Mind As Functional System

Mind As Functional System

(01 This article is one of a series on Ayurvedic Psychology)

Early medicine had a natural integration between body and mind. Both Greek and Indian humoural medicine indicated physical and psychological qualities of humour imbalance, and both systems promoted healthy diet, exercise and dreaming for mental well-being. Christianity was not beneficial to the medical profession and any remaining integration was lost during the sixteen century’s movement into Cartesian science that perceived mental activity as a product of the body as a machine. Freud became a medical doctor in 1881, while the focus of science was to understand the body as a machine. He researched neuro-anatomy and neuropathology and had a strong desire to understand the psychology of neurosis.

Freud learned electrotherapy and saw minimal results, and those results could be attributed to suggestion or placebo. Freud learned hypnosis which he found often helped momentarily but was then followed by a relapse in his type of patients. He avoided hydropathy (which was a more holistic ancient practice of herbal and hot water baths) because it was not financially beneficial for him. He was searching for a better way for a doctor to handle neurosis.  

Freud had researched neuroanatomical brain functioning and also hypnotism and its application to mental disorders, so he saw the capabilities of each. He saw mental and physical disorders that pertained to the mind unconsciously acting on the body. This showed him that there were aspects of the mind that were hidden from the normal waking consciousness. From these observations, he was able to understand that certain aspects of the psyche were not part of the physiological brain but were part of a functional psyche.

Freud learned through an associate, Breuer, that under hypnosis his patients revealed much of their hysteria to be caused by repressed impulses. In the Victorian atmosphere, many of the repressions were of a sexual nature. In his search for understanding the pathogenic process, his first theories were focused on ego development through a lense of sexuality. His research and that of his followers has furthered both Western and Eastern understanding of the development of the individual sense of self. Freud did not have the benefit of reading Eastern literature about the functioning processes of the mind, so his understanding stayed in the realm he kept his attention, which was improper ego development and sexuality in his neurotic patients.  

In Eastern culture, the focus has been heavily focused on the higher functions of the mind, and did not deeply focus on the developmental issues directly related to the ahaṅkāra (I-sense). The I-sense was an aspect of one’s individual mental functioning system (antaḥkaraṇa) and so was not seen in a negative light. There is often a confusion that the East has a desire to remove the ‘ego’. Ahaṅkāra represents the individual I-sense (literally I-maker), and it also can be used to mean proud, selfish and what we call ‘egotistical’. So there is a direct link between these words. Spirituality never spoke of destroying the ahaṅkāra, which would be like removing your heart or brain from the body and thinking it would still work; it was seen as a functional organ of the mind. The goal was not to get rid of the ‘I’ but to get rid of the sense of ownership (the ‘mine’), which was called moha (delusion). Most Vedic approaches took a very constructivist approach and worked to change the meaning the ‘I’ utilized to refer to itself. Instead of destroying the ‘I’, one changed the identification of what that ‘I’ referred to.

The East had developed concepts about the buddhi (intellect), thought processing (kalpana), image processing (chitta), affect (rasa), emotions (manas), post-conventional personality development and more but the pathological focus on the ahaṅkara was minimal. There is a concept that has been stated by modern Eastern and Western teachers (I am not sure the original source) that you have to be someone before you become no one. The Buddhist psychologist, Mark Epstein, considers this the root difference between East and West psychology: Western psychology developing the ‘I’ and Eastern psychology about losing the ‘I’. I disagree with Epstein and would restate that it is the root difference between Western psychology and Eastern spirituality. Never the less, Freud opened the doorway in the West to studying the sense of self (ego), and other aspects of the mind as non-biological processes. 

Freud stated, “The subdivision of the unconscious is part of an attempt to picture the apparatus of the mind as being built of a number of functional systems whose interrelations may be expressed in spatial terms, without reference, of course, to the actual anatomy of the brain.” [i]  In this way, Freud was able to understand what I call the non-local mind and begin observing its subtle anatomy. His functional model is the key for understanding the Āyurvedic model which is not a topographical map of the brain, but instead a map of the subtle body.   

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[i] Sigmund Freud, translated by James Strachey, An Autobiographical Study, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1963.