It was partially my own experience with a family member who transfered childhood trauma and depression with no outlet into a myelin sheath degeneration which led me to the study and practice of psychoanalytic and psychosomatic medicine. In my practice I see the continual transfer of psychosocial experiences into physical disease and back again.
With specific reference to neuroscience, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff describe the quantum coherence effects of the microtubules of cell cytoskeletons which operate at a more subtle yet more superordinate level of will and consciousness to the more linear discrete operations of neuronal firing. In their research they were able to disrupt simple external tasks with mild electrical current through the brain too subtle to effect the actual neurochemical transmission.
In my own doctoral research I argued that the quantum coherence of the cytoskeleton was able to translate nonlinear transpersonal events of consciousness and will before the further linear specification of neural mapping which requires the later (ontogenetically and phylogenetically) developed sheathed neurons for many of the logical symbolic behaviors which our particular external culture prizes.
Indeed I saw how the demyelinization accompanied decreasing ability to perform specific motor and memory tasks and increasing free associative behavior which was radically honest to the discomfort and/or amusement of others. With very little judgement this person entered childlike or mystical states which appeared to be pleasant. The negativity or guilt was in those who were observing.
Your comments neurologically parallel Aulagnier's findings on the creation of schizophrenia from violent interpretation and intrusion which robs the ability of the psyche or self to evolve. The brain simultaneously is intruded upon and develops autoimmune defenses. Lack of the culturally normal specificity of tasks, pain from self-destruction, and fear of external judgement are often accompanied by heightened creative and paranormal abilities which have not been lost the way they are through normal development in this culture. This has led to an unfortunate dualism among those struggling for an enlightened approach to schizophrenia in many ways. There are BOTH biological causes and effects AND psychosocial causes and effects AND they are structurally coupled. One can have BOTH sympathy for the pain of "schizophrenic" subjectivity AND struggle for an understanding about how cultural judgement and medical labelling of "schizophrenia" as a disease caused by some bad gene or microbe perpetuates an inability to see how it develops and heal it.
For more general background reading I recommend.
Roger Penrose "Shadows of the Mind"
Wilhelm Reich "The Cancer Biopathy"
Klaus Dumke "AIDS: The Deadly Seed"
Ernest Rossi "The Psychobiology of Gene Expression"
Mark Seem "Bodymind Energetics"
Piera Aulagnier "The Violence of Interpretation"
Posted by scott at September 12, 2004 05:43 PM | TrackBack