In this essay, I present a framework of the mind using my own terminology. I believe it has great explanatory power, and is backed up empirically and is congenial with most modern and historical psychological theories, including: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence, Jungian psychology, Theory of Structural Dissociation, Dabrowski's overexcitabilities and positive disintegration, mindfulness and acceptance (MAT) theory, Friston's free energy minimisation theory, predictive processing, RElaxed Beliefs Under pSychedelics (REBUS), Buddhist philosophy (very tightly), a vast set of philosophical works on the subject of the mind, Internal Family Systems, Fonagy's Alien Self, and perhaps more.
A quick note on this claim: while this sounds impressive by number, once you consider that many of these frameworks have common historical origins (like Jungian psychology and Structural Dissociation in Janetian psychology), or modern prerequisite frameworks they build upon (like predictive processing as a well-accepted modern tenet), hopefully it becomes less so. I am simply attempting to re-elucidate the underlying, shared structure that I believe has been largely forgotten by many.
Moreover, I believe it can be tied to both the neuroscientific Global Workspace Theory and philosophical Integrated Information Theory, as both the broadcasting of conscious awareness creating subjective experience, and the intrinsic importance of the integration of information, are both central tenets. This is certainly something to be explored further.
Where it is not necessary to advance the framework's development, I do not explicitly connect these aforementioned theories to the framework. For a deeper exploration of the connections, please read the 'Predictive Psyche: Initial Essay' attached on my website.
Fundamentally, I create a distinction between the mind and the physical world. No external factor has any intrinsic power to act on the mind, such as by producing sensations. Only the mind itself, or special inbuilt pathways between the two through the body, can influence the mind. I believe that this distinction is crucial, and often overlooked.
Given this distinction, it is clear, however, that there are built in connections between the external world and our subjective experience in the human body. It is difficult to argue that pain and pleasure are not directly stimulated through external phenomena, implying that there exist predetermined, innate, and stable pathways between the body and the mind.
However, I propose that these pathways account for much less of the production of our subjective experience than we think. Rather, the vast majority of our sensations are created by predictive models. There exist predictive models of both internal sensations and external phenomena. These predictive models are capable of producing sensations themselves, but also cognitions, and any other part of subjective experience. These predictive models are generated through interactions with the external world, and accrued correlational data.
As these predictive models expand scope and complexity, they can be said to elaborate. A sufficiently elaborated predictive model, encompassing the relationship between internal and external experience, can be thought of as the narrative self.
It can be said the mind is fundamentally composed of two forces. The first is an integratory drive. Perhaps this was Nietzsche's will to power, or Jung's drive towards individuation. The drive towards truth, modelling the external world sufficiently well, and modelling or arranging the internal world sufficiently well. This is what compels us to create predictive models, and continuously update them. From the perspective of predictive models, integration is the discovery of latent variables underlying two disconnected phenomena.
The second drive is that which is created by our relationship to subjective experience itself. Our relationship to pain, pleasure, fear, et cetera. The degree to which internal predictive models generate such feelings, and the valence of our relationship to these feelings, is the degree to which this drive will dominate our life.
The final concept I will introduce is the idea of conscious awareness. It has been well established that not every part of our mind is always in the field of conscious awareness, and, to go further, not every part of our mind that is currently active, making predictions about the internal world, external world or self, and thus influencing our sensations, cognitions, actions, etc., is in conscious awareness. A contraction of this field of awareness is what causes dissociation from sensation, cognition, or other aspects of experience. For completeness, in the literature dissociation can also refer to the separation of generative models from an underlying lack of integration.
Now, this essay begins to get philosophical. First, I attempt to explain my understanding of how integration occurs. However, before doing so, I posit one additional underlying concept: that prediction error, or a conflict between predictions, is fundamentally painful. This is perhaps the root of the integratory drive, and what makes a lack of integration so pathological as per the Theory of Structural Dissociation.
From this lens, I believe that integration is fundamentally about confronting prediction error, and holding the difference in conscious awareness sufficiently to enable the discovery of underlying latent variables. Holding contradiction sufficiently to enable synthesis.
Moreover, we come to a crossroads: if prediction error is encoded through sensation, and sensation itself is also subjected to predictive models, then the type and degree of prediction error that is accepted into conscious awareness and identified with is subject to variability. Strengthening the mind to be capable of acknowledging and grappling with prediction error more wholly, and not relegating it from conscious awareness, thus starts with being aware of and accepting internal experience exactly how it is.
Finally, I propose a claim that I can't back up, but that would be interesting to explore further: that the goal of integration is not about understanding the external world, but that the external world is simply a proxy, providing a set of experiences that enable some form of internal development.
Now, some interesting exploration of what this framework implies:
It is well established that the more compulsive the avoidance of internal sensation is (phobic avoidance), the more it tends to dominate and control our life. This is perhaps because even when something is pushed out of conscious awareness, its activation still influences our decisions and perceptions, creating another prediction error in itself that must be continuously further avoided. Thus, people would be inclined to reduce this prediction error, in a way that is maximally outside of conscious awareness. This may lead to cycles of vain attempts towards integration: repeated patterns that are themselves pushed out of conscious awareness, and yet perpetually being performed. Perhaps these cycles of what we continuously fail to integrate are a dominant factor in the direction of many of our lives. This chronic avoidance of internal experience, causing an inevitable and cyclical reenactment in the external world, can be labelled as nonrealisation.
Now, let us consider Fonagy's Alien Self theory. If I am correct that the model of internal experience, and the narrative self built on top of it, is just another predictive model, largely generated from our interactions with the external world, it directly follows that caretakers insufficiently attuned with a developing child would cause these models to be distorted and incorrectly reflective of the actual structure of the mind. This would lead to chronic and massive prediction error, perpetually and habitually pushed out of conscious awareness that BPD may represent.
Let us now consider flashbacks. In this framework, flashbacks quite simply represent the activation of predictive models with extremely high precision priors. High confidence of what the external world looks like, much stronger and thus directly bypassing the actual information being communicated.
Now, a few asides. Psychedelics may serve to forcefully expand conscious awareness, forcing us or enabling us to contend with prediction error. Perhaps they also amplify the intensity of subjective experience. It directly follows that intensity of internal experience would be proportional to the inability to nonrealise.