An Apologia for the Human MindPatrick de Maré and Roberto Schöllberger

Group Analysis, Vol 41, Nr 1 p 5-33

IntroductionThis is the fifth article we have published in answer to the vexed question about the mind.

The first was a paper in 2001 entitled “The Primacy of the Human Mind. The Battle Against Mindlessness”. This was delivered at the Washington School of Psychiatry.

The second was a chapter in the bock “The Large Group Re-Visited” edited by Schneider and Weinberg, published by Jessica Kingsley in 2003 entitled “The Larger Group As A Meeting of Minds”.

The third entitled “A Case For Mind”, published in Group Analysis in 2004, vol.37 Nr 3, p. 341-354.

The fourth entitled “A Theory of Mind” which appeared in Group Analysis in 2006.Then Malcolm Pines unearthed a publication entitled “Mind” by Foulkes. This was in

Group Analysis 2003, vol. 36, Nr 3, p. 215-221. In this article Foulkes acknowledges the presence of the mind as the most undoubted of our experiences.

Later Dick Blackwell describes these two articles as very important.The following represents a diagram of the mind described in triadic terms. Descartes himself

established the Cartesian duality but followed it up by a triad of the intermingling and interaction between body and mind.

DIAGRAM OF THE MIND

Structure The Minding Process Content

ThesisBodyAnabolicRes ExtensaSumConcreteObsessiveSomaMatter, body, brainTotalise, wholisticProjectSpeech, talkImageChronos, mechanical timeLogic (numbers)WhatPastSolidCircleWavesNatureNoumenaCognitionDeductive (matter)

Synthesis MeaningMetabolicintermingling, interactionWholeSymbolicMindingPsychosomaticMinding, caring, loving, meaningSymboliseProjective identificationDialogue, discourseMagicTempo, temporising, rhythmReasonWhyPresentGasCrossingQuantaCultivationAppearanceIntuitionResearch, examine, explore,

Antithesis MindKatabolicRes CogitansPartsAbstractTalkingPsychicSpirit, MindAnalyseAnalyseLanguageImaginationKairos, human timeLogos or wordsHowFutureFluid CentreParticlesCulturePhenomenaIntelligenceInductive, hypothetical

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MotherPhallusSexGoodPain (body)AnimalPlacentaKin (blood related)Notation Social UnconsciousLarge GroupMoney, gold, depositMonologueOppression

investigateChildErosLoveChoiceSuffering (experience)PanBirthCulturalMelodyCollective UnconsciousMedian GroupCurrency, distribution, exchangeDialogueDemocracy, Choice

FatherKuntaErosBadPanic (mind)HumanLungsKith (socially related)Scales, ArpeggiosPersonal UnconsciousnessSmall GroupCreditDuologueLiberation, Freedom

It is perhaps relevant here to mention the work of F.M.Conford “Before and after Socrates” (1932) which is a most revelatory exposition about Socrates who also influenced Descartes particularly in the switch from things and nature to human beings and souls. However interest in the human mind dates back several thousand years before.

Things or nature were first described by the Ionians e.g. Homer. They are characterised by materialism and rationality dated round about the 6th Century B.C. . The Melanesians came from Ionia notably Tales and Anaximander. Anaximander explained wind, rain and lightening by a naturalist hypothesis and brilliant conjectures. His mentor Tales is described as the first philosopher of all time! That was round about 585 B.C.

About eleven centuries later Rousseau, the leading light, ushered in the Enlightenment which was continued later by Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, Otto Rank et al.; they were involved with the tradition which considers that it the socio-cultural which shapes individual and behaviour but also that it is vice versa. It is only the single mind which actually thinks, but unfortunately man creates a prison for himself. One is reminded of Marx’s comment that “man makes history but not on his own”, but with others when consciousness is created and the flavour and saltiness of meaning becomes acquired.

If the widely accepted notion that mathematics is the sense of everything that has ‘mass’, that ‘mass’ was enunciated by the human mind; the mind must clearly have existed long before mathematics was ever thought of. Hegel has said something similar when he states that all entities (in that case all what I think) are really the thoughts of a single mental substance: they are developed by this single substance, namely the mind and this was termed ‘panlogism’. Marx later turned this upside down which constituted the basis for ‘dialectical materialism’ which conceives of political purpose. Hegel’s religious propensities represent an odd pantheistic version of Christianity. The material world in Charles Rycroft ‘Willhelm Reich’ puts the case for the biological sciences, physics, and chemistry as demonstrating that the structure and behaviour of living organisms was only explicable in terms of physics and chemistry. This standpoint was strictly deterministic and assumed that all explanations are in terms of causation but in fact this attitude fails to be adequate in matters of consciousness, the reflective self, awareness and meaningfulness occurring in humans and higher animals, namely wisdom.

Socrates’ began with his study of external nature which became a study of man and of the purposes of human actions in society. In fact nature had first to be established to incorporate what had previously been regarded as supernatural and outgrown theogony in favour of cosmogony.

The following quotes from Socrates (430-399 BC) are perhaps relevant.“The unexamined life is not worth living”. “Imagine now that there are two ruling powers. One of them is set over the visible or physical world and the other over the invisible or mental world”. “Understanding and reason belong to the invisible or mental world”, “there abides the very being

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with which the knowledge is concerned, that colourless, formless, intangible essence visible only to the mind. The divine intelligence of souls is nourished from this pure knowledge”.

The ‘bridging’ between minds is facilitated by certain stimuli such as aesthetics, capacity for expansion, wisdom, intelligence, meaningfulness, creativity and the experiences of flavour, colour, taste, smell.

