(i thought this was fascinating… the brain has 3 parts, including an Emotional center. A good friend sent this to me so I’ll have to find out the source for you)
“Who Are You? 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself” Author – Malcolm Godwin.
Georgiades Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, the charismatic Armenian mystic & teacher, maintained that human beings are wonderful stimulus-response mechanisms which, he said, "eat impressions & excrete behavior." he proposed that we are all 3-brained beings, each brain forming a different center of awareness. He taught that an individual is dominated by one of the 3, which constitutes his type – in Man Number One this is the moving brain, in Number Two it is the emotional brain, while in Number Three it is the intellectual brain. Each of us has a lifelong predisposition toward either the belly, the heart or the head.
Gurdjieff’s aim was to bring about an integrity between the disparate urges of each of these brains, or centers of consciousness, so that the individual could begin to wake up to his or her real potential by using all 3 in harmony.
In the year of his death (1949), he might have seen a number of neurologists come to the remarkably similar conclusion that there are indeed 3 distinct brains that carry within themselves the whole history of our evolution. Prehistoric fish evolved specialized bundles of nerves along the spine which became sensitive to smell, light & sound.
These clusters became what is known as the reptilian brain, corresponding to our own most ancient brain – the cerebellum. It deals with the five mechanical & instinctual responses of flight, fight, freeze, food & reproduction.
A further evolutionary refinement, ensuring far better odds of survival, was the limbic system, or emotional brain. Although unconscious, it added powerful urges to the 5 basic instincts, ensuring faster and more appropriate responses to the environment. This is the mammalian brain.
Crowning this neurological explosion was the cortex, with frontal lobes which apparently triggered a conscious awareness of self.
The hard-wired connections between the 3 brains is anything but efficient. Often communication breaks down between all three. This can cause a split in which we tend to operate in only one mode – physical, emotional or mental. The 3 types can be easily identified in caricature as Shakespeare’s Falstaff, the instinctual man of the body, Othello, the emotional lover, and Hamlet, the divided man of the mind.
ASSESSMENT: With which do you most identify?
TYPE NUMBER ONE: You enjoy acting impulsively, on instinct, rather than reasoning out a course of action. You trust that your whole body will instinctively act for you. You seldom bother to reflect on your actions. You take pleasure in the immediate things of life – food, drink, sex, and in the delight of energy and the action of your body.
Brainstem & Cerebellum: The most ancient of the 3 brains is responsible for the more mechanical aspects of the body, being dedicated to movement, the physical senses & instinctual responses.
Falstaff – The Belly/Hand: Instinctual intelligence. Lives in the phenomenal environment, in the moment. Acts on impulse, instinctive, body-oriented, materialistic, non-reflective, lusty and bound by the earth.
TYPE NUMBER TWO: You know that you respond to people and situations in a very emotional way. You are passionate and value love above all reason. You sometimes act foolishly simply because you feel driven by an overwhelming impulse you can’t explain. You become insanely jealous while you know you have no reason to.
The Limbic System: The emotional center that creates feelings but is not conscious in itself. It is the most powerful generator of urges in the nervous system & has the greatest influence on behavior.
Othello – The Heart: The Feeling intelligence. Lives in the emotions, passionate, jealous, possessed & possessive, expressive, moody & unreasonable.
TYPE NUMBER THREE: You enjoy the delights of intellectual challenge, the world of ideas and of creative dreaming. You want to increase your knowledge and seek the truth and the meaning of existence. You do not trust your emotions, preferring logic and careful reasoning.
The Cortex: This area of the brain is concerned with language, thinking, planning, organizing & consciousness. It has fewer neural pathways to the other brains than from them.
Hamlet – The Head: The Reasoning Intelligence, living in the head and in an environment of ideas. Using the reasoning powers of the mind, logical & strategic, mathematical, knowledgeable, mind-created experience.
Food for thought?
Very interesting about the Shakespeare. Lately I’ve been looking at Otello (the Verdi opera version particularly) as an emotional intelligence example gone bad. I coach emotional intelligence and am always looking for great illustrative stores and examples.
When you say – if you’re not in touch with your feelings you are NOT in control of your life… I think Otello got lost in the reptilian. Iago got mad at him and wanted to do him in, and he never had to touch the man. All he had to do was wind Otello up, push the button and watch him self-destruct.
Otello trusted whom he shouldn’t trust, and didn’t trust whom he should have. His passion overtook his reason, and also his “gut instincts.” Iago knew Otello better than he knew himself, guess why? Iago went for the reptilian sexual jealousy, and Otello’s basic insecurity about various things, and just jerked him around like a puppet.
The opera itself is a replay of the triune brain.
In the first act of the opera we see Otello the conqueror, the man in control (neocortex).
In the second act, we see Otello the lover and husband (limbic).
In the last act, we see what the unbridled reptilian brain can do. It’s eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. React. We see Otello kill himself because he has destroyed himself already, all except his body. Listen to Mario Lanza sing “Niun Mi Tema,” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4sfXc5a5Y4 ) Otello’s lament before he kills himself. To lose it all … and at your own hand …
Otello didn’t think it through. From the minute Iago started on him, he didn’t stop and think it through, but propelled himself forward at the reptilian level. And all Iago had to do was say a few things. When you aren’t in touch with your feelings, or able to manage them and to think, you are out-of-control, but ironically, very predictable, and this leaves you extremely vulnerable. That’s the irony of it.
Great article and I love your site.
Best, Susan Dunn, http://www.susandunn.cc