A Process Perspective on Neuroscience and Counseling
In my youth, I discovered two areas of interest that have remained central throughout my life: a fascination with the natural sciences and a deep curiosity about extraordinary experiences, such as dreams, parapsychology, meditation, and mystical states. By the time I entered college, I had some general goals in mind: to find an integrative way of thinking through the issues and problems of the entire field of psychology, and to coherently connect psychology to the other sciences. After twelve years of investigation, I was led to Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, his “process philosophy,” and discovered that it can provide the necessary metaphysical foundations to accomplish both of these objectives. And much more.
Whitehead’s thought is too complex to fully address in a short talk (or even a very long one!). But I do want to highlight two of his ideas that are especially important for psychology. One foundational idea is that Whitehead conceives of all actualities in terms of momentary experiential events that create themselves by synthesizing other past events into new integrated wholes. Of crucial importance, is that influences from the immediate past flow directly into each new event, much like the way quantum-level events take account of all other past actualities, or how our memories and our immediate past experience feel internally present to, and can directly inform, each new moment of awareness.
This understanding of reality bears striking similarities to classical Asian thought. Whitehead’s philosophy shares the Buddhist idea that reality is to be sought in the processes found in momentary experiences, versus seeing the world in terms of objects or enduring things. Like Confucianism, Whiteheadian philosophy portrays the world functioning via relationships and social organization. And like Taoism, it emphasizes harmony through contrast, and sees change and flow as the essential nature of the universe.
In order to demonstrate the wide applicability of Whitehead’s system for the field of psychology, I want to consider two areas from opposite ends of the spectrum of psychological phenomena: neuroscience and counseling.
A major, if not the major, problem for neuroscience is finding a coherent way of accounting for how subjective human experience arises out of the activities of the brain; and reciprocally, how human subjective experience can bring about changes in the brain and body. A possible solution to this seemly intractable problem—how something “mental” can interact with something “physical”—is found in two of Alfred North Whitehead’s most revolutionary ideas: the “actual occasion” and “prehension.” Whitehead’s theory of the actual occasion suggests that all actuality arises out of momentary subjective events, largely nonconscious in nature; his second idea is that these moments of experiences are closely interconnected by direct feelings, or prehensions, of each other’s experiences. Actuality, as the interconnected flow of momentary events, arises out of “feeling the feelings of others.” For example, in Whitehead’s process philosophy, each of the brain’s neurons is understood to be a complex organic society composed of the flow of interacting atomic and molecular events that are unified moment to moment by the (presumably nonconscious) experience of the neural-cellular occasions. In addition there is a constant flow of data-laden feeling between the brain’s neural events, as well as within each neuron.
One may well ask: Is it accurate to call this process “experiential” or “subjective”? Whitehead argues in the affirmative: all levels of momentary occasions or events share essential features resembling human subjectivity as we know it (even though in most simpler occasions the experiential mode will be completely nonconscious). Whether the events in question be atomic, molecular, cellular, or human, this process of self-creation always involves an initial responsiveness to feelings of the past, the integration of the data received from these past events, and an active synthesis of these influences, resulting finally in the occurrence of a new bit of actuality. When completed, this momentary event in turn acts as an influence on the future. Whitehead argues that events that can respond, synthesize, and exert influence are best understood as being “experiential” in nature, since these are also central characteristics of human subjective activity.
These two metaphysical innovations provide a new way to understand the psyche, the brain, and how they can interact with each other and with the world at large. In short, by understanding the brain’s neural events and the occasions constituting the psyche as being made up of the same kind of “stuff”—that is, as flows of momentary experiential events—“mind-brain” interaction can be conceived in terms of a back and forth sharing of data-laden feeling between the brain’s neural network and the human-level experiential pulsations that make up our psychic life. Through this process, the effects of neural activity are felt by each new event of the human psyche. In return, the experiential feeling-tone of the psyche floods back into the brain. The former constitutes the generally assumed causal influence of the body-brain on human experience. While the latter provides a coherent model for how the human mind can influence the brain and body, via so-called top-down causation. In other words, the brain’s neural events are in rapid interaction with another stream or series of more complex events that constitute the human psyche—or soul. Furthermore, Whitehead’s conception of the human psyche, as a series of subjective events which form wholistic experiential integrations, provides a straightforward explanation of why conscious experience unfolds as a unified phenomenon, rather than manifesting as the highly disparate matrix found in the brain.
