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Hemisphere Differences (7)

Page history last edited by Jenny Mackness 3 years, 9 months ago

Self-awareness and emotional timbre

The right hemisphere is more self-aware. The left hemisphere is ever optimistic, but unrealistic about its short-comings. McGilchrist illustrates this with reference to patients with right or left hemisphere strokes. Patients with damage to the right hemisphere tend to deny their illness. Denial is a left hemisphere speciality.

The right hemisphere has a greater tendency to melancholy, sadness and depression. The right hemisphere is more in touch with and concerned for others. ‘The more we are aware of and empathically connected to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, the more likely we are to suffer.’ (p.85)

Moral sense

Moral values are not something we work out rationally on the principle of utility. Moral judgements are unconscious and intuitive and involve a complex right-hemisphere network.

Our sense of justice is underwritten by the right hemisphere. We rely on the right hemisphere for self-control and to resist temptation. The left hemisphere is trapped in a hall of mirrors and only does more of what it is already doing. It is stuck in a positive feedback loop, whereas the right hemisphere tends to negative feedback and self-correction.

The Self

Self-recognition (face or voice), self-awareness, insight, self-concept are all more dependent on the right hemisphere. For the left hemisphere the self is objectified and an expression of will. ‘The right hemisphere matures earlier than the left, and is more involved than the left in almost every aspect of the development of mental functioning in early childhood, and of the self as a social, empathic being’ (p.88)

Right hemisphere damage can lead to detachment from self. Independence and motivation (acting for ourselves) and the ability to identify with others, is associated with the right hemisphere. Passivity is associated with the left hemisphere.

In reality we are a composite of the two hemispheres, and despite the interesting results of experiments designed artificially to separate their functioning, they work together most of the time at the everyday level.

But that does not at all exclude that they may have radically different agendas, and over long time periods and large numbers of individuals it becomes apparent that they each instantiate a way of being in the world that is at conflict with the other (p.19).

Continue to: Hemisphere Differences (8) The 'front-back' problem; Conclusion