Page 38 - NAMAH-Jul-2018

Namah Vol. 26, Issue 2, 15th July 2018

Neuropsychological correlates Quod vitae sectaboriter? (“What road in life shall
I follow?”). An unknown person gave him
This dream experience, which might be a piece of verse beginning with Est et Non
interpreted to subjugate reason to emotional [yes and no]. By this time the encyclopaedia
fervour, predated the neuropsychological reappeared and was no longer complete as
findings accumulated from a rich repertoire it was when he saw it before.
of clinical experience by Dr. Antonio Damasio,
whose treatise, Descartes’ Error , chronicles how Descartes started analysing his dream while
‘I think’ cannot be an isolated phenomenon asleep and understood that the encyclopaedia
but is linked with the whole. He explored signified scientific knowledge while the
real-life cases to prove that reason without anthology of poetry suggested philosophy and
emotion was greatly impoverished. Reason, wisdom combined. He woke up and continued
presumed to be arising from the neocortical to interpret his dream. The collected poets
structures (that evolved later) cannot be strictly signified revelation and enthusiasm; the Est
segregated from the biological regulation et Non — the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ of Pythagoras was
modulated presumably by subcortical structures interpreted to stand for truth and falsity of
(that evolved earlier). Rationality as a quality human knowledge.This dream led Descartes
has not been merely superimposed on the in future to discard all his previous beliefs in
biological apparatus but arises also from it search for a new foundation of knowledge;
and with it. While rationality seems to be a it was to be his basis for proceeding by
neocortical phenomenon, emotions are played doubting everything till he found that he
out under the control of both cortical and could not doubt the fact that he doubted (4).
subcortical structures. Damasio describes feelings
to be a variant of emotions, albeit at times not The sense of being and the ego
originating in emotions, yet offering us the
cognition of our visceral and musculoskeletal Rollo May, in an existential analysis of the
state, letting us mind the body (3). dream-experience of the 28-year-old lady born
an illegitimate child narrated above, explains
Beyond neurological correlates that her ‘I-Am’ experience reflects the ‘sense
of being’ which must be differentiated from
If dream-work is a valid psychological ego functionings. The ‘sense of being’ arises
instrument, it would be unfair to judge the from a consciousness that is deeper than the
Cartesian dualism based on the analysis ego. The ego functions in the psychosocial
of neurological correlates alone. After all, space, and it cannot avoid being a reflection
Descartes’ own thought was triggered by of the external world. The ‘sense of being’
a series of three dreams in his twenty-third refers to the totality — the wholeness of one’s
year, on the night of 10 November, 1619, experience, both conscious and unconscious
th
the eve of St. Martin’s day when crowds and views the psychosocial space from an
commemorated the souls of the departed. inner and deeper psychological space which
The third dream had an encyclopaedia and is outside the purview of the ego. Rollo writes,
a collection of poems by different authors. “My sense of being is not my capacity to see the
He opened the first book to find the verse, outside world, to size it up to assess reality; it is

38