Summary of Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D. & Sharon Begley's The Mind and the Brain

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The book has a virtual third coauthor in Henry Stapp, whose research into the foundations of quantum mechanics provided the physics underpinning for JMS’s theory of directed mental force.

#2 The UCLA Department of Psychiatry holds grand rounds, at which an invited researcher presents an hour-long seminar on a topic of clinical relevance. One afternoon in the late 1980s, I saw an announcement that a leading behavior therapist was going to discