In other fields of endeavour, not just systems interconnection, it is well known that scale can be important. Lots of things are visible at one scale but not another. So in the animal kingdom we have all kinds of microscopic things going on in the eukaryotic cell, the building block of larger life. Moving up a bit we have the vascular system of capillaries irrigating those cells. Moving up a bit more we have the standard ground plan of a vertebrate. Different kinds of things are explained at the different scales. And layers is just another way of looking at scale.
So all in all, it seems entirely appropriate to continue the theme with the seven layer model of the brain illustrated above left.
But my focus today is not with layers, but with clouds, first here mentioned at reference 2. Clouds which might be thought of as being the traces or products of systems, systems which combine process and data more intimately than is thought proper in a normal computer system. The idea now being that there is not just one cloud, but a number of clouds, a regular menagerie of clouds fighting for their niche, for their space in the brain. For the moment, in line with the field idea, we suppose the clouds to be disjoint; at most one cloud in any one place at any one time.
We allow each cloud its own base, a base in which it can do rest and recreation and from which it can sally forth when the time is right. A base which implements various critical functions. A base which gives the cloud some continuity, some continuing life, getting it over the periods when it is not particularly active or important. With one cloud being consciousness, perhaps the cloud with its base in some special part of the brain stem.
It might then be that there are others clouds which implement some of the structures invented by the Freudians, if not by Freud himself. The ego, the id and the superego. With subordinate systems doing things like transference, projection, repression and sublimation. And with cathexis being a measure of the power with which certain clumps of neurons are endowed. For example, in an anxious female, perhaps a failure from the great bake, the clump of neurons which is home to the concept 'pecan tart' might have a lot of cathexis. And in an anxious male, the clump of neurons which is home to the concept ‘castration’ might have. And I am not in jest here. I do believe that, despite the disfavour into which the Freudians have presently fallen, in part because of dubious science and dubious behaviour of some of the founding fathers, they were onto something. The brain is a very complicated bag of tricks and if we are going to succeed in reaching some accessible & shared understanding of how it all works, we need some structure, something which is not hidden in layers of statistical or electrical reasoning, far beyond the reach of the common mortal. And something like the ego strikes me as an object at about the right level. Maybe it will regain its explanatory pre-eminence.
Furthermore the time is right. While until now the theories of the Freudians could be dismissed as the unverifiable dreams cooked up by shrinks from the burblings of their patients, we are not that far off the time when we will be able to look and see. To test and perhaps to verify some of those theories.
I close with a quote from Flann O’Brien, from p167 of the Everyman edition of the complete novels: ‘the tense of the body is present indicative; but the soul has a memory and a past and a future’. Maybe the Jesuits (from which I assume this comes) were onto something too – and it is certainly no coincidence that the Freudians thrived in the countries of the Catholics. Still do, I believe, in the countries of South America.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=seven. With a further selection to be found at http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=seven. There is clearly a lot of it about.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-dogs-life.html.
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