The Healthy Mind Assumption
July 27, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9781315122649-2 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the widespread, unexamined "healthy mind assumption" that the egocentric mind is healthy is mistaken, and that the egocentric mind is unhealthy because it produces a cascade of "normal pathologies" accepted as ordinary daily life. Proposes that empirically studying the stream of consciousness is the key to understanding mental health, and begins to explain why the egoless mind is a healthy mind. |
Abstract
Chapter 2 introduces several of the subjects that will be covered by The Healthy Mind . It opens by reflecting on the fact that we have, as a species, long organized our individual lives and societies around the unexamined and mistaken assumption that the egocentric mind is a healthy mind. This is the healthy mind assumption. It then introduces the science of the phenomena that appear in the stream of consciousness that has been generated by our research, and from which our maps of the egocentric and egoless mind have been derived. It explains why the key to understanding the nature of the healthy mind is to empirically study the stream of consciousness. It locates the ego in our everyday experience of the mind so that the reader will understand exactly what the ego is, and be able to see their own ego clearly. It introduces the idea that the egocentric mind is an unhealthy mind because it creates for itself a cascade of normal pathologies : a group of maladies that we accept as normal because we live with them day in and day out. Chapter 2 concludes by introducing the reader to the data from the science of the stream of consciousness that describes the workings of the egoless mind, and begins the process of explaining why it is a healthy mind.