In “Critique of Dialectical Reason” (1960) Sartre abandoned “Being and Nothingness” (1943), and he exchanged Existentialism for an ideology of people being controlled by a scarcity of raw materials.

For us the age of scarcity is over as a result of technology: we no longer live in a world of universal scarcity but are in the position to be selective about what is scarce and what isn’t. The present economic system is based on a faulty banking which operates under the effete assumption from the past age of scarcity: a power group of compulsive obsessing which controls credit and rations wealth which is under their control, a sort of toll gate system, a reductionism not of the real wealth which results in compulsive poverty, wars, genocide, torture and terrorism.

Sartre continues (p.531) ‘This is the crucial point: what we are touching on here is that essential structures of communities suffer from an epistemological idealism called the agreement of minds. There are no such things as minds any more than that there are souls’. Does Sartre mean things don’t have minds or is he suggesting that minds don’t exist at all? So even Sartre abandoned existence for a misinformed monopoly of credit by banking, by evading it.

We propose that memory can be deposited into the body, into society, into the computer, into God and into the mind. When deposited into the body it is conceivable that this brings about physical illness.

“In civilisation and it’s Discontents” (1929) Freud comments ‘We may be justified in reaching the diagnosis that under the influence of cultural urges some civilization or some époque of civilities, possibly the whole of mankind, have become neurotic’. ‘We may expect one day someone will venture to embark upon a pathology of cultural communities’.

In our understanding of Hoppers publication ‘The Social Unconscious’, Hopper considers there is no social unconscious until 50 members are present and that the interim between 0 and 50 is a void. For us it is precisely here that the Median Group operates in the meeting and sharing of minds and is where consciousness first emerges (by definition from the Oxford University Dictionary consciousness means: knowing things with other people). Hopper’s void is our consciousness. It is here that the unconscious mind meets social reality and by the subsequent activity of thinking is able to confront and disentangle the obfuscation that is occurring in society. In our experience the optimal size of the Median Group is around 17 members.

Melanie Klein

The Kleinian unconscious of the infant is generally speaking considered to be deeply embedded in a phantasmagoria of infancy. But this is only half of the story since it is likely that the infant gets some of the reflections coming from the external world which is by no means a phantasy. In our opinion here unconscious is a reflection of our ongoing social reality. The child is sensitive to the surrounding environment and is able to pick up some of these realities with the help of what one might describe as outsight. Infants therefore do receive a great deal of information about the external world which suffers from famine, torture, killing, murder, wars, catastrophes, terrorism which is actually happening around them; they are well able to reflect.

Normality is a word that is often banded about but is in fact constituting a duality with social norm on the one hand and individual, personal on the other. The norm can be either highly destructive or creative. When it is individual, it is a single and unique substance. There are as many substances as there are unique minds.

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Reneé Descartes

The first principle of Descartes’ philosophy (1596-1650) lies in the aphorism ‘cogito, ergo sum’: I am thinking therefore I exist: ‘je pense, donc je suis’. He wrote “The physical world is made up of one single substance but each human mind is unique and so each one is a separate substance”, “I can’t be certain that I exist when I am not thinking; my existence depends on my thinking”. Therefore in essence ‘I am’ is a thinking process, a soul or a mind or an intellect. Descartes uses mind, soul, and intellect interchangeably. For him the soul was an immortal entity for thinkers. So human beings are primarily made of two substances: one mortal and the other immortal.

He suggests that his existence is indubitable, but that his body is dubitable. “My existence is independent of my body. From this I know I am a substance, a whole essence whose nature is simply to think, which does not require any place or time or depend on anything in order to exist.” Accordingly this ‘I’ is entirely distinct from the body. This is a startling conclusion namely that our existence depends entirely on our being conscious. Once we stop thinking we disappear. We suggest that this puts us under an obligation to think even in sleep. Our mind and soul continue to exist when our bodies die. For us soul is best reserved for that part of the mind which relates to God. In other words the terms soul and self are primary and therefore have no further derivation, and are elemental.

Mathematics

Pythagoras (550-500 BC) surmised that numbers have a life of their own and should therefore be worshiped. The visible world is merely an illusion that hides the real mathematical reality of things. The mathematics exists separately from human beings and is prior to the Creation of the universe itself. The word mathematic is derived from the Latin, meaning learning or lesson.

Plato (427-347 BC) followed Pythagoras and agreed that mathematic pre-exists the real structure of the universe and that random events follow a fractal geometric pattern. All knowledge can be mathematised.

Descartes used algebra to bring letters together with geometry, for instance the letters x, w, z represented the unknown and a, b, c was already known. He noted that parallel lines never meet and that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that axioms and physics entails constructing mathematical models.

For us mathematics has not discovered so match as being invented by the mind which was introduced by the Euclidean’s as ‘formalism’. Descartes noted that business, accountancy, astronomy, optics and navigation were improved when mathematics was applied. For us it is the mind that carries out these functions. However mind is very rarely referred to directly and seems to be a taboo subject. For us the mind pre-empts the brain, it is not the brain that creates mind but mind also creates the mortal brain. Minds do not seem to be investigable in physical terms. The behaviourists and cognitivists deny the presence of mind altogether.

The unconscious is the result of two unconsciousness: one is social and the other is individual. They become fused and confused and it is only when they are processed by the mind disentangling them to become distinct that integration, not fusion, takes places in consciousness in the same manner that in which two integers become integrated.

