Damasio AJCH Review.

Damasio, Antonio (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York, NY:

Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $15.95, Paperback.

Reviewed by: Richard Duus, Ph. D., Duluth Psychological Clinic, Duluth, Minnesota.

Richard E Duus

Duluth Psychological Clinic

Damasio AJCH Review. 2

Damasio, Antonio (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York, NY:

Pantheon Books, 2010. 367 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-37875-0. $15.95, Paperback.

Reviewed by: Richard Duus, Ph. D., Duluth Psychological Clinic, Duluth, Minnesota.

Biological Constructing of a Self

Self Comes to Mind continues a narrative that begins with Descartes Error (1994), continued

with The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999), and

further developed by Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (2003). These books

are meant to be accessible to the general public, but are also useful to those professionals and

researchers, who are not neuroscientists, seeking a review of recent neuroscientific empirical

developments and thinking concerning self and consciousness. These books summarizing one person's

effort to capture the complex phenomena of self, consciousness and mind totally within the

neurological processes of the central nervous system take their place in a large corpus of literature

concerning self that is complex and sometimes difficult. “Few ideas are as weighty and as slippery as

the notion of self,” to borrow Jerrold Seigel’s apt characterization in the introduction to his account of

the western intellectual discussion of its varied and changing ideas of self, The Idea of the Self (Seigel,

2005, p. 3). He elaborates pointing out that “The nature and meaning of self is subject to constant

revision, as it is ever-again taken up on behalf of some partisan aim or project,” and that “More than

any other culture, the modern West has made the debate about individuality and selfhood a central

question – perhaps the central question – of its collective attempts at self-definition” (Seigel, 2005,

pp. 3–4). At some point in this paper, the question should be addressed, at least briefly, as to what a

biologically centered discussion of self offers, or benefits, a professional community concerned with

the applied application of hypnosis based procedures and research? Other than simply contributing to a

current understanding of the brain's role in constructing mind, self and consciousness, the short

response is indirectly. Few would deny that how a person's self or selves are perceived and

conceptualized influences how interventions and research are implemented. It is hoped that such a
Damasio AJCH Review. 3

benefit is to be derived from the following summary. The relation of hypnosis and self processes is not

simple and deserve examination, but requires another venue.

Damasio’s investigations are a specialized neuroscientific effort to establish the foundation of

self as it emerges from evolutionary biology and the resulting neurological structures of the central

nervous system. He is part of a relatively large and select group that includes Jaak Panksepp, Jean

Changeux, Karl Popper, John Eccles, Vittorio Gallese, Joseph LeDoux, and Rudolfo Llinas, to name a

few. Panksepp’s investigations are a good contrast to Damasio’s as there is an equally continuous

publication record and they approach the problem of a core self from distinctly different directions

(Panksepp & Biven 2012).

In Descartes’ Error, Damasio establishes the central importance of emotions in how we live our

lives, especially how emotion supports continuous and sustained activity. In it, he introduces the

concept of the somatic marker important to the further development of his conceptual framework of

how self and, subsequently, consciousness arises in a brain. The Feeling of What Happens

distinguishes emotion, feelings, and an awareness of feelings, and builds the concepts of a protoself,

core self, and core consciousness emerging in the most likely brain structures. Looking for Spinoza

seeks to show how social consciousness and behavior emerges and is accounted for solely from

evolutionary developed biological processes and brain structures, and makes a sharp distinction

between emotional behaviors which are subconscious processes and conscious emotional feelings. The

former, emotional behaviors, are derived from automated homeostatic biological processes and

subcortical brain structures while the latter, emotional feelings, depend on higher neocortical structures.

Animals emit emotional behavior, but not emotional feelings since they do not have a well evolved

neocortex.

Finally, Self Comes to Mind further refines and extends this general framework and corrects

what Damasio has come to regard as a mistake, and to then “start over,” as he is dissatisfied with some

aspects of his earlier account. This dissatisfaction is directed generally to two issues: “the origin and

nature of feelings and the mechanisms behind the construction of the self” (p. 6). The first refers to the

reconsideration of the importance of the brain stem as the origin of self and consciousness processes,
Damasio AJCH Review. 4

and subsequently affecting their nature as the brain stem is among the most primitive portions of the

evolved brain. The second issue is a re-examination of the cortices and subcortical brain structures

functioning in emotional, self, and consciousness processes. This book then investigates two questions:

first, “how does the brain construct a mind?,” and second, “how does the brain make that mind

conscious?” But it is also about “what we still do not know” (p.6).

Self processes are elevated to a more central role in human adaptive functioning. A self

unequivocally exists, but “it is a process, not a thing, and the process is present at all times when we are

presumed to be conscious” (p. 8). Damasio distinguishes, generally following William James (1890),

the “self-as-object,” me, James’ empirical self renamed “material self,” and the “self-as-subject” or as

“knower,” the I. The evolutionary emergence of I, the self-as-subject-and-knower is viewed as the

“turning point in biological evolution resulting in a human being” (p. 7-9). Neurologically the

“subject-knower is stacked ... on top the self-as-object as a layer of neurological processing,” which

makes possible another layer of neurological processing in a “.. nested, hierarchical componentiality”

(p. 252). Damasio asserts that the self-as-subject-knower directs life’s regulatory behaviors, and

reflects on the environmental experiences (p. 12-13 and Chapters 8 and 9 ).

