Crazy idea: What if an important part of psychotherapy is synchronization between the brain hemispheres?
(I am not an expert, so maybe the following is wrong.)
Basically, the human brain is divided into two parts, connected by a link. This is what our animal ancestors already had, and then we got huge frontal lobes on top of that. I imagine that the link between the hemispheres is already quite busy synchronizing things that are older from the evolutionary perspective and probably more important for survival; not much extra capacity to synchronize the frontal lobes.
However, when you talk… each hemisphere has an access to an ear, so maybe this gives them an extra channel to communicate? Plus, some schools of psychotherapy also do things like “try to locate the emotion in your body”, which is maybe about creating more communication channels for listening to the less verbal hemisphere?
Experiment: Would the psychotherapy be less efficient if you covered one of your ears?
Julian Jaynes assumes that people in the past were crazy beyond our imagination. I wonder if it could be the other way round. Consider that fact that in more primitive societies, inferential distances are shorter. Well, that includes inferential distances between your two hemispheres! Easier to keep them in sync. Also, in the past, people talked more. Listening to yourself talking to other people is a way for your hemispheres to synchronize.
Talking to others, talking to yourself, talking to gods… perhaps it is not a coincidence that different cultures have a concept of a prayer—talking to a god who is supposed to already know it anyway, and yet it is important for you to actually say it out loud, even if no other people are listening. Saying something out loud is almost magical.
Sincerity seems to be an important component of both psychotherapy and prayer. If you keep a persona, your hemispheres can only synchronize about the persona. If you can talk about anything, your hemispheres can synchronize about that, too.
Keeping a diary—a similar thing; each hemisphere controls an eye. I am not sure here; maybe one of the hemispheres is more specialized on reading. Listening is an older skill, should work better for this purpose.
Crazy idea: What if an important part of psychotherapy is synchronization between the brain hemispheres?
(I am not an expert, so maybe the following is wrong.)
Basically, the human brain is divided into two parts, connected by a link. This is what our animal ancestors already had, and then we got huge frontal lobes on top of that. I imagine that the link between the hemispheres is already quite busy synchronizing things that are older from the evolutionary perspective and probably more important for survival; not much extra capacity to synchronize the frontal lobes.
However, when you talk… each hemisphere has an access to an ear, so maybe this gives them an extra channel to communicate? Plus, some schools of psychotherapy also do things like “try to locate the emotion in your body”, which is maybe about creating more communication channels for listening to the less verbal hemisphere?
Experiment: Would the psychotherapy be less efficient if you covered one of your ears?
Julian Jaynes assumes that people in the past were crazy beyond our imagination. I wonder if it could be the other way round. Consider that fact that in more primitive societies, inferential distances are shorter. Well, that includes inferential distances between your two hemispheres! Easier to keep them in sync. Also, in the past, people talked more. Listening to yourself talking to other people is a way for your hemispheres to synchronize.
Talking to others, talking to yourself, talking to gods… perhaps it is not a coincidence that different cultures have a concept of a prayer—talking to a god who is supposed to already know it anyway, and yet it is important for you to actually say it out loud, even if no other people are listening. Saying something out loud is almost magical.
Sincerity seems to be an important component of both psychotherapy and prayer. If you keep a persona, your hemispheres can only synchronize about the persona. If you can talk about anything, your hemispheres can synchronize about that, too.
Keeping a diary—a similar thing; each hemisphere controls an eye. I am not sure here; maybe one of the hemispheres is more specialized on reading. Listening is an older skill, should work better for this purpose.