Two of Me

This text attempts to answer the question: how much of what we do is the result of conscious and deliberate decisions and how much originates in unconscious, unthought out, automatic directives? The answer is that far more than what we might imagine falls into the second category. We tend to assume responsibility for our unconsciously determined thoughts and actions, and even though we do not know why we think and act the way we do, we make up reasons for it, which we truly believe. Each one of us is really two people in the same body, who in many respects, function quite independently of each other, and yet somehow manage to get along with things - while the other, the outer brain, serves as the spokesperson for both of them. The inner brain is the source of our objectives and generates the emotions that keep us on track in our attainment of them. This book explores the strange relationship between these two parts of us across a spectrum of mental processes including, memory, language, problem solving, dreams, delusions and hallucinations, and more complex pursuits such as the arts, humour and religion.

This new theory of mind covers ground touched in his two previous texts and synthesises a wide and deep range of knowledge, in which analytic theory, cognitive psychology and the latest research in neuroanatomy combine to yield a thought provoking, holistic, subjective and relational-based view of mind, written with wisdom and compassion. - Dr. Dale Mathers, Member, International Association of Analytical Psychology

John Birtchnell is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London and author of Relating in Psychotherapy and How Humans Relate.