Even in mentioning the word ‘mind’ we find ourselves in an infinity and diversity of concepts: we are unable to cover the situation or do justice so much so that we eventually concluded that the level has reached the point in which quantity effects a change of quality. In some ways we have not got the words to describe this new quality other than the word psychotherapy which cannot be covered by any of the laws that we have so far encountered. We are entering the human sphere of a new order in moral science.

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The word substance originally referred to things and was synonymous with matter. Descartes’ use of the word therefore is somewhat confusing which such philosophers as David Armstrong has exploited in suggesting that consciousness is a physicalistic substance and is derived from the Latin meaning ‘underneath’ and ‘what is standing’. The idea of substance has been used differently by various philosophers from the beginning e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Look, Spinoza, Kant and originally it meant something that was robust and solid, Aristotle distinguished between matter and substance. So one is impelled to divide things into the duality of substance and attribute which was the original dualism existing in the real world, both concrete and abstract. This confusion does seem to mess up mind and meaning which is constantly being exploited for political purposes. The word capitalism is derived from enumerate assessments of the heads of cattle. The anti-capitalists are protesting against the confusion between brain and mind. Abstraction is derived from a word ‘pull away from’ and we could reflect that language itself can often be really ambiguous. The idea that mind itself is a drawing away from the brain as a disparate object, constituting Plato’s interchangeable thought of ideas with forms, runs through geometry, numbers, figures, propositions, properties and relations. Aristotle denied the independent existence of abstract entities and defined a diluted sense of Plato’s forms as being secondary substances that adhere in primary substances or spatio-temporal particulars. This dispute persists in medieval times between realists and metaphysicians. Augustine and Aquinas accept the existence of abstractions and nominalists, e.g. Ockam (1285-1347), who maintained that similar objects may simply be referred to by the same name without participating in an abstract form. This controversy has given rise to our opinion that the compulsive obsessing with details is mindless. We would suggest the word ‘premise’ rather than substance and leave substance to the interchange ability of matter.

Philosophy of psychotherapy

We as psychotherapists have constantly being bemused by an area which has not been articulated but remains conceptualised in the form of constantly obsessing.

We postulate a universal law of human mind that has to be recognised and acknowledged, a law which if broken creates savage and severe reprisals. The first of these laws is the law of opposite dualities. For instance the term minding has two distinct meanings namely that of caring and looking after and the second in the sense that things do matter to oneself and can hurt and one is not indifferent towards others. If we do not acknowledge this we are not able to bother about other people, since we are unable to care for ourselves, by the same token we cannot care for others which relates to the phenomenon of autism. The phrase ‘love others as you love yourself’ is part of the law of universal duality and can only be broken when it causes insecurity, anxiety and the law of the subhuman jungle prevails, and we proceed to destroy each other without compunction.

We might add here that the history student Karen Armstong ( “The Great Transformation”. 2006) has written that the Golden Rule of the Perennial Philosophy: “Love the other as yourself” was universal from China to Greece and Palestine between 900-300 BC.

The double law constitutes the essence of humanisation and without it we behave like subhuman where there is no distinction between good and evil. Each one of us is in a position to make decisions and choices and this faces each one of us personally and individually at every moment of our lives even in our sleep and in our dreams: i. e. take responsibility.

Another duality which has to be recognised namely that there are the rights of society and the rights of the individual which, if ignored, have a disastrous effect in the form of vengeance by the individual against the culture of society.

This apologia is true apology for the situations we have created and which we disguise by a mask of indifference and obsessionalising which poses as thinking. There is an interesting derivation we would like to mention namely that of the word tragedy which comes from the Greek

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meaning ‘goat and song’. The god Pan is half goat, half human and the clash of this is to result in the making of music by the pan pipes.

The word obsession is derived from the Latin meaning ‘to sit on’ which is part of a mindless process of dehumanising and is interpreted as a punishment which cannot be sorted out except by the disentangling of neurotic guilt from real guilt and which is abstract. The rights of mankind and personal rights lead to a type of litigating which is characteristically obsessional and can only be sorted out by the mind which has a characteristic quality of having to use or loose. In effect litigation is unreliable and it is the mind which finally has to refer to a different law which relates to logos and a Universal Law that has been termed divine.

It is often difficult to decide where philosophy ends and psychology begins. Leo Vigotsky and Wundt developed a physiological psychological reduction to simple elementary physiological components and were unable to deal with conscious behaviour such as motives, abstract thinking, active memorising, and voluntary actions. This marked another way of looking at things and was called descriptive psychology, experiential, phenomenological, and with the stark distinction being the logic of numbers and the phenomenological aspect of appearances.

We find that Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the Swiss linguist is revealing when he speaks of ‘la Langue’ is as a social fact of language and ‘la Parole’ is representative of speech. He makes a sharp distinction between signifier and signified and he invented the discipline of semiology which refers to the science system of signs.

We suggest that when there is a union between dualities there is a state of tension that constitutes the base for consciousness. Freud hoped to be acknowledged as scientific but he discovered the new phenomenon that symptoms and dreams have meaning which marks a thoughtfulness which is entirely distinct from scientific obsessing: logic versus logos. In relationship to this Sartre displaces a monism but at the same time has created such dualities as ‘on soi’ and ‘pour soi’ and has even created a third intermingling that of ‘being for the other’, ‘myself as subject’. Descartes described intermingling which is surely a third premise which for us embodies consciousness. We have reached the conclusion that Freud, Wittgenstein, Sartre and Foulkes et al. are essentially dualists. Perhaps it may seem strange that in keeping with so many others who have written about the mind we would like to say that we have differentiated ourselves from all these references and we have embarked on one simple notion: namely we have attributed primacy to the mind itself above all other considerations. There is in the first place a curious paradox in that in order to grasp the full significance of mind: we have each one of us to look at the mind with the help of mind itself. We would suggest that the fundamental function is to disentangle materialism from spirituality; what is body and what is mind creates a thesis, an antithesis and a synthesis which is therefore a triadic rather than dyadic phenomenon.