Self Comes to Mind consists of four sections titled Starting Over (two chapters), What’s in a

Brain That a Mind Can be? (four chapters), Being Conscious (four chapters), and Long After

Consciousness (one chapter). The first chapter, “Awakening,” develops the conceptual grounding for

the central processes required for consciousness, mind, self, and cognition as they emerge from

evolutionary processes. It appears that self processes are necessary if not prior to consciousness.

Consciousness is defined as the “organization of mind contents centered on the organism that produces

and motivates those contents” (p. 10). The term mind is introduced and is asserted to be identical to

brain and which consists of two types of neural mapping processes: one of the internal body through

interoceptive and proprioceptive maps, the protoself, and one of the external world. The “feeling what

happens” or “knowing” is the mapping, or matching, of the internal world to the external world. The

protoself precedes and is the foundation of basic emotions which then in turn precede and are the base
Damasio AJCH Review. 5

for the “feeling of knowing.” The feeling of knowing is core consciousness (p. 76, 169 and pp. 280-

281).

The second chapter begins to pursue the neural mechanics of value molecules and argues that

life regulatory activities exhibited primitively in single-cell organisms lead to biological values that are

no more complicated than and are operationally identical to physiological homeostasis. Viewed in this

way, “brains evolved as devices that could improve” the process of maintaining the survivable

constraints of an organism (p. 50). Out of this context, Damasio argues, emerges biological values that

are reflected in every standard dictionary definition of value. A similar and relatively cogent extension

of this radical view of biological values to account for human morality is developed more thoroughly

by Patricia Churchland (Braintrust 2011). An emotional feeling of satisfaction and being comfortable

is no more complicated than an organism, irrespective of complexity, remaining within the homeostatic

limits required for survival except, of course, that emotional feelings are possible only in those

complex organisms with sufficient neocortices.

The purpose of Part II, What’s in a Brain that a Mind Can Be?, is to identify the probable brain

centers producing a conscious mind in the context of the “unquestionable” fact (p. 63) that the

management of life is the primary function of the brain and prepares the way for Part III and the

primary goal of this book: to account for consciousness and the role of self processes in creating

consciousness. Damasio asserts that a mind becomes conscious “when a self process is added onto a

basic mind process (p. 8). The purpose of Part III is to develop and fill out this argument. The last

chapter, 7, of Part II explores the properties of consciousness that begins with comparing wakefulness

and consciousness, and noting that they are not the same thing (pp. 162-166), and also begins to

describe the various probable brain centers, particularly the importance of brain stem nuclei, that

mediate consciousness, a protoself, and core self processes.

Protoself and core self are concepts that have been developing through out Damasio’s project,

but are terms probably not entirely specific to his program, as is reflected in the earlier books noted,

and are more fully developed in Part III. Three selves are elaborated beginning with the unconscious

protoself process embedded in the body and functioning as a reference for higher order self processes.
Damasio AJCH Review. 6

The core self process in which awareness emerges when the “protoself processes” interact with an

environmental external object that is mapped “in a narrative sequence of images, some of which are

feelings” which are “momentarily linked in a coherent pattern” (p. 181). A third stage of self processes

emerge that is extended to a relatively transient larger scaled coherent pattern as a result of “an

abundance of core self [neurological] pulses” that results in a narrative construction of the

autobiographical self which can reflect on its experiences and actions. Consciousness emerges at the

core self stage as subjective awareness setting the stage for reflection and the narrative of the

autobiographical self (pp. 182 and 201-205).

“Living with Consciousness,” Part IV and the final Chapter 11, closes as an, not very

successful, attempt to tidy loose ends such as acknowledging the important contribution of

nonconscious processes in regulating life activities. Damasio suggests that self reflection resulted in

the creation of culture which he sees as another example of physiological homeostasis and forthrightly

names “sociocultural homeostasis.” He argues that “Sociocultural homeostasis was added on as a new

functional layer of life management, but that biological homeostasis remained” (pp. 290-293). He

concludes with the summarizing question, “What is the ultimate gift of consciousness to humanity?

Perhaps the ability to navigate the future in the seas of our imagination, guiding the self craft into a safe

and productive harbor” (p. 296).

Summarizing Observations and Conclusion.

