No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism

by Chris Niebauer

have you ever felt a threat to your ego? Ever felt stupid or embarrassed? In those moments your sense of self wasn't as secure as you thought it was, so you likely shifted and reinterpret the events to account for this unexpected change. This reinterpreting or reinvesting can happen in a variety of ways. You may do anything from discounting others (i.e., “their opinion is of no value”) to refocusing your identity another way (“well, I may not be as rich as they are, but I am much smarter!” or focus on how patriotic you are, or how spiritual, or any other prized pattern of the self that compensates for the area in which your ego felt threatened). From a neuropsychological perspective, we could say that all of these defenses are caused by the left brain's mechanism readjusting to unexpected pattern changes. From a Buddhist perspective, we could say that the self is recreating itself in response to the threat of dissolution. In my view, they are one and the same.