There is a provocative publication ‘The Wisdom Paradox. How Your Mind Can Grow Stronger As Your Brain Grows Older’, by the neuropsychologist Elkhonon Goldberg, Free Press 2005. Three quarters of this book is a description of the brain, the last chapter however describes very well the approach similar to ours “But vigorous life of the mind should not come to a halt at any time. It can and must continue well into advanced age. The longer it goes on, the longer it will continue to bestow own rewards in the form of stimulating various growth processes in the brain and by so doing protecting it from the effects of decay. The concept of lifelong mental fitness, with better odds for keeping a sound mind for life as its reward, should become part of popular culture. I believe it soon will.” “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labour of thinking” (p 291).

We would not deny of course but would not regard this as the only aspect since it concerns human beings who mind and care and humanize and wonder. As Socrates stated ‘Wisdom begins in wonder’. Teresa of Avila, the mystic, wrote ‘the way in which this what we call union comes and the nature of it I do not know how to explain. It is described in mystical theology, but I am unable to

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use the proper terms and I cannot understand what is meant by mind or how it differs from soul or spirit. They all seem the same to me, though the soul sometimes issues from itself, like a fire that is burning and has become wholly flame and sometimes this fire increases with great force’. Plato on the other hand believed in a soul with tree parts, reason, noble passion, base passion, proceeding from head, lungs, heart, liver and guts. Soul and mental faculties were located in the spaces known as ventricles.

We would regard psychotherapy as providing a unique philosophy of its own but with certain Platonic roots as exemplified in the ‘Republic’; Aristotle did not agree and considered Plato was mistaken. This presupposes a new approach to the whole of philosophy, and therefore alters forever and ultimately all previous philosophical assumptions and therapy therefore reshapes the whole of philosophy since the Mind is based on the primacy of Mind itself. Never has the Mind been taken as so central to healing and by the same token participation in the Median Group is self evidently therapeutic. It is perhaps relevant that Marcus Aurelius (121 to 180 AD) who considered the concept of meaning is every bit as problematic as the concept of mind. Another of the pagans circa 585 BC, Tales, stated God is the mind of the universe.

So therefore it can be said that there are at least five modes of Mind namely monism, dualism, triadic, quaternal and pentalgramatic.

Monism occurs when the foetus inside the womb receives oxygen and nutrient supplies established through the placenta and this state of affairs consists the essence of monism such as the Garden of Eden or Paradise, before the Fall, at one with God with the oceanic feelings of the amniotic fluid totally materialistic in relationship to the derivation for the Latin word ‘mater’. The foetus appears to smile in a state of nirvana, an Atlantis. Atlantis, by the way, was a phantasy of Plato.

Throughout history there have been many images of the Mind, ranging from the Hindu concept of mind as a mandala and tantric mandalas with drawings as a space containing circle and square used in initiating ceremonies. The lotus as a flower represents supreme reality and is always present in Buddhist statues.

In the chapter of Genesis the earth was described as being without form and was void and darkness was the face of the deep. In St. John this beginning was described as logos or the word. The word was with God and the word was God. In Genesis, when God spoke, ‘Let there be light. He saw that this was good.’ In Genesis God is described as ‘I AM, I AM’. God and the initial being had later to be humanised by a human being, the Sun of Man.

In China the Tao, the Way was motionless characterised by nothingness, absence of finality and which Plato originally described as ventricles, as primal being and space an abstract idea, subsequently described as archetypal by Jung. When nothingness developed colour, meaning, melody, universal mind, it was also universal and good which became impersonalised as The Primal Good. When Buddha was asked what he was he replied ‘I am Awake’. At the same time this invisible magic intangible flowing being has been described as Dasein by Heidegger. Since these words are difficult to define, the truth is regarded as secret, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’. The Hindus considered the mind is a substance that can take on the shape of any object. Beyond the three aspects of the divine, beyond the trinity, there is a fourth dimension which, so far, has no definition and has not jet been defined and we suggest the four quadrants of the symbol of the Cross (see p 16).

We suggest the Universal Mind is a fourth dimension and a formless substance. The mandalas of Hinduism and Buddhism are attempts at illustrating mind pictures.

In the second chapter of the Tao The Ching various dualities are described such as beauty and ugliness, good and evil and by the same token existence would also suggest non existence, as

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an example the circle of the circumference exists but at the centre mathematicians describe as being too small that it doesn’t exist but has a locality.

There are two sorts of religion: the first is historical and ranges over thousand of years such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism as distinct from primal religions such as shamanism and paganism which are between 40 and 100 thousand years old. Ethics, the philosophical study of morality along with logic, metaphysics and epistemology constitute the four main branches of philosophy. Moral ethics which studies goodness and right action is a powerful issue in psychotherapy. Should we as psychotherapists mind about our clients, should we care for them and mind what they say in enabling them to help and heal, which concludes that we do have minds, that self evidently we do mind. Of course if we deny mind as the behaviourists and cognitive psychologists do, we very much limit our therapy.