Of course, many questions remain. Do the psyche’s occasions draw directly from the neurons themselves, or might the electro-magnetic fields produced by the neural activity mediate this interaction in some way? Do the brain’s integrative centers generate higher-order events that preprocess the individual neural activity, thus simplifying the human-level event’s integrative work? On a related note, do the human psyche’s occasions enfold the entire brain in gathering their preliminary data—perhaps at times extending their reach into the body or even beyond—or do they, as Whitehead once suggested, flit about the brain’s interstices drawing on different areas and brain formations for their “nourishment” of neural feelings? In this way, a postmodern process approach to neuroscience could foster both a new foundational understanding for psychology, as well as open up whole new avenues of research and theory construction.
I might add that Whitehead’s metaphysics offers a novel and expanded way of conceptualizing the unconscious in terms of dynamic processes. Since every momentary occasion is in direct contact with all past events, the human depth unconscious can be most broadly depicted as the entire past universe. From this perspective, the unconscious would have a transpersonal dimension reaching out to all other actualities, providing a basis for phenomena such as telepathy and mystical experience, as well as collective human experiences. According to Whitehead, the unconscious activity of each new psychic event feels its own past series of occasions with a particular completeness. It thereby dynamically recreates moment to moment its habitual sense of self, along with those related unconscious fears, attachments, and defense mechanisms that accompany all of us on our life journeys.
Since data from the brain’s neural activity as well as the body’s feelings enter directly into the early unconscious phases of every human-level psychic occasion, they play an integral role in the psyche’s unconscious processes. Thus, the brain’s neural activity might be considered part of the psyche’s unconscious, since this is one of the primary sources of feeling and data for each new human-level moment of experience. However, if we consider the unconscious in a more psychodynamic sense—as the unconscious phases of the psyche’s own actual occasions—then it might be more consistent to limit the human unconscious to the psyche’s personal series of occasions, with the caveat noted above that the psyche’s reach extends into all past events, which would obviously include the brain. In any case, the two primary contributors to the psyche’s own occasions, and thus to the unconscious phases of those events, would be the brain’s neural activity and the psyche’s own past moments of experience.
As we have already wandered into topics of a psychodynamic nature, perhaps now is the time to say a few words about the implications a Whiteheadian approach holds for the theory and practice of interpersonal counseling.
Since, from a process perspective, every moment of experience constructs itself out of its relationships with events from its past, an individual’s relationships with family and friends, work and play, and even pets and toys, help form the very core of self-identity and the subjective tone of experience. In the case of therapy, the client’s connection with the counselor becomes the central fact of the therapeutic situation. This is confirmed by repeated research findings that the single most important determinant for success in counseling is the quality of the client-therapist relationship itself.
Another important relationship, neglected by some counseling methods, is the client’s relationship with their own body. While the client’s conscious and unconscious attitudes and feelings about their body are significant, of more fundamental importance is how the body acts as an unconscious reservoir of repressed and blocked emotions and memories. These are frequently “stored” in chronic tensions in the musculature, especially those associated with breathing. Thus techniques designed to release these holding patterns can also free up previously unavailable depths of emotion, sensation, and repressed traumatic memories. As long as these emotions and memories are lodged deep in the bodily unconscious, these associated feelings will continue to influence the quality of the client’s current state of awareness through what Whitehead calls “conformal feelings": that is, the psyche tends to unconsciously recreate and repeat past experiences unless those underlying patterns can be altered. Remember that each new occasion of the psyche feels and integrates its own past moments of experience in an especially insistent manner, thus ingrained character traits, habitual patterns of repression, and unconscious aims and purposes are recreated moment to moment, shaping each new occasion according to one’s unique personality template.
A process theory of psychotherapy calls for the transformation of these habitual patterns of psychic integration through the interruption of this repetition of form, and by the introduction of novel understandings and possibilities, thereby opening up the client to richer feeling and more intrepid aims. Whitehead describes these higher aims as seeking intensity of experience and the Adventure of life. Since Whitehead suggests that these universal aims are constantly informing all actuality, the counselor’s role becomes one of facilitating this innate inner drive towards wholeness, trusting that the client’s own process will point them in the proper direction if allowed to emerge organically.
As with Gestalt Therapy and Buddhist theory, all change must occur in the present, where all life occurs. But unlike some interpretations of Gestalt and Buddhism, a process approach emphasizes that the present moment is deeply informed by both past experiences and future anticipations, that is, by its history and its aims. Thus the therapeutic process must subtly negotiate ways of freeing the client from rigid, habitual past modes of feeling and thinking, while exposing any hidden agendas or self-defeating aims. This is accomplished by drawing attention to these influences from the past as they manifest in the client’s present experience, while highlighting the shift in aims and purposes that emerge naturally in the client’s ongoing process.
This has been but a brief look at how a process approach might facilitate the client’s movement towards greater wholeness and integrity through self-transcendence and transformation; and how process philosophy might help psychology reconceptualize its understanding of the relationship between the psyche and its ground in the brain-body organic society.
