Prologue to Jason Brown’s “Foundations of the Self”
Mark Germine
Institute for Psychoscience, P.O. Box 1654, Mount Shasta CA 96067
There is perhaps no deeper question in psychology than the nature of self. Brown approaches the question from the perspective of his microgenetic model. Brown describes microgenesis with respect to phyloontology (evolution-development) as follows (1996, p.3):
Phyloontology describes individual or group patterns that seem to be extended in time. From a microgenetic standpoint, these patterns reflect the reiteration of a single instance of becoming over different (evolutionary, lifespan) durations. Put differently, every organism is in a constant process of becoming that reinstantiates itself in some duration. Phylo-ontology is the pattern of reinstantiations over time. Microgenesis is the time-creating pattern of each instantiation…The time for events is an ordered succession generated out of a (timeless) core. In other words, the time of a becoming is the time the becoming creates.
From a dynamical systems perspective, we can think of the brain as having a physical state, which unfolds over the course of microgenesis, beginning with the core of self, and ending in objects and actions. The state is a pattern of activity, correlating broadly with the distribution of activation energy in the brain. As a new pattern arises in the progression of one brain state to the other, there are shifts in regions of brain activation, corresponding to changes in modes of cognition.
The state of the brain in its condition at the end of one state provides the initial conditions for the next brain state. Dynamical systems imply critical dependence on initial conditions, such that initial conditions are amplified in the transition to the next brain state. The boundary conditions for the next brain state are provided by all of the afferent input into the brain, which include sensory input. The sum total of all the activity creates a hyperdimensional phase space, with energy minima, which are the attractors. As a quantum, chaotic system, the brain, in the period of transition, occupies an array of attractors. Each attractor is a complex of perceptions, drives, thoughts, and decisions.
According to Brown, the base level of the evolution of the mental state is the core self. This being the case, the core of self provides the initial conditions for the mental state, amplified throughout the course of each mental state. Brown states that this core self is unconscious and timeless. Our deepest sense of identity comes from the core self, which is “constant and authentic.” The core self is foundational to the theory of microgenesis. It provides the timelessness of an enduring process that gives us a sense of who we are, and through which evolution and development can be repeated in the course of each mental state.
Brown tells us that the core self is polyvalent. It has the potential to produce many “I”s. In early development, the core self progressively manifests this potential, giving rise to the luminal, self-referential self, ego, or “I,” which is “transient and adaptive.” Brown states: “Many a self that never materializes is latent in the core… The ‘not-me’ is not what is outside the ‘me’ but what is alien to the ‘I.’ The core self is grounded in the wholeness of the organism…The ‘I’partitions the core, setting the explicit self against the ‘non-I’, including in its potential all past and possible selves. As the core crystallizes into a conscious self, other possible selves are bypassed and subdued.”
The core self crystallizes into the “I” during the duration of microgenesis. In the dynamical systems model, each “I” is an attractor. It arises out of the initial conditions of the core self in each mental state. The ego develops out of reference to self, and reference to others and objects. However, since the ego arises, in microgenesis, from the core of self, we must ask ourselves if it is that the core of self is polyvalent, being partitioned differently depending on the demands of the ego, or is, in fact, quantum, being a superposition of possibilities, out of which one is selected in the course of the microgeny of the ego. Brown (1996, p.2) writes: “Pathological data aid us in recovering early phases in cognition. The process reconstructed is a progression from potential to actual, not from the primitive to the developed.” If there is freedom in becoming, the potential must be a superposition of possibilities, since classical potentials unfold in a deterministic fashion.
It has been variously stated that the ego or “I” is mistaken for the self, and that this is, fundamentally, an illusion. Since the ego is conscious and the core self is not, it would seem natural to think the ego is the core self. Like Narcissus looking at his own reflection, the ego may become enamored of itself, causing narcissism. There is a great deal of psychopathology that involves the core self/ego dichotomy, as pointed out by Brown. When an individual loses the sense of agency, residing in the core self, delusions can erupt, with the feeling that some other is inserting thoughts into one’s head. Loss of the agency of one’s own thought process can lead to hallucinations.
Looking at the brain as a single system, with a global state or superposition of global states, is one way to get around the problem of the neurological localization of self. The brain, or brain/body, in totality, is permeated by self, which, in order to give us a unity of perception, would have to function in a modality that is non-local, or quantum. As per Brown, self, as observer or agent, is the “guiding or organizing substrate and origin” of the various mental functions. The self is an agent, meaning that it has free-will, since agency involves choice. If brain function were purely classical, there would be no choice, because there would be no uncertainty. In the quantum-chaotic model, quantum uncertainty is amplified by the unpredictability of chaotic systems. Amidst all of this uncertainty, the observer, in a quantum sense, by the act of observation, brings about a definitive process. The will is inherent in the observer, and the act of observation, by decreasing entropy or creating order, gives rise to information that is the content of consciousness. The core self, and not the ego, is the observer, although the ego does put constraints on the function of the core self. Brown (1996, p.78) writes: “The deep self is the precursor of concepts and objects and creates the inner life.”
The ego is conditioned from an early age by reward and punishment. In a recent book, Brown (2005) describes the core self as character, and discusses the relationship of the core self and ego (33): “The physical and social environment impel the drive-representations to articulate the core-self into ego-centric and other directed pursuits.” This would seem to be a diversion of microgenesis (Brown, 1996, p. 79): “The primitive will announces the deep self in the commitment to action. Every mental state has its onset in primitive will.” Microgenesis would normally proceed from the drives and will at the level of the core self through the drive representations and ego function, not in reverse. Here the core self is impelled, seemingly, in a sense, coerced against its character, into being ego-centric.
The ego has important functions, but the mistaken identification of ego as self is maladaptive. The function of religion has been to redirect the center of experience from the ego to the core self, which is identified with the soul and the deity in the West. The Hindu belief is that there is one Self, Atman, and that the idea of a separate, individual selves is an illusion. The problem of a system (the brain) that observes itself has yet to be solved by science, and would seem to require an entity that embodies the brain or brain/body
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References
Brown, J. W. (1996). Time, Will, and Mental Process. Plenum Press, New York.
Brown, J. W. (2005). Process and the Authentic Life. Ontos, Heusenstamm.