The pre Socratic philosophy begins with nature but Socrates was involved with the discovery of the soul. The Greeks had a passion for the state and Plato wrote in the dialogues of Socrates that he would prefer to be dead rather than live in a city, which was corrupt. Plato, the greatest philosopher of all time examined the study of mind which ‘orders all things and may justly be called wisdom and mind’ (Drake, H. 1959 ). We ourselves, consider that the most significant feature in the concept of Mind is that it is a process of awareness which disentangles what is human from what is scientific. To summarize the situation there are four modalities of thinking: the first is monistic as in monotheism which is materialistic as in behaviourism and cognitive psychology. The second is dualism such as Cartesian. The third is triadic, thinking itself and involved with disentangling such as melody, meaning, humanity, choosing and koinonia. The fourth dimension that of totalisation: the universal intelligence which is inspired and creative, visionary, timeless, anti depressant and divine. The fifth is the universal.

The single word the ‘mind’ itself covers such concepts as nothingness, space and lack and pause. The Hindus and Buddhists void was termed ‘shunyata’: Plato named it ventricle, all of which are like the facets of a mirror ball with a single centre, e.g. Nothingness, the mind which runs like a red thread through the history of mankind.

David Hume deprived thinking of all certainty except logic and mathematics which Kant (1781) rescued us from this dead end by the notion of synthetic a priori, which does not depend on inductive experiential proof but is replaced by the mind itself which contribute various ordering elements to our sensations of space, time, causality, relieving us from chaos, reclaiming metaphysics, human freedom and ethics. The ‘Critique of Reason’ (Kant) has been described as one of the monumental works of all philosophy.

In recommending the concept of mind two main issues are evident, the first of which is the presence of the Universe itself and the second is the reflection of that universe by the human mind.

The pentalgramatic universe consists of all that there is to reflect on, which consists of a vast array of concepts such as the conscious and unconscious mind.

Essentially the mind constitutes the outcome of a triad. First there is monism followed by the opposition of the dyad and which is followed by a new synthesis. This means maintaining a nothingness of the mind. Most religions recommend fasting, abstince, celibacy and a general freedom from identifying with things, refraining from addiction, commoditisation and finacialisation. The triadic supposition is essentially a process leading to meaning and the human mind. The concept that the whole consists of more than the sum of its parts, for instance: a good melody has nothing to do with the actual notes and scales and arpeggios, namely a third dimension that of melody.

One of the earliest symbols of the universe was represented by the Chinese and consisted of the circle or circumference. Then the circle with the centre was introduced which had no dimensions but did have a location, described by the mathematicians as too small to exist at all. This could be seen as the essence of the concept of the mind itself. Whilst the circumference is

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multifaceted like a mirror ball, the centre is a single dimension which reflect and is equidistant from all the billions of the facets. This entails maintaining a nothingness.

Dualism can become monistic in the notion of two aspects of the same thing so that dualism is either monistic, but triadic when two things interrelate.

To interpolate, consciousness is a word derived (Oxford University Press) as a knowing (scio) with (con) other people. To declare that brain and mind are the same thing denies the presence of the space between brains or that the pauses in music is the same as the sound.

Mind therefore cannot be defined since it is a central nothingness which reflects everything, the void only expressible in terms of nihilistic negativity and can only be defined by encountering another mind or by relating to the universal mind of God described as ‘I AM I AM’.

It is interesting to regard the oldest of all religions, namely shamanism, which searches for the lost souls of sick people by reclaiming the soul. Sickness, physical or psychological, is in the shaman doctrine due to a loss of soul or ‘soul loss’. The methods applied are by feasts of various paraphernalia, states of trance, such as trance or ecstasy created by the beating of the drum and remarkable phenomena such as ropes in the sky or fires of unknown origin. All this had been shared by various peoples over the world which are pre Christian, such as the Lapps, Eskimos, the Red Indians of the Planes north America, the Australian aborigines, the African Voodoo and various hunter gatherers in the past.

We have surmised and would like to interpolate here that there exists in every one a condition of primal terror or panic which is so severe but is heavily repressed and therefore unconscious. It creates a state of mindlessness which renders humanity helpless victim of an inherent cowardice resulting in a universal loss of morale, courage, and a prejudice against in the least trace of mind, of meaning, of caring. It is only as a result of pain, suffering and corruption that the conscious mind can be pressured into existence. The very word Sin is derived from an Aramaic term (the language Christ spoke) which means the loss of the power to focus and therefore a loss of consciousness in the form of the repressed unconscious.

There are two quotations worth referring to, namely one by Silvia Plath, who committed suicide, in the Poem Apprehensions (1974) and the quote is a question: “is there no way out of the mind?” The other is by W.B. Yeats, in The Second Coming (1921): “Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold”.

Giovanni Stanghellini (Oxford 2004) entitled ‘Disembodied Spirits and Deanimated Bodies’, writes “the last few years have witnessed a remarkable explosion of study between philosophy and psychiatry. Psychiatry raises problems of meaning with empirical difficulties: as a consequence there is a growing need for clear thinking in our discipline.” Stanghellini has shared in an international network of psychiatrists, psychologists and philosophers collaborating in a rigorous understanding of human subjectivity. (Phenomenological Psychopathology). The notion has emerged that it is social disturbances which become introjected into the individual causing madness and moral idiocy. It is interesting that all Husserl’s work displays a tension between Ego and Society.

It is perhaps relevant to mention that it was Carl Jaspers who first described phenomenology as the science of experience. He was the first “existentialist”.

