Monday, December 6, 2010

Is she playing with my mind?


What is a mind?

The brain is a physical organ of the body, a collection of neural networks, but is the mind just the brain? Are thoughts just electrical impulses down nerve cells? As people test and examine the brain in part or as a whole, its complexity is becoming more and more apparent. To persist with the idea that the physical brain cannot carry out all the functions of the mind is becoming more difficult.

Yet each mind is different. If brain structure is so clearly uniform in many ways, how can minds have such individual prints? My mind encapsulates my self. I cannot separate who I am from the processes of my mind.

This question (Is she playing with my mind?) finds its key in the self. When someone asks if their mind is being played with, they are ultimately questioning whether someone is playing with their self. Is she playing with ME? No wonder the question is so deep and desperate. It is founded on a real sense of invasion and being controlled.

The person who asks this question, feels out of control. They cannot change what is happening to them and are desperately seeking stability. It indicates an external locus of control (that is the sense of my life being controlled and affected by events and people outside myself) which puts this person at greater risk of a depressive illness.

And the question is asked because reassurance must come from outside the self to be believable. He cannot trust himself to be able to read the situation, let alone control it. Providing reassurance (an answer) can be counter-productive for the questioner because it reinforces the sense of being ineffective and powerless, that he so clearly has.

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