Acknowledging the central importance of self functions in pursuing life’s activities is a

distinguishing aspect of Damasio’s program from other accounts equally constrained to empirical

biological and neurological processes accounting for the emergence of a mind with consciousness (see

Changeux, 1985; Llinas, 2001). The framework proposed by Damasio is a relative of the James-Lange

account of emotion which as a feedback model engages the higher neocortical cognitive processes in

which emotional feelings are perceived and experienced by the cognitive processing of interoceptive

and proprioceptive input. The Damasio framework is a readout account that identifies images of
Damasio AJCH Review. 7

internal bodily states constituting emotional feelings. “Feelings of emotions are variations on complex

body feelings caused by and referred to a specific object” (pp. 73-77). Damasio’s account is

appropriately characterized as a top-down account of emotion. Panksepp and Biven compare and

evaluate the “read out” accounts of emotion and specifically the views of Damasio with their own

program that is a bottom up account which first identifies the neurological circuits of seven primary

biological emotions originating initially in the brain stem and which are directly sensed and

experienced (Panksepp & Biven 2012, pp. 63–81,484–489). Panksepp and Biven’s proposed view of

how a self emerges from neurobiology uses some of the same terminology used by Damasio such as,

for example, core SELF, protoself, primary process feelings, and is worth comparing to Damasio’s

formulation (Panksepp & Biven, pp. 390–423).

Perhaps it is worth noting the first major effort to address self’s emergence in the brain was

produced when Karl Popper teamed with John Eccles in The Self and its Brain: An Argument for

Interactionism which vigorously argued against, what they referred to as, monist materialism (for

example, Popper & Eccles, 1977, pp. 358–360,). Damasio's account of self processes emerging from

the brain, thirty plus years later, illustrates the “monist materialism” so deprecated by Popper and

Eccles. This significant effort appears to be not even relevant in the current discussion concerning self.

It generally fits that self processes are necessary to those of consciousness and for that reason may be

said to more fundamental; but it is apparent that any investigation into self processes are entangled with

consciousness as investigations primarily concerned with consciousness entangles with self processes.

This observation is given some credence by Damasio in tying together self and consciousness

processes, and is also congruent with Panksepp’s views.

Martin and Barresi’s (2006), Seigel’s (2005), and Taylor’s (1989) perspicacious and erudite

investigations of the Western conversation of self are useful, if not necessary, to understanding the

complexities of self concepts and phenomena as well as their hold in directing both philosophical and

empirical cognitive and neuroscientific investigations and research of mind, self, and consciousness.

The neuroscientific investigations illustrated by Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious
Damasio AJCH Review. 8

Brain extend the recognition of the central position of self processes and self concepts in understanding

the human condition by pinning them to empirical evolutionary and biological data.

As important as this endeavor is, a continuing and seemingly irreparable distance separates two

traditions in the sciences directed to understanding what it is to be human and the consequences to that

humanity. Habermas (1990, pp. 1–2) acknowledges this dualism by observing that “there is no serious

indication that their methods [i.e., what he calls the historical and hermeneutical positions] can be

integrated into the model of strict empirical sciences..... Instead of being addressed...it simply finds

expression in the coexistence of two distinct frames of reference.” The sociocultural perspectives, the

historical and hermeneutic positions referred to by Habermas, are gathering momentum in the

psychological literature as indicated by such publications as The Relational Being: Beyond Self and

Community (Gergen, 2009) and The Sociocultural Turn in Psychology: The Contextual Emergence of

Mind and Self (Kirschner & Martin, 2010) and sharply contrasts with the empirical neurobiological

projects of neuroscientists such as Damasio. This “sharp contrast” is presaged by Popper and Eccles

(1977) formulation of their interactionist view of subjective and objective realities. The clash of these

opposing perspectives is likely to become increasingly dominant in the continuing conversation

regarding self processes and their significance in human sciences, certainly in the social and

psychological literature. The continuing productions of this clash will be important to the evolving

understanding of human intra- and inter-subjectivity, thought and behavior. The import of this drama

for employing hypnosis framed therapeutic treatment procedures in medical and psychological contexts

is not immediately evident, but is likely to impact and change how we perceive and address the

“selves” of a person, more especially, of a patient.

References

Changeux, J. P. (1985). Neuronal man: The biology of mind. (Translated by L. Garey). New

York, N. Y: Pantheon Books.

Damasio AJCH Review. 9

Churchland, P. S. (2011). Braintrust: What neuroscience tells us about morality. Princeton, New

Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. New York, N.

Y.: Avon Books.

Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of

consciousness. New York, N. Y.: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Damasio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. Orlando, FL:

Harcourt Inc.

Gergen, K. J. (2009). Relational being: Beyond self and community. New York, N.Y.: Oxford

University Press.

Habermas, J. (1990). On the logic of the social sciences (Studies in Contemporary German

Social Thought). (Translated by S. W. Nicholsen & J. A. Stark). Cambridge,

Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (1983). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

University Press.

Kirschner, S. & Martin, J., (Eds.). (2010). The sociocultural turn in psychology: The contextual

emergence of mind and self. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.

Llinas, R. R. (2001). i of the vortex: From neurons to self. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT

Press.

Martin, R. and Barresi, J. (2006). The rise and fall of soul and self: An intellectual history of

personal identity (p. 383). New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.

Panksepp, J. &. Biven, L. (2012). Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary origins of human

emotions. New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company.

Popper, K. R., & Eccles, S. J. C. (1977). The self and its brain: An argument for interactionism.

Boston, Massachusetts: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Seigel, J. (2005). The idea of self: Thought and experience in Western Europe since the

Seventeenth Century. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.

Damasio AJCH Review. 10

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Cambridge,

Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.