What does existence actually mean?For us it is the mind that creates the meaning of existence and of being. It creates the story,

the narrative which is the relatedness of facts which therefore become ficts.Phenomena of consciousness is to find the essential laws of consciousness such as dualism

or of thinking itself. The computer, for instance, does not think but computes. It treats abstract meaningful words as if they were numbers, which constitutes the distinction between first logic and mathematics and second logos. If the Word does not exist, it results in nausea or depression. The discovery that it does exist is existentialism which entails minding, caring, thinking and abstracting and therefore assumes the presence of a minder who focuses, involving the deficiency disease of such illnesses as schizophrenia and in the case of depression a loss of sense of value and inspiration,

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and a loss of ability to express because of oppression and fear. To take all these abstractions into account constitutes psychotherapy, healing and miracles. The schizophrenic creates magic not imagination since he is uprooted from actuality which becomes replanted in the case of dialogue with other minds e.g. the therapist or group.

David Hume in ‘A Treatise of Human Nature’ (1739) wrote “In pretending therefore to explain the principles of human nature we in fact propose a coupled system of science built on a foundation almost entirely new and the only one upon which we stand with any security it is founded on experience and observation ‘a new footing’ referring to recent philosophers coming from England”. He calls this science “human nature”, and the only one upon which we stand with any security and which we would refer to as the Human Mind. He writes “The essence of mind is unknown to us” and which he proposes a science superior to any other human comprehension. He wrote ““All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS. The difference betwixt these consist in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind and make their way into our thoughts or consciousness.” which we call the Human Mind. He writes “For me it seems evident that essence of the mind being equally unknown to us. Is to establish a science which will be superior in utility to any other human comprehension”. He further proposes another division of the impressions into original and secondary. He further goes on to say that there is a further division between impression and sensation.

We note that these are all dualisms and would simplify them to a central dualism of reflections and the things that are reflected. This is only the beginning that goes into several more implications. Suffice to say that reflection is fundamental to the quality of the concept of mind which is part of a dualism of the body mind problem. We feel supported by the “Treatise” though we are confounded by the extent of the obsessional verbiage.

Hume talks of the soul by which we suggest he refers to the mind.The whole of the ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ circles round references to a concept of mind.

A related significance must be attributed to Kant’s ‘Categorical Imperative’ and later Heidegger’s talk of ‘Dasein’. We would use the word mind to cover all three terms and they can be said to cover the obsessional obfuscations of words like ideas (Plato, who also talked of Forms) or Nothingness (Sartre) and ‘the case’ of Wittgenstein, also the soul in religion and the spirit in philosophy. These are terms which seem to go round and round in a verbiage which indicates compulsive obsessing and is often mistaken for thinking. For us only the individual, single human mind actually thinks which is cultivated in relation to other minds. As we have said, the mind, therefore, runs through the history of mankind like a red thread and is subject to a curious taboo. This renders the study of the mind all the more significant.

We would like here to turn to some of the writings of Jean Jacque Rousseau who was inspired by the ancient Greek City State and was himself the leading light of the Enlightenment: he questioned the self serving monarchic social system which reduced the common people to a state of enslaved servitude. In his masterpiece “The Social Contract” (1762) it remains relevant to today’s problems with widespread wasted interests; essentially this concerns two modes, one which is lateralisation and the other a vertical dimension. These two, if they cross each other constitute a cross and the point of crossing is a centre of localisation and in Christianity is symbolised by the thorns and twisted presence of Jesus Christ, the sufferings of the human race. (see The Symbol of the Cross, p )

A loss of social contract causes a condition of falling apart which the individual becomes introjected as madness. What is an actuality in society which is accepted as normal and is thoroughly Kleinian.

Dasein was a notion suggested by Heidegger and referred to a state of mind which has a peculiarly elusive character, denoting being in the world. Dasein describes his approach and

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requires no science or philosophy since it is that way and cannot be reducible to either body or mind, is a science of authenticity. It seems that Heidegger is the philosopher of psychotherapy. It is interesting that neither Heidegger nor Husserl nor Sartre are mentioned by Bertrand Russerl’s “History of Western Philosophy” (1946).

The idea of phenomena is derived from the ancient Greeks which eventually became basic to phenomenology (Timon 235 B.C.) He wrote “The Phenomenon is always valid” and ”that honey is sweet, I refuse to assert, but it appears sweet I fully grant” One should mention that the “Phenomenology of Mind” by Hegel in 1807 constantly refers to the mind itself and the term phenomenology itself was first described as a system of philosophy by Husserl in 1900. In other words 93 years later.

Roberto and Patrick are, in this article primarily concerned with the beginnings of a mini philosophy for psychotherapy emerging from psycho and group and sociotherapy. On the whole philosophy in psychotherapy is ignored in favour of being scientific. For us it is clear that the concrete presence of the brain is in sharp contradistinction to the abstract presence of mind which entails relating to other minds.:

We are adding a new list of dualities and which are more philosophical in nature namely :

Concrete Abstract

Worldly UnworldlyThe how of causal The why of reasonExplanation by science The understanding of the mindSymptoms MeaningThe Reflected The ReflectingSubstance AttributesSimiotics SemanticsSubject PredicateRes Extensa Res CogitansMatter Energy

Although it was Descartes who is known for the Cartesian duality, he actually introduced the triadic dimension in terms of the relationship between body and mind known as intermingling or interaction.

Galileo (1564-1642) was the greatest of the founders of modern science, Newton came later (1642-1727) and Descartes (1596-1650), Copernicus and Kepler. Descartes is also regarded as the founder of modern philosophy which also included the progress of the exact sciences including psychology which he termed the first philosophy.

Previously Aristotle had taught that one of the laws of formal logic was that of the excluded middle which suggested that ‘a’ is equivalent to ‘c’ and that the middle ‘b’ was excluded. This is the domain of what is the mind (for us), which echoed in computers by digital and analogue thinking which is more or less as distinct from the ‘either or’ of digital.

