Talk:Multiple thought streams

Theories of Consciousness

Multiple parallel modalities

"In an ambitious new theory of the processes of consciousness, Dennett (1992) challenges the standard view of consciousness. This he characterizes as the "Cartesian Theatre" view in which the subjective self i likened to a privileged observer watching a play in which everything comes together on the stage. In other words, consciousness is akin to watching a single sequence of perceived events unfolding before us which match the actual sequence of real events occurring outside of us. Against this view, Dennett argues for what he calls a "multiple drafts model" in which "all varieties of perception -- indeed, all varieties of thought or mental activity -- are accomplished in the brain by parallel, multi-track processes of interpretation and elaboration of sensory inputs" (o. 111). In other words, the contents of consciousness, far from being a unified stream, consist of multiple narratives which are undergoing continuous editorial revision. The significance of these ideas in this context is that they imply a multivocal quality identical to that attributed by social constructionist writers to interpersonal and societal symbolic transactions."

Dipsychism and Polypsychism

"The theories of mental organization that emerged can be concisely classified into two main groups: the theory of dipsychism and that of polypsychism [3], implying either two "layers" of consciousness or more than two.

If there were two layers (dipsychism) the first was conceived as the normal waking consciousness, the second as usually hidden, but occasionally revealing itself in dreams, abnormal symptoms, in hypnosis, and occasionally in unusual and unexpected creative acts. The two layers of personality (or consciousness) were assigned different qualities, depending on the authorities describing them. In what Ellenberger calls the "closed" form of the theory the subconscious contains only tendencies and memories arising in the experience of the individual, but no longer available to the waking consciousness. According to Janet, who was the first to use the expression "subconscious," the unavailable ideas, as we have already noted, became "dissociated" or "disaggregated," so that they could not be synthesized into waking awareness; Freud, in his first concept of the unconscious believed that it consisted of "repressed" thoughts or wishes. Hence dissociation and repression described essentially the same facts of a closed subconscious layer. In the "open" form of the theory, the subconscious layer is not only more extensive than the conscious layer, but it has access to some broader sets of experience that may never have been in the waking consciousness. Such a "subliminal self was posited by Myers [4, 5] and was favorably supported by James in his Varieties of Religious Experience [6]. This general position has found more recent expression in Jung's collective unconscious and in his belief in universal archetypes and mandala symbols in dreams [7]. The issue is again of interest because of present-day romanticism about consciousness expansion and human potentiality. The iceberg analogy is often used, with consciousness merely the portion that is visible and the larger (and more important) portion beneath the surface.

Another distinction differentiates various views of the subconscious in the "closed" and "open" form. In one position, common to Janet and the early Freud, the subconscious (or unconscious) portion is somewhat debased as being fragmented, illogical, or impulse ridden (as in the seething cauldron picture of the unconscious associated with early psychoanalysis). The opposite view is that the subconscious (whether "closed" or "open") may be the source ofmorality, inspiration, or creativity. Oddly enough, the phenomenal observations are as contradictory as the theories explaining them.

The polypsychic theories accept the general notion of splits in the personality or ego but assert that the cleavages may result in more than two subordinate parts. Freud, for example, moved from his earlier dipsychism1 to a tripsychism in proposing the division into id, ego, and superego: "The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three. ... The three tyrants are the external world, the superego and the id" [8, p. 108]. His later disciples have divided the ego into numerous apparatuses and substructures [9, 10]."