New Research Into the Human Brain
As one who does close and intense therapeutic work with chronic mentally ill patients in a hospital setting, I truly enjoyed your well-written series on research into the human brain (Oct. 13-16). But as I read, I was continually confronted with one critical issue that seems to receive scant attention in the rush to understand the origins of human behavior and consciousness. I believe that the hope that we may understand the true nature of consciousness is idyllic and will remain elusive.
To simply understand the mechanism of human “being” and awareness, without exploring the deeper reaches of the spiritual universe, is a futile exercise that confuses the mechanism with the mystery. The answers that are discovered as to the questions of cause of human awareness are not the answers that will suffice for the questions of origin of that awareness. For 2,500 years the Buddhist understanding of the world has advocated that the self as we traditionally know it is not real, but rather is a congregate of physical construction mediated by manifold environmental conditions and our behavioral responses to them.
To suggest that one has achieved a profound end and insight by simply identifying the mechanistic processes of human awareness is to run the risk of hubris and to reduce the profundity of being to little more than a schematic diagram.
GARY D. SPROUL
San Clemente
* Kudos for Julie Marquis’ article, “Erasing the Line Between Mental and Physical Ills” (Oct. 15). We families who have a son, daughter, sibling, spouse or an elderly parent with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, obsessive compulsion or panic disorder, appreciate the comprehensive and accurate information Marquis presented about these brain disorders.
We agree with her assessment concerning the dramatic shift in “American attitudes” toward a better perception and acceptance of mental illness over the last 15 years. Unfortunately, the barriers of discrimination in housing, employment, education and insurance coverage, rooted in ignorance and myths, are still rampant.
We are hopeful that her interviews with individuals who described the inner tortures of their disorders, even as they struggled toward recovering, will help to end the ridicule, slurs and stigma associated with mental illness. These sensitive persons deserve stronger support, not demeaning discrimi- nation.
STELLA MARCH, President
Alliance for the Mentally Ill
Los Angeles
