Training the Mind
Newsweek has an interesting article showing Sam Harris to be more religious than you’d expect. I remember, a little while back, a few of his right wing Christian critics uncovered his affinity for Eastern philosophy, suggesting him a hypocrite or fraud. I’m not so sure; Harris may be a defacto Buddhist which is not inconsistent with atheism, or atheistic rationalism.
This passage on Harris’ approach to the mind interests me on a personal level:
Harris says he became interested in spiritual and philosophical questions while an undergraduate at Stanford University. At 18, he experimented with the drug ecstasy and was struck by the possibility that the human mind—his own mind—might be able to achieve a state of loving unselfishness without the help of drugs. So he left college and traveled to India and Nepal, where he studied with Hindu and Buddhist teachers who could help him attain a kind of peace and selflessness through meditation. Over the next 10 years, he read religion and philosophy on his own and spent weeks and months—adding up to two years—in silent retreat.
He finally returned to Stanford to complete a philosophy degree. Though he prefers the Eastern mystics, he sees some wisdom in the Western mystical tradition as well. “If I open a page of [the 13th-century Christian mystic] Meister Eckhart, I often know what he’s talking about.” Harris pursued a doctorate in neuroscience because he hoped science would give him the tools to rationally explore human experience.
Harris’s true obsession, then, is not God but consciousness, the idea that the human mind can be taught—trained, rationally—to be more loving, more generous, less egocentric than it is in its natural state. And though he knows that he can sound like a person who believes in God, he thinks that God is the wrong word to describe his beliefs.
I’m interested in the ability of adults to retrain their mind. Contrary to a line of thought popular among various Enlightenment philosophers, the mind, especially the adult mind, seems hard wired at an early age, not of infinite plasticity.
“Why is he that way? Why does he say and do those things?” “That’s the way he’s always been and probably always will be.”
The mind of a child certainly seems more plastic. Think of how easier and more natural it is for children to learn languages than adults. That might be the proper analogy; adults can change the way they think and in turn how they feel and behave, boost their IQs, unlearn their neuroses; but it may be akin to learning and mastering a new language. Not easy for adults. How many folks have the will and discipline to stick with it?
Or perhaps once one has the discipline to break through an initial rut — indeed a mind lock that can last decades — it’s smooth sailing from then on.
I doubt the ability of psychiatry to change people without chemicals; psychotropic drugs like SSRIs seem more effective or at least easier for most folks in a rut.
A good talk therapist, to me, seems not much different, in principle, from a good bartender. Though I have been admonished to check the claims of the cognitive emotive therapists.
And there is a guy named Dr. John Sarno whose theories seem enticing. A lot of self help, psychology and psychiatry is pseudo-religious woo woo (as Michael Shermer has termed Deepak Chopra’s excesses). I’m looking for something serious beneath the woo. I want something that has credibility with hard nosed skeptics, not likely to be swept up in a con. And philosophical literature that is not “light weight.” Chopra and the Mararishi Mahesh Yogi, I’ve heard, are like the Joel Osteens of Hindu/Eastern philosophy. There are more serious sources to the ideas they sell for which Western audiences seem to have an appetite.
But what intrigues me about Dr. Sarno is that his methods have actually worked on a number of famous people — indeed no dummies — with hard nosed skeptical kind of minds. Two names are John Stossel and Howard Stern. And when I say “worked,” I mean something objective and verifiable, not, “oh he makes me feel better.” Dr. Sarno cures middle aged folks of crippling, chronic back pain and shows them it’s all in their head. Not just a little pain, but pain so severe it reduces patients to wheelchairs, and for which MDs have suggested operations.
Anyway, something about meditation — the various kinds — seems, if not extremely helpful, key to this kind of mind retraining. And it’s something that needs to be done religiously, two three times a day, everyday. Like the person who physically exercises religiously five times a week, it’s not easy. Or at least not seemingly, at first, easy, rather something that takes discipline.
But I’ve heard, once in the zone, it’s effortless.
Hmm… I think you’d be surprised at how much the mind, or at least the brain, can change as an adult. It’s true that much of the major wiring, barring dramatic events (e.g., loss of a major sense or brain damage), much of the systematic wiring is done, but new connections are being created all the time, and the brain is remarkable in its ability to adapt even at a fairly advanced age.
Also, if you look at the research, you’ll find that psychotropic drugs are less effective, and in many cases (e.g., anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, etc.) largely ineffective long term without talk and/or behavioral therapy (depending on the disorder). CBT, in particular, can be quite effective for a wide range of affective and behavioral disorders, particularly when coupled with medication.Report
Thanks! I’ll look into it.Report
You may find this of interest, Jon, from a supporter of Sarno.
http://www.arthursmithphd.com/transitions.htm
Dr. Arthur Smith: What you are talking about here is what Dr. John Sarno, Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at NYU and long-time advocate of mind-body medicine in treating back pain, calls the “nocebo effect,” i.e., the thoughts and beliefs that work on the same principle as the placebo effect, but which cause disease or other harm. Sarno claims that many of the costly, painful, surgical operations performed to cure back pain are both ineffective and unnecessary, because even severe back pain can have psychogenic causes.
Knowing what we do now about the stress response, any false beliefs that contribute to unnecessary chronic stress in our lives can be nocebos. I can’t prove it, but I would almost be willing to bet that words and thoughts spread colds and flus just as much as sneezes do. As we continue to learn more about the intricate and intimate relationship between the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems, I believe we will find more and more links between immune activity — or inactivity — and the nervous system. A widely accepted theory of cancer, the surveillance theory, holds that the body creates malignant cells all the time. Cancer occurs when the normal immune activity that destroys these cells is somehow interrupted or incapacitated. The same could hold true for viruses, or at least some viruses.”
I’ll add here, since of friend of my wife’s is one, that Christian Scientists are surely in the same zone. Add the “Christian” part, and admittedly some of their more extreme stances with their children, and it’s an object of derision for “rational” people.
Yes, yes, the broken arm argument, and certainly it gets weird when they fight to let their children die of meningitis rather than allow treatment.
However, the core remains, that once you start taking drugs and shortcuts, you lose your “mindfulness” about your health. In fact I believe Maimonides says something similar, and they didn’t even have any ace drugs back then.
As for Sam Harris, yes, his affinity for eastern thought was detected awhile ago. Harris’ “seeking” is the sort that sells a lot of books, Buddhist scholar Paul Williams’ is not.Report
Many thanks. I’ll check out those links.
I know a number of these “kinds” of folks say diseases like cancer are caused by negative emotions that the mind can cure even diseases such as that. That just seems too far a stretch for me, as I understand things now. I don’t doubt negative emotions can contribute, trigger, make things worse, but as a cause and cure for something like cancer I can’t accept that yet.Report
One of my favorite art profs. taught us a lot of tricks for adjusting our minds to suit different tasks, sort of the way that using non-standard guitar tunings can make some songs easier to play, or even give an entirely different color to the instrument.
Conversely, the playwright friend I mentioned in the shooting to miss post had a whole bunch of tricks he’d play on himself to beat down the bad voices that pop up in the creative process, or just day to day business. One of my favorites was when he caught himself in a cycle of obsessive doubt, he would get an egg timer and for every minute he spent catastrophizing, he would spend a minute thinking about extravagantly successful outcomes.
None of the above are curing cancer with the power of your own mind, but surprisingly effective.Report