Are We Just Chemical Soup?

Today, despite all the knowledge gained about the body and the brain – its chemicals and hormones – we still confront age-old questions:  what truly constitutes one’s personality?  Do we have souls?  If so, how are they defined?   I struggle intensely with this issue, because I do not want to accept the modern conclusion that my emotions and perceptions arise solely from different amounts of chemicals connecting to receptors in my brain.  Such a concept undermines the notions that I have control over my actions, that I am unique, and begins to make me feel machine-like.  I want to believe that because I am able to think about my mind that something of me transcends my body… but in light of modern science, this is difficult to do.

So I guess the statement "you are what you eat" would apply here, right?  (image: web)

Let me set the scene with the lyrics of a beautiful song I happened to listen to recently.  It is the song O’Sister by the band City and Colour, and I believe it has great relevance to understanding the conflicting understandings of mental illness that still exist today.  (to listen:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi-crVagUok)

Oh sister
What's wrong with your mind?
You used to be so strong and stable
My sister
What made you fall from grace?
I'm sorry that I was not there to catch you
What have the demons done?
What have the demons done?
With the luminous light that once shined from your eyes?
What makes you feel so alone?
Is it the whispering ghosts
That you fear the most?

Chorus:
But the blackness in your heart
Won’t last forever
I know it’s tearing you apart
But it's a storm you can weather

Oh sister
Those lines etched in your hands
They're hardened and rough like road map of sorrow
My sister
There is a sadness on your face
You're like a motherless child that's longing for comfort
What’s running through your veins
That's causing you such pain? 

Does it have something to do with the pills they gave to you?

What is eating at your soul?

Was it the whispering ghost that left you out in the cold?

Chorus

Oh sister

My sister

Oh sister

My sister

I was surprised by how much the lyrics of this song express a struggle for the singer to understand his sister’s mental illness in corporeal terms.  He wavers between ‘what’s wrong with your mind’ to ‘what have the demons done?’  He also seems to battle between a physical and ethereal description of the illness, sometimes describing it as lost light in the eyes, and something ‘running through the veins,’ but then following those terms with language such as ‘whispering ghosts,’ ‘blackness in your heart,’ ‘storm you can weather.’  He also expresses distrust for modern psychological drugs in the line “Does it have something to do with the pills they gave to you?”  The song essentially encapsulates the question, “Is my sister depressed or ill because of her bodily chemistry or because of supernatural forces?”

Such existential angst has a long history, because humans never have been able to give a wholly convincing answer to questions of the mind.  In the 19^th century, several scientists, artists, and academics began to hypothesize connections between physical appearance and personality traits by making ‘objective’ studies of human skulls (phrenology) and faces of mental patients (the monomaniacs of Théodore Géricault).    These conclusions were sensational and controversial; while holding a possible key to understanding the human mind, they also threatened to undermine what many humans hold dearest: a sense of existence that transcends the material realm.

Phrenological head diagram.  As a funny note, phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) believed that no apprenticeship was needed to become an architect if you had a large 'inhabitiveness' bump (love of home) and 'constructiveness' bump (ability to build).  He also told Mark Twain he had a crater in his humor area, meaning that he had no sense of humor.  (image: graphicsfairy.blogspot.co.uk)

Phrenology – the study of the size of skull-bumps as indicative of personality traits – was developed in 1796 by physiologist Franz Joseph Gall, and became very popular during the early 19^th century. The study originated from observations of aptitudes or deficiencies within living humans: for example, because a phrenologist observed that a man with extraordinary language skills had a prominent brow, a prominent brow became associated with language ability.  Most of the observations were not reliant on one instance, but rather several skulls taken from deceased animals and people that had notable characteristics.  Phrenologists liked to collect skulls of extreme cases – such as criminals and the mentally handicapped – and use those as exemplars of certain characteristics associated with those extremes.

A series of phrenological heads from the Whipple Museum here in Cambridge.  The one on the left was used as a portable head for phrenologists to carry around when studying the bumps of Victorians.  The middle-left is the cast of a head of a mass murderer, and the two on the right are heads of the mentally handicapped. (image: author)

The seemingly ‘objective’ approach of phrenology also extended into the realm of madness.  19^th century European society began to believe that people did not go mad because of their sins, but rather because of physical characteristics that predisposed them to do so.  Mental illnesses began to become classified by their symptoms, and many ‘objective’ phrenological and observational studies were undertaken to help define a disorder’s characteristics.  For example, in 1820 (phrenology’s heyday), artist Théodore Géricault (as a commission for psychiatrist Étienne-Jean Georget) painted a series of ten portraits of mental patients, each with a different disease.   Géricault and Georget hoped to capture and define the physical manifestation of each disease.  For example, in Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, Géricault depicts a man with a disheveled appearance, blank eyes, and a frown.  This series of characteristics evident in the painting would then be used as a metric to determine if other patients had kleptomania.

Théodore Géricault, 1822, Portrait of a Kleptomaniac  (image: Wikipedia)

It seems that in this time period, someone’s appearance is no longer a consequence of what has gone wrong with someone’s spirit.  A person’s physical appearance is instead indicative of what goes on in the mind, because both are now understood as having a corporeal origin.  While such understanding led to discrimination in some cases, overall, phrenology and objective portraiture resulted in kinder treatment to mental patients, because mental problems were seen as disease-like and out of the patient’s control, rather than a result of the patient’s sin.  Phrenology also proved revolutionary in society’s relocation of mental faculties from the spirit into the brain – a belief modern society seems to hold true, but Victorian society hesitated to accept. 

I must end with one thought.  I think we should be careful in our pursuit of answers to the questions of the mind.  Do we really want to know the answers to these questions?  It seems like the answers hold the potential to take all the poetry and magic out of human existence.