The biggest and most corrupt hoax the world has ever known is the simple trick of naming things such as money as a commodity and as distinct from the abstraction of being a facilitating agent for exchange, which creates what has been called the National Debt, which has to be repaid by the labours who sold their labour in the first place, which therefore becomes slave labour. This constitutes the basis of the two dualities of the ‘class war and capitalism’ and communism.

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Classical physics saw the universe as a giant machine in a framework of space and time which cannot be visualised. In Newtonian synthesis all motion has a cause and effect relationship termed determinism. Energy and motion are represented by two models, one a particle impenetrable the other a wave which are mutually exclusive: energy must be one or the other. The properties of light was described by Maxwell as the electromagnetic wave theory.

A yogi called Patangeli wrote the original complete of classical yoga somewhere around 500 BC which was probably concurrent with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Buddha. This textbook consists of four booklets containing 196 aphorisms or sutras in Sanskrit describing the first serious concept of the mind and is composed more strongly in Buddhism than any other form of traditional teaching, regarded as a true expression of the subjective self, consisting in our innermost thoughts and desires, the light of life. Mind attains peace by associating with the happy compassion of the soul appearing as the good and avoiding the evil or vicious.

The Sanskrit word for mind is Chitta, the mind as a whole, the state of consciousness of Nama, attention, reflection, mental vitality, focusing or concentrating, inseparable mental factors in any state of consciousness. This is in contrast to corporality or body named Rupa, the Rupa-Chitta as the body-mind duality.

The Dharma is the totalisation of all the sorts or objects of the mind as distinct from the mind itself, the total content of mind.

Turning now to the term ‘science’ is a name derived from the Latin for ‘to know’: originally any systematised knowledge but later became limited to a more exact approach involving the body of facts systematically arranged in the natural physical world with the precise application by logic, mathematics, numbers, measurements, rules, principles, laws, axioms, which are predictable and repeatable.

With the specificity of exact science and induction, hypothesis experiment, causality. Newton set the modern agenda, conciliance of induction where several pieces of evidence convened to make one true explanation. Solidity, tangibility, visibility, physicality, concretisation. The word substance has become extended to cover concretisation to abstraction, the two substances of duality.

Mental disturbances usually manifest defences are indeed deficiencies diseases such as Beriberi, which was a disease caused by deficiency of vitamin B, the first discovery of vitamins in 1922. In the case of psychological disturbances there is a deficiency of mind. Schizophrenia for instance was originally labelled dementia praecox with thought disorder characterised by mindlessness. In the case of depression mind is an antidepressant and expresses itself symbolically as obsessing as distinct from thinking which is compulsive. In the case of phobia the mind is antiphobic but is often characterised by verbiage so often displayed by philosophers and scientists.

Finally we would like to summarise some of the basic characteristics of the mind:-

1. it is axiomatic that the mind involves the perennial Cartesian duality of the body-mind problem

2. this fundamentally entails the duality of concrete and abstract, the mind is abstract. To treat abstract as if it were a concrete commodity is a disaster and results in the biggest corrupt hoax of all time namely finance capitalism. The medium of exchange namely money is exploited by being transformed into a private possession. The Bank of England, for instance is a private company only accountable to itself and by law is entitled to 10 times that amount of credit which they have as deposits in addition to the interests on the loan. The British National Dept to its own bankers is more than there is gold in the world and can newer be paid back but the interests amounts to about 50 pounds per person per year in tax.

3. the mind than is at the triadic centre of matte-spirit duality which was first suggested by Descartes as interaction and intermingling (unio substantialis)

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4. this triad is the Trinity of all time, namely the Holy Ghost and it is the mind that disentangles this conundrum. A similar significant distinction is exemplified by the conflict between capitalism and socialism “public ownership of the means of production” and the class war. The mind than is in opposition to slavery which is caused by the labourers having to repay the credit they loaned in the first place.

5. above all distinctions is that of the process of thinking on the one hand and obsessing on the other which is verbiage. This often passes as thinking but is mechanical and repetitious.

6. mind, above all, minds and cares and humanises which renders it therapeutic7. the array of these dualities is enormous, it entails abstraction or nothingness,

‘nature abhors a vacuum’.8. The mind explores the hiatus between ontology and phenomenology9. there is therefore a need for the mind to distinguish psychotherapy and counselling

from the psychoanalytic attitude. 10. The mind is like the centre of the circle which mathematically is regarded as being

too small to distinguish11. so that it turns out that it is only the single individual mind that actually thinks

whilst institutions only obsess, termed democratic

In order to try and simplify matters people have resorted to symbolisation. Symbolic formation is as old as history and the first of such symbols amounted to four, namely the circle, the centre, the cross and the square, essential vehicles for focusing the mind of which the cross is particularly clear.

The following diagram is an example of the cross symbol which is over 16.000 years ago. There are many more symbols that have been elaborated.

In the diagram of the cross the vertical dimension symbolises the single autonomous ranging the hole gamut from alpha to omega, from beginning to end, from good and God to bad and Satanic. This vertical dimension is halved by being cut across in the middle by the horizontal which is sociocultural dividing the mind into consciousness and the unconscious which creates four quarters. The top left area is that of universal material reality and the top right is the symbolic transformation in a state of consciousness. The bottom left is the social unconscious and the bottom right is the individual unconscious mind both of which cross at the centre representing the collectivity of the four quarters and constitutes what we have named the Mind with a capital, a highly complex constellation of totality, both concrete and abstract, both commodity and symbol, sexual and erotic, cause and meaning, obsessing and thinking, both verbiage and logos. Throughout history typical manifestations of the cross have included Zen, Taoism, Mandalas, the Christian Cross of the New Testament. Like the Passion, the exercising of the Mind involves acute pain and suffering, which in fact leads to transformation to the healing process. (See the Symbol of the Cross)

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Batson, G. (1972) Steps To An Ecology Of Mind. Intertext Books. London Behr, H. and Hearst, I. (2005) A Meeting Of Minds. Group Analysis, vol.

