stanley Klein, Roger Penrose, Jack Sarfatti, Henry Stapp, and Leonard Susskind for their explanations, clarifications, and input regarding the theoretical physics.

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