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This is not a book about addiction but a general treatise on the development
of the human brain through social interaction.
It is the author’s thesis that the human brain is a
construction project in which genetics supplies the building blocks
but social interaction largely determines how they are put together.
Transcription of DNA into the proteins that shape brain tissue is
directly influenced by social experience, Dr. Siegel says.
The actual “wiring” of the brain, the interconnection of its
neurons, is dependent on social interaction, most demonstrably in early
childhood. Repeated experience
creates and strengthens neural pathways, while lack of experience causes the
corresponding unused tracks to wither.
A key brain region in human social interaction is the
limbic system, because this area in humans coordinates and combines
emotional energies and regulation of body states with the rational-logical
products of more evolved brain areas.
It is the coordinating center for face recognition, affiliation,
and empathy. The limbic system is not a simple fountain of primitive
reflex-like emotions, as earlier researchers believed, but rather a highly
complex junction box and switching station that processes inputs and
outputs from many brain areas, “high” and “low.”
It is therefore specially adapted for handling human interactions,
which typically consist of a blend of emotional and logical signals,
inextricably intertwined.
“The limbic system functions as the center of processing of social
information, autobiographical consciousness, the evaluation of meaning,
the activation of arousal, and the coordination of bodily response and
higher cognitive processing.” (p. 131).
Dr. Siegel describes the state of effective communication as one where two
brains are in resonance, with rapid cycles of feedback between them on
many levels, showing not only logical interchange but also a range of
other interactions right down to mutually modulated changes in
respiration, muscle tension, heart rate, blood pressure and temperature.
In good interaction, people not only “feel” the other’s state of
mind, but also “feel felt.”
Current brain research, Dr. Siegel writes, makes
clear that emotions are not merely the function of certain narrowly
delimited brain areas, but are complex multi-stage processes involving
cognitive, experiential, chemical and behavioral elements, having the
entire brain for a staging area, and taking place within a social context.
The distinction between “emotion” and “non-emotion” does not have a basis
in human brain anatomy. Nor
is it possible to consider the topic of emotion outside our social
existence. We humans along
with the other primates are unique in having large numbers of muscle
endings in the skin of our face, together with the dedicated brain regions
that operate them, all devoted to signaling or concealing the play of our
emotions to others of our species.
Reptiles are not so equipped.
The sense that humans have of being conscious and
having a “self” is intimately linked with our emotional social
interaction. Indeed, for Dr.
Siegel, “the regulation of emotion, or the regulation of the flow of
information and energy within the brain, creates the self.”
(p. 159). As a
psychologist specializing in the study of development, the author takes it
as axiomatic that “the self” is not something we are born with, nor
something that once formed remains immutable, but rather as something that
is “perpetually being created.”
Indeed, it is normal to experience a series of simultaneous “selves”
phasing in and out, and not infrequently coming into conflict.
“The idea of a unitary, continuous ‘self’ is actually an illusion
our minds attempt to create.”
(p. 229). It is normal
to have “multiple and varied ‘selves,’ which are needed to carry out the
many and diverse activities of our lives.”
The persistence and power of any of these “selves” depends
crucially on our relationship experiences, i.e. on the degree to which
these organizing patterns of the mind experience social reinforcement and
lead to successful integration within the larger pattern of our individual
personality.
In conclusion, Dr. Siegel writes:
“Connections between minds […] involve a dyadic
form of resonance in which energy and information are free to flow
across two brains.
When such a process is in full activation, the vital feeling of
connection is exhilarating.
When interpersonal communication is ‘fully engaged’ – when the joining
of minds is in full force – there is an overwhelming sense of immediacy,
clarity, and authenticity.
It is in these heightened moments of engagement, these dyadic
states of resonance, that one can appreciate the power of relationships
to nurture and to heal the mind.” (p. 337).
I found this book interesting and timely by way of
theoretical reinforcement for ideas I
had put forward more or less intuitively and pragmatically in my
“two heads” essay, “How Our Groups
Work.” My concern
there was to give a secular answer to the question where the sobering
power observed in self-help groups comes from.
It comes, I said, from communication between the “sober selves” in
the participating brains. Dr. Siegel’s book demonstrates in elaborate and
neurologically informed detail how the “resonance of minds” in social engagement – a thoroughly secular process,
although it can have a transcendent feeling -- contains the power to heal
and transform. The fact that
Dr. Siegel’s book is a general treatise about mental development that says
nothing expressly about alcoholism, addiction or substance abuse makes it
all the more valuable and interesting.
Dr. Siegel is currently medical director of the infant and preschool
service at UCLA, as well as a professor of psychiatry at UCLA Medical
School, among other posts.
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