Consciousness: A Brain-Centered, Informational Approach

This paper is the second in a series exploring the nature of a brain-centered psychology. In the first paper (Olds, 1990) I developed the idea of a psychology that would consider the brain as its central organizing concept, in lieu of previous abstractions such as ego, id, or internal objects. The rationale for this change is to organize all of our thinking about mental agencies, mental process, and psychological function in general with reference to brain processes. The goal of such a psychology, not fully realizable as yet, is to ground all mental processes in biology in a manner resembling that of Freud's early hopes. The model is an information-processing one, in which information and semiotic functions serve to bridge the gap between brain and mind.

I here pursue this idea further in discussing the phenomenon of consciousness. Once this model is developed I will try to show that such a model places the psychoanalytic concepts of the unconscious and of psychoanalytic therapy in a different light, bringing them into line with current research in brain function and biology. The ultimate aim of such an endeavor is to ground psychoanalytic theory in a currently relevant scientific context.

Writing about consciousness is a kind of quicksand. The topic is vast, the history of thought about it is nearly infinite, and the relevant research findings are accumulating faster than one can