La gatera de Beguemot

You’ve said the implicit or unconscious aspects of the self play an essential role in shaping who we are and explaining why we do what we do. You’ve also said, “An understanding of the mystery of personality crucially depends on figuring out the unconscious functions of the brain.” How is personality shaped at the unconscious level? What’s something that really surprised you about this process?

I’ve long believed that much of who we are is due to unconscious processes. This goes back to my Ph.D. thesis work in spilt-brain patients, done with my advisor, Mike Gazzaniga. In these patients, the two sides of the brain are separated to control epilepsy. From the point of view of each side, behaviors produced by the other side are behaviors that are unconsciously produced. So we did lots of work trying to understand how the left hemisphere, which has language and can be communicated with, dealt with behaviors produced by the right hemisphere. The surprising thing was how seamlessly the left hemisphere adopted these behaviors as its own, as if it had produced them.

This led Gazzaniga and me to propose that much of human behavior is like this — produced by unconscious systems. Consciousness then makes sense of it all by telling a story. Gazzaniga went on to pursue the nature of interpreter functions of consciousness and turned to trying to understand the unconscious control of emotional behavior. That’s how I got interested in the unconscious aspects of mind. If you think about it, the enduring features of mind and behavior that define our personality are not things we consciously control. We are simply that way, and it can be hard to change those things because they are unconsciously controlled.

Joseph LeDoux entrevistado en Salon y dedicado, obviamente, a nuestro hombre en Luanda.

La foto… ah, que no hay foto que relacionar oblicuamente (o no) con el texto, descubriendo así todo tipo de asociaciones, un campo de asociaciones, una constelación que yo había previsto, o no, o que significativamente no había previsto, o que solamente ustedes pueden ver por ser quienes son, o por ser quienes son, o por ser quienes son en realidad, que igual no tiene nada que ver ni con quienes son ni con quienes dejan de ser, o que ven exclusivamente porque hoy se les cagó (o no) una paloma (esas ratas con alas) en la solapa de la americana que no llevan porque hace demasiado calor en la Sevilla de julio.

Qué tedioso todo.

[Venga, foto, foto, foto. Si no tienen ojos indiscretos mirando por encima de su hombro, pueden contemplar (a) y (b) y (c) y encontrar un cierto valor alegórico de Psyche desnuda y lánguidamente atada]