The Real Role of the Neocortex

So what do you think it is?  I submit that its primary is to keep us from feeling.  And that allows us to slay our enemies with impunity.  If this were not the case, ordinary Germans would not have stood by and watched them shoot Jews in the back, or gas them in caves.  If this were not true then it would have been impossible for Whites to stand around and watch Southerners lynch Blacks as if going to some kind of celebration..  In other words, the neocortex’ job is shut down feelings and allow us to be swallowed up by ideas and propaganda and beliefs that paints others as killable.  Now we know one key function of ideational therapy; like the Germans, fill their heads full of so many ideas, the more convoluted the better, that feelings no longer have any place.

So tell me.  Why are we doing psychotherapy that lives in our heads, that confines ideas to the intellectual and that suppresses feelings?  Since it is clear that neurosis is a disease of feeling how can we ever get well while neglecting and repressing them?  Well, you say, I practice meditation and that relaxes me.  I think you believe it relaxes you.  Not quite the same thing.  I mean how can you neglect feelings and be relaxed when it is imprinted pain and tension that prevents relaxation?  Otherwise, how could it be that my patients drop many signs of pain permanently after months of feeling pain?  Lower cortisol, lower blood pressure and heart rate, etc.    And the one thing that cannot be faked, radical changes in the amplitude and frequency of brain waves.  

Here is the problem.  If we agree about imprints, that bad memories are stored deep in the brain and agitate us all of the time, then how can we really relax in a “head” therapy…a therapy that rides above the imprint?  And all new neurobiologic information confirms for all time the veracity and the impact of the imprint which now inhabits the primitive genes and cells.  How can we relax when we enter a therapy whose ancient, prehistoric role is to push back feelings?  If you don’t believe it look again at the Nazis who were ordinary Germans, after all.  Marlene Dietrich never spoke to her sister again after she learned that she lived across the way from a death camp.  How could she? She could because many of the Germans’ minds had been filled for years about the inferiority of Jews, and those ideas occupied most of their neo-cortex, which allowed them to watch and tolerate killing without any feeling.  So now we know that dental scientists can drill on your teeth with no pain so long as they explain to you that their hypnosis (ideas) will take care of the hurt.  And mostly it works.  Excuse the expression but it is all a “mind-fuck”.  It is cognitive manipulation, which shows how susceptible it all is.  And  of course when you fill a child’s head with ideas early on they tend to stick.  Those first impressions are powerful and they endure.

Hitler could feel for his dog because his head left a little space for other beings but not much space.  So again, how can any therapy that specializes in ideas and insights get you well when the real problem resides far deeper in the brain.  So any therapy that includes beginning with ideas,beliefs and notions does not penetrate to where it has to go.  Think of it this way:  any therapy where the therapist directs you, even “do this and then do that,” is most often a detour.  Therapy has to be inner prompted.  If it comes from some else it is her ideas not yours.  We have all enough manipulation in our lives but the problem is that we get used to being manipulated and told how to think so we just slip into being directed.  Ayayay.

I have had patients, many, who after months of Primal suddenly are aware of the egregious mistakes they made with their kids.  This, after we liberated the pain and feelings.  As a result of feelings they were now aware, not like before, aware in their heads but consciously aware due to feeling feelings. Yes feelings provide real conscious awareness, not cognitive awareness which rides about them.  Suddenly one sees that he ignored the child’s drawings leaving his son feeling a it less capable.  Or spanking his daughter cause he learned about “tough love. “  Never once imagining the consequences of their actions.  But feelings make you conscious and aware and finally about to see, really see.

Historically then, shutting down served many functions, not letting feelings interfere with what had to be done.  And above all, permitting us actions of which we could not feel.  Thus the origin of the neo-cortex, very important for connection to lower level  feelings but remaining able to shut them out when they become dangerous (my mother does not love me.  I cannot live without love.).  So if we ignore the pain it will always be there and we cannot ever really relax.  How could it be otherwise, unless we live in a world of denial where we never acknowledge it?  We cannot have it both ways;  we cannot be feeling humans and ignore feelings.  We cannot relax without brain surgery to cut out memory.  We can never relax as long as ideas and beliefs occupy feeling space?  And so, following evolution, as I have noted a myriad of times, ideas and insights must come to us in evolutionary sequence: after feelings, as they did for millions of years.