The Human Psyche (PDF)

In February and March 1978 I delivered my first series of Gifford Lectures in the University of Edinburgh. These lectures have been published under the title The Human Mystery. The second series of ten lectures were delivered from April 18 to May 4 1979 under the title The Human Psyche. As with the first series, the printed text is actually the manuscript prepared for those lectures, not some later compilation. The lectures were delivered informally, but based strictly on this manuscript. It is hoped that the printed text will convey the dramatic character of a lecture presenta­ tion. This book must not be regarded as a definitive text in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, but rather as a series of 'adventures of ideas', to revive a Whiteheadean title. The brain-mind problem has been the theme of three recent books: The Self and Its Brain; The Human Mystery (in its latter part); and now The Human Psyche. In this book there is critical discussion in the first lecture of the materialist hypotheses of the relationship of the self-con­ scious mind to the brain. In the subsequent lectures the strong dualist-interactionism developed in The Self and Its Brain is explored in depth in relation to a wide variety of phenomena relating to self-consciousness. The aim has been to demonstrate the great explanatory power of dualist­ interactionism in contrast to the poverty and inadequacy of all varieties of the materialist theories of the mind.