Sigmund Freud Vindicated ! — a New 3 Brain Model
I recently posted part 4 of my series The Collapse of the First Global Civilization: The A3 Brain, Human Consciousness and the Crisis of Psychology. The entire article was listed as a 46 min read. There are subsections that stand on their own that I’m sure will interest special audiences in a smaller format. Here is one of them.
This post discusses a new theory of brain organization to set the stage for a follow-on piece that discusses a functional model for consciousness in animals and humans.
Most readers will be aware of Sigmund Freud’s 3 brain model: Id, Ego and Super-ego. Most will also believe that Freud’s theories have been disproven by modern psychology and therefore dismissed. But there is a big problem with that view. Modern medicine made multiple mistakes translating Freud’s book from German to English.
First, Freud never precisely described the 3 functions. He clearly acknowledged that fact in his books claiming only that he had observed 3 repeating patterns. He suggested that other researchers pick up where he left off and map out the details. Some tried but couldn’t make them match the physiology of the brain that was being discovered by more recent research.
I also tried to do it; and encountered similar problems. Then, I had a great stroke of luck! I stumbled on the reason why the matching wasn’t working: there was an ironic and tragic misnaming of the 3 brains when Freud’s book The Ego and the Id was translated from German to English!
The selection of the term “super-ego” (Über-Ich in German) did the major damage. Uber, in German, can mean: about, above, across, beyond, hyper, over. But to translate it as “super” was tragically misleading.
Second, the use of the English prefix “super” led many to assume that the “super-ego” brain was superior to the ego.
Third, if it was “superior”, they concluded it must have evolved later than the ego in the sequence of brain component development and was primarily a “supervising” function over the “earlier evolving” ego.
Fourth, if it was the “superior” brain, researchers assumed that the super-ego must be the site of human consciousness.
Fifth, brain analysis didn’t support that. So, Freud was thrown out. Modern psychology has gone down the wrong road since that time.
The stroke of luck that occurred to me was to try to switch the order of evolution of the ego and super-ego. When I made that simple assumption, a whole new brain model occurred to me :
>> Let Freud’s Id, which I now call “Hulk” (yes, the green super-hero), include all the brain functions that are strictly INHERITED: motor control, heart beat, temperature etc. Modern medicine calls these the “autonomic” system. But also let Hulk include the inherited drives for water, food, shelter and sex. (Yes, this model importantly connected Freud with Maslow.) Hulk is the most primitive brain. Both its structure and the rules that run it are inherited. Hulk is partially conscious (meaning perceptive of complex sensory input), but not “self-aware”. Hulk’s functions are reactive (meaning output producing in proportion to input).
I chose the term Hulk to describe this brain because this part of humans acts very much like the comic book super hero. When things related to human survival are going well, we don’t even notice he is there. But if something goes wrong, WATCH OUT! Hulk explodes with huge force. He takes over our bodies and mind to drive us toward singular goals that he perceives to be critical to save our life.
>> Let Freud’s super-ego, which I now call “Middle brain”, evolve second. It is a very different brain from Hulk with a very different structure. Only its structure is inherited. All of its “content” must be learned. One of it’s functions is promptly learning (storing) behaviors. It stores them as complex, streaming, associated, time-based, perception sequences ( all functions in bold are critical for this model). Middle brain is conscious (meaning perceptive), but not “self-aware”. Its perceptions include the classic 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell ( and the more recently accepted senses: heat, balance, rotation etc. ). However, and this is a key observation, Middle brain gets all its perception information from Hulk. It also gets “judgment” messages from Hulk. The judgment messages are perceived as pain and emotions.
>> Now, let Freud’s ego, which I call “Thinker” evolve last. It is also a “learning” brain. However, its perceptions of the outside world are summaries received indirectly from Middle brain after a lot of processing by both Hulk and Middle brain. The “summary” perceptions Thinker gets from Middle brain, which include vision, sound etc. include associated pain and emotion messages Middle brain generates itself, but also those passed from Hulk. Because Middle brain processes information it gets from Hulk, the perceptions Thinker receives from Middle brain are not produced in “real time”. That is, they are not coming in direct response to sensual input, but are playbacks of sequences stored earlier in Middle brain.
Here are some important observations that relate to all three brains:
· Their primary goal is protecting the life of the body that keeps them alive.
· The brains have a priority structure. In cases of crisis, Hulk has the highest priority, Middle brain is second, Thinker is third. The brains with higher priority can interfere with the operation of the other brains by shutting off their inputs and not listening to their outputs.
The following graphic shows the 3-brain structure in the left column. In another post on consciousness, a connection will be made to a new theory of consciousness shown in the right column.
Other short excerpts from article 4 related to psychology are:
Sigmund Freud Vindicated ! — a New 3 Brain Model
Consciousness — the New A3 Model
Consciousness linked to Maslow’s Hierarchy
The Seven Deadly Sins
Why modern psychotherapy doesn’t work — Truth, Values and Freedom
Additional discussions of this issue can be found on the A3 Society web page under the following tabs: Brain Theory ; Human Species ; Psychology
Images courtesy of flickr — ascriptions with photos
