Altered Egos How the Brain Creates the Self

by Feinberg, Todd E.

• ISBN13: 9780195152425
• ISBN10: 0195152425
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Altered Egos , Dr. Todd Feinberg presents a new theory of the self based on his first-hand experience as both a psychiatrist and neurologist. Feinberg introduces dozens of intriguing cases of patients whose disorders have resulted in what he calls "altered egos": a change in the brain that transforms the boundaries of the self. He describes patients who suffer from "alien hand syndrome" where one hand might attack the patient's own throat, patients with frontal lobe damage who invent fantastic stories about their lives, paralyzed patients who reject and disown one of their limbs. He then argues that the brain damage suffered by these people has done more than simply impair certain functions--it has fragmented their sense of self. From these fascinating cases, Feinberg proposes a new model of the self that links the workings of the brain with unique and personal features of the mind, such as meaning, purpose , and being . Drawing on his own and other evidence, he explains how the unified self, while not located in one or another brain region, arises out of the staggering complexity and number of the brain's component parts. Lucid, insightful, filled with fascinating case studies and provocative new ideas, Altered Egos promises to change the way we think about human consciousness and the creation and maintenance of human identity.

Author Biography

Todd E. Feinberg, M.D. is Associate Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Chief of the Betty and Morton Yarmon Division of Neurobehavior and Alzheimer's Disease at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: Soul Searching	1	(7)
Dissecting the Self	1	(1)
The Patients	1	(1)
John	2	(2)
The Perplexing ``Inner I''	4	(4)
Deconstructing the Self	8	(22)
Asomatognosia	8	(1)
Mirna	8	(6)
Sonya	14	(1)
Personification of the Limb	15	(3)
Shirley	18	(3)
Anosognosia	21	(1)
Jack	21	(3)
Patsy	24	(2)
Daryl	26	(1)
Explaining Asomatognosia	27	(1)
Lizzy	28	(2)
Missing Pieces; Familiar Places	30	(25)
The Margins of the Ego	30	(2)
Capgras Syndrome	32	(2)
Emma	34	(1)
Louise	35	(2)
Oliver	37	(1)
Marianne	38	(1)
The Family Romance	38	(3)
Fregoli Syndrome	41	(2)
Fannie	43	(1)
Bart	44	(1)
JP	44	(3)
Environmental Reduplication	47	(2)
The Capgras-Fregoli Dichotomy	49	(2)
Disorders of Personal Relatedness and the Anatomy of the Self	51	(4)
Mything Persons	55	(17)
What Is Confabulation?	55	(1)
Linda	56	(2)
Personal Confabulation	58	(1)
Sick Willie	59	(1)
Sam	60	(3)
Linda	63	(2)
Walter	65	(2)
Explaining Personal Confabulation	67	(1)
Personal Confabulation and the Anatomy of the Self	68	(4)
Auto-Bodies	72	(18)
Mirror Misidentification	72	(1)
Susan	73	(2)
Rosamond	75	(3)
The Self as Known and Knower	78	(2)
Double Indemnity	80	(1)
Autoscopia	80	(3)
The Vision of the Self and the Soul	83	(1)
Imaginary Companions and Guardian Angels	84	(4)
Florence	88	(2)
Keeping It All Together	90	(16)
Splitting the Brain	90	(3)
The Alien Hand Syndrome	93	(2)
Stevie	95	(4)
The Self Finds a Way to Remain Whole	99	(4)
Sonia	103	(1)
Seymour	104	(2)
Journey to the Center of the Mind	106	(15)
How Does A Distributed Brain Create a Unified Self?	106	(1)
Descartes' Dilemma	107	(2)
Sherrington Ponders the Mind's Eye	109	(3)
Mental Unity and the Visual System	112	(2)
The Cartesian Theater and the Binding Problem	114	(3)
The Ghost in the Machine	117	(4)
The Nested Hierarchy of the Self and Mind	121	(18)
Emergence and the Brain	121	(4)
Roger Sperry Argues for the Emergence of an Immaterial Mind	125	(2)
Non-Nested and Nested Hierarchies	127	(2)
The Nested Hierarchy of the Brain	129	(2)
Meaning and the ``Inner I''	131	(1)
Purpose Is the ``Ghost in the machine''	132	(7)
Being and Brain	139	(10)
The Subjective and Objective Points of View	139	(2)
The Neurological Basis of Meaning	141	(3)
Meaning, Qualia and the Mind-Body Problem	144	(3)
The Brain Is Not About Itself	147	(2)
The Living Mind	149	(4)
The What, Where, and How of the Self	149	(1)
Beings and Brains	150	(3)
Notes	153	(14)
Glossary	167	(12)
Bibliography	179	(14)
Index	193