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Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. Introduction by Maurice Freidman. London: Routlege

Cottingham, J. (1996) Western Philosophy. London: Blackwell Publ. 2003 Crane, T. (2001) Elements Of Mind. Oxford University Press Chevalier, J. (1996) A Dictionary Of Symbols. Penguin Bocks, p. 248-257 Cutter, J. Saussure (1976) Fontana Modern Masters. Drake, H. Plato’s Complete Works. (1959) Littlefield, Adams & Co, USA, p 273-360 De Maré. P.B. and Schoellberger, R. (2003) The Larger Group As A Meeting Of Minds. In

The Large group Re-Visited. Ed. By Schneider and Weinberg. Jessica Kinsley. London --- (2004) A Case For Mind. Group Analysis, Vol 37, Nr. 3 p 341-354 --- (2006) A Theory Of Mind. Group Analysis, 2006, Vol 39, Nr 1, p 65-73 Evens, D. (1996) An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge Foulkes, S.H.(1975) Group Analytic Psychotherapy. Gordon and Breach. London --- Mind. Group Analysis. Vol 36, Nr. 3 p 215-221 Gregory, R. (1987) The Oxford Companion To The Mind. Oxford University Press Goldberg, E.(2005) The Wisdom Paradox. Free Press, p 291 Hass, D. (2001) Psychotherapy And Research. Group Analysis. Vol 34, Nr. 3 Hampden-Turner, C. (1981) Maps of The Mind. Charts and concepts of the mind and its

labirints. London: Mitchell Beazley Publ. Hegel, G.W.F. (2003) The Phenomenology Of Mind. Dover Pub. New York Heil, J. (2004) Philosophy of Mind. Oxford University Press Henderson and Gillespie. (1950) A Text Book Of Psychiatry. Oxford University Press Hopper, E.(2003) The Social Unconscious. Jessica Kinsley James, M. and Crabbe, C. (1999) From Soul to Self. London: Routledge Jung, C.G. (1952) Symbols of Transformation. An Analysis of the Prelude To a Case of

Schizophrenia. Translated by R.F.C. Hull. London: Routledge&Kegan, 1956 Kreeger, L. (1975) The Large Group. Constible. London Larousse, (1992) Dictionary Of Believes and Religion Lyndon, P. (2000) The Telos Of Patrick de Maré. Group Analysis. Vol. 33, Nr. 1 Marx, K. (1968) Marx Engels. Laurence and Wishart. London. Manifesto Of The

Communist Party, p 35 Mc Dougall, W. (1920) The Group Mind. Putnams Patangely, B.S.(1938) The Sutras Of Joga. Faber & Faber Pisani, R. (2006) The Median Group. Training and Supervision. Group Analysis, Vol 39,

Nr. 4, p 537-548 Rose D. (2006) Consciousness. Philosophical, Psychological and Neural Theories. Oxford

University Press Ross, N.W. (1968) Hinduism, Buddhism and Zen. Faber & Faber. Rousseau, J. “The Social Contract” (1762). --- (1782) Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated with an introduction by Peter France.

London: Penguin Boocks, 2004 Santas, G. (2006) Plato’s Republic. The Balckwell Guide To. Oxford: Blackwell Publ. Sarte, J.P. (1940) The Imagery. A Phenomenological Psychology Of The Imagination.

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common Sense. Oxford University Press

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Stevens, A. (1983) Archetypes. Quill Whorf, B.L.(1956) Language, Thoughts and Reality. M.I.T. Press

Patrick de Mare, F.R.C.Psych., worked with Bion, Rickman and Foulkes at Northfield Military Hospital and is a founder member of the Group-Analytic Society, the Institute of Group Analysis and a founder of the Group-Analytic Practice. Currently, he convenes the Median Group Seminar which has just introduced the Median Group into the UK Prison Service. Author's address: 5 Holly Place, Holly Walk, London NW3 6QU, UK.

Roberto Schöllberger, B.Psych., is a training analyst at the Institute für Psychoanalyse Zuerich-Kreuzlingen in Germany, also currently working with the Mental Health Centres, Azienda Unica Alto Adige, Comprensorio Sanitario Bolzano in Italy. He has worked with Psichiatria Democratica, the movement that helped get asylums closed and made community psychiatry possible in Italy. Supervisor of teamwork in clinical and social psychology, he also leads training sessions in group therapy and group work. Author's address: Corso Libertà 53, 39100 Bolzano, Italy. roberto.schoellberger@asbz.it

SYMBOL OF THE CROSS

Material reality

ConcreteBodyBrainSex

CausalObjective

Group Matrix

horisontal conscious

Alpha VerGoGo

Sun of Sin

SECONDARY

th

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The beginningticaloddGodgle

PROCESS

free

Symbolic Reality(Circle, Centre, Cross, Square)

AbstractSpiritMindEros

MeaningSubjective

Individual Person

conscious horizontal

choice,auto

cen

decision makingnomous

tre

lateral unconscious Mi

sin

nd

gle

unconscious lateral

15

SocialPolitical

IndividualCultural, cultivation

OBSESS

ING

mulcoll

unconPRIMARY

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VerOmega,

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tipleectivesciousPROCESS

manvilrkdticalthe End

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