In Search of the Id (Introduction)

The male brain is like a cage with 2 adjoining chambers, each of which are accessed by either the Ego or by the Id. The Ego habitually uses the left hemisphere, and the Id, the right hemisphere ⇒　(E,I), but they may also switch sides.

Thus, the Id is like an unwelcome guest inside the brain that prevents the Ego from utilizing the 2 hemispheres together, unless it is actively moving muscles on the left and right sides of the body.

Auditory hallucinations may be produced when the Id accesses the brain's language areas. Another organ involved must be the cerebellum.

To deal with brain chatter, here are some recommendations:

A. Slap the face somewhat hard, on and around the ears, with emphasis on the right side, to shock and destabilize the Id and disrupt its noxious activities. This cowers the Id into submission. (Take care not to burst the eardrums.)

B. Use a magnet on the right and left sides of the head in skimming motion, as if it were a comb, to induce electric currents to flow inside the brain by electromagnetic induction. This enhances lateral communication between brain hemispheres and quietens down the Id. However, do it with moderation, because its impact is quite strong, like a minor surgical operation.

(The sequels can be found within, Academia.edu , under the name, New Approach to Schizophrenia.)

1. From the 1960’s, patients suffering from fits of epilepsy were made to go through operations to dissect their corpus callosum (to cut loose and separate their left and right brain hemispheres) to control seizures, and the 2 brain hemispheres showed signs that there were separate spiritual entities residing in each half of the brain.

By all accounts, these entities lacked any direct communication between them nor was there any swapping of sides in the 2 hemispheres, because the connecting organ, or corpus callosum, was completely severed.

Researchers such as Roger Sperry and Michael Gazzaniga discovered from these split brain patients that the left hemisphere of the brain is normally the one utilized for speaking out.

V. S. Ramachandran has revealed that the separate spiritual entities in split brain patients could be so strongly individualistic that they hold different religious beliefs.

Building on these ideas, I have come to the conclusion that these separate spiritual entities must correspond respectively to the consciousness (Ego) and the subconscious mind (Id), as originally expounded by Sigmund Freud, and that the Id must exist in every person, as the “animal within.”

On this assumption, I have tried to develop a theory to explain how brain chatter or auditory hallucinations may occur. Of course there exist useful explanations, e.g. on the basis of excesses and deficiencies of dopamine in the brain, but they do not sufficiently clarify the mystery that surrounds this strange phenomenon.

2. MRI imaging techniques have helped establish the conclusion that males tend not to use the 2 brain hemispheres together but concentrate on using one of them at a time. People try to explain this by mentioning the quality of the corpus callosum that bridges the cerebral hemispheres, including its relative size in males.

However, the more important reason must be that in males, the Id makes it a point to access and occupy at least one of the cerebral hemispheres, so that it becomes difficult for the Ego to access the side occupied by the Id, i.e. the Id hinders access from one brain hemisphere to the other by the Ego.

(The 2 brain hemispheres are like 2 different PC machines, Windows and Mac, that can each be utilized by one of the 2 spiritual entities, the Ego and the Id; there can be swapping and re-distribution of hemispheres by the Ego and the Id, as long as they are using separate hemispheres.)

3. If and when given the opportunity, the Id will begin to take an adversarial stance against the Ego, in a complete reversal of its complementary, buddy relationship with the Ego, characterized by collaboration and cooperation in normal circumstances, for the following reasons and motivations.

(1) The Id may feel it is the underdog in relation to the Id, always being bossed around and taken advantage of by the Ego that enjoys a monopoly over important bodily functions such as voluntary muscle movement including locomotion, and the use of languages to express itself, conversing and communicating with others, as well as to think logically and reasonably.

(2) In contrast, the Id normally plays a more passive, internal role that consists mainly of adapting the body to whatever situation or environment the Ego may choose by moving about in locomotion, and thus to maintain a certain homeostasis or healthy equilibrium.

(3) The Id, recognizing itself to be the permanent underclass in comparison to the Ego, may then be tempted to start a rebellion to release itself from the Ego’s control, overthrow the Ego’s system, and to become the new master.

4. The Id may finally succeed in accessing the language areas of the brain while the Ego is away and start sending verbal messages to the Ego, and this must be how schizophrenia starts. At this stage, the Ego will find that communication between the 2 brain hemispheres most frustrating and experience great difficulty in retrieving information stored in one hemisphere while seated in the other because the Id wields more control over the corpus callosum and restricts lateral movements of the Ego. In fact, the victim will come to resemble a split-brain patient.

Such an explanation is in line with the findings of Emily Canfield and others as explained in A Longitudinal Study of the Corpus Callosum in Chronic Schizophrenia published in Schizophrenia Research in 2009, to the effect that schizophrenia is related to a reduction in the effectiveness of the corpus callosum.

5. All the same, one must make the admission that, because the incidence of brain chatter is limited, normally linked with schizophrenia afflicting a mere 1% of the population, and also because of the social stigma, bias and discrimination associated with mental health problems, no matter how clever a new explanation may appear to be, one will always be working against heavy odds in terms of opportunities for experimentation, verification and systematic application.

People who do not experience brain chatter may not find it easy to understand the ideas, and those afflicted may not wish to come out and truthfully comment on whether they approve of the new explanation and its ramifications.

6. However, more than a century has passed since 1900, when Freud published the Interpretation of Dreams, in which he discussed the role of the unconscious, and the years, from 1915 to 1917, when he gave lectures at the University of Vienna on Introductory Psychoanalysis.

Given the serious threat that mental illness poses in civil society today, it must be time to bid farewell to old taboos, inhibitions and squeamishness, and start discussing the second spiritual entity in a more open, dispassionate and objective way.

7. After all, the present day approach that relies almost entirely on the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat mental health problems leaves the patient without a clue as to what causes the strange symptoms, notably brain chatter.

While the effectiveness and usefulness of drugs may not be disputed for the time being, there must also be a parallel attempt to unveil the true causes of mental illness, so that social misunderstanding, bias and discrimination may be reduced and minimized.

People must be able to discuss the true causes more openly, so that the level of general understanding may be significantly raised, and the mystery unveiled. This way, in an emergency case when someone comes down with mental disorder, people will have a better understanding on what is happening and on what immediate care should be taken before the patient can be taken to a doctor.

8. We should also beware that in this age of globalized communications on the internet, including SNS, that assail the user with simple yes/no questions, there is an ever-increasing margin of maneuver for the Id to sway important personal decisions, by giving rise to a sudden urge or impulse on the darker side, especially if the decisions are taken by a simple click on a mouse or by typing simple words on keyboard attached to PC and smartphones.

9. Accordingly, given the remarkable recent developments and exciting new discoveries in neuroscience, we should strive for progress to unveil the mystery of the Id and to efface the stigma attached to mental illness and related phenomena. (If there can be scientific proof of the existence of the Id in people’s minds, that should be worthy of such honors as the Nobel prize.) In this context, the collective subconscious, that makes itself felt by everyone in mass psychology, may provide us with the more obvious clues.

In this age of drastic climate change characterized by frequent natural disasters on an unprecedented scale, mankind may have reached the point where it must face the truth about the human spirit and its composition as a matter of survival, because there is no end to victimized people coming down with depression and mental illness caused by the Id, so that they are an increasingly heavy burden on human society.

The spiritual entities known as the Id must understand this point and be resigned to uncovering the truth about its role and identity; they are no longer averse to being openly discussed, and must look forward to coming out into the open, so that the Ego will have a better understanding on the existence of the Id, and that good relations with the Id are essential for mental health.

Consequently, the Ego and the Id may find new ways of working together, so that good health and living standards may be maintained even under climate change, if not for sheer survival at times of disaster.

10. As a point of caution, since the analysis below is based on a male individual, it may not be immediately applicable to females, said to be able to use the 2 brain hemispheres in a more combined fashion. Furthermore, because my brain handles the English language in the right hemisphere, this whole text may be considered as written mostly from that hemisphere, reflecting its biases, characteristics and limitations.

11. I am also writing a Japanese version of this paper in tandem fashion, and there already exists an almost identical twin paper in the Japanese language, with occasional divergences, partly due to awareness of different readers.

Although this style of work does involve a clear redundancy and inefficiency, I should mention that, when I come up with new ideas, registering them in one language (chosen at random) and then rewriting them in another prods me on to further develop them and look into the ramifications and connotations, so that the thought process is expedited. The reason may be, using different languages to examine the same basic idea allows for inspection from different angles because, in my case, the Japanese language areas and English language areas are located in separate brain hemispheres.

Again, this English version must be a product largely of my right brain hemisphere, whereas the Japanese version must come from the left hemisphere, and so they may convey a somewhat different mood and outlook.

(Basic Ideas and Contentions)

Humankind is known for its proclivity to be right-handed, and this must have given rise to the strong tendency for the native language areas to be located within the left brain hemisphere. With the advent of mass communication and the rise of the internet, language skills have become all important, and this has resulted in overuse of the left brain hemisphere, so that the right hemisphere is overlooked in daily life.

One of the important points to remember for keeping a healthy mind must be to use the left and right brain hemispheres in a well-balanced manner, so that neither side is neglected or out of use over long hours. This is because the subconscious, or Id, may find it opportune to make inroads into the vacant hemisphere, often the right side, then to approach and utilize the language areas to start the terrifying phenomenon of brain chatter.

With new, effective drugs continuously being developed, the chances of recovery from such mental illness are dramatically improving. All the same, there must be room for effective alternatives, as there may be side effects, users may become negligent, and for emergency relief, in case medication is not readily available.

A. Sigmund Freud may have considered the subconscious or Id to be a sort of library of repressed memories and emotions from infanthood that sometimes surface later on in life to cause mental health problems.

The truth may rather be that the Id is more like a system of artificial intelligence inside the brain, that plays an important role in the daily running of the human body, especially in terms of homeostasis, and in reproductive functions.

It is probably the cause of binocular rivalry, whereby the visual image of an immobile object or pattern unwittingly alternates at short intervals. The Id is also the author and creator of dreams. Since binocular rivalry and dreams are a universal phenomenon, so too, must be the existence of the Id.

In contrast, the Ego plays a leading role over the Id, with a monopoly over key functions such as locomotion, speech and other use of languages.

B. Mental health problems will arise when the Id starts to rebel against the dual spiritual structure that recognizes the Ego as leader, especially if the Id acquires the ability to speak out and verbally communicate with the Ego through brain chatter.

C. If there are a plural number of people within a room or secluded area, the Ids present in each individual will form a group, with its own set of social rules, and this underlies the group of overlapping Egos from the same human cluster.

The collective subconscious tends to be conservative, protective over women, and will rely on traditions, orthodox ways of thinking and perhaps old texts handed down from generation to generation.

(Bibliography)

Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Penguin Freud Library)
C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Bollingen Series XX, Princeton U. Press, 1969)
Michael C. Corballis and Ivan L. Beale, The Psychology of Left and Right (Japanese translation 1978 Tsune Shirai et al.)
Rhawn Joseph, The Right brain and the Unconscious (Perseus Publishing, 1992)
Fredric Schiffer 「Of Two Minds」（Free Press, 1998）
V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain (Japanese translation 1999 Atsuko Yamashita）
Eric R. Kandel et al.(edited), Principles of Neural Science 4th Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2000)
Allan and Barabara Pease, Why Men don’t Listen and Women can’t Read Maps (Japanese translation 2000 Rumi Fujii）
Gregg D. Jacobs, The Ancestral Mind (Penguin Books, 2003)
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Japanese translation 2005 Yasushi Shibata)
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary (Yale U. Press, 2009)
Rita Carter, Mapping the Mind (Japanese translation 2012 Rumi Fujii)
Rita Carter et.al., The Brain Book (Japanese translation 2012 Takeshi Yoro)
Michael Gazzaniga, Tales from Both Sides of the Brain (Harper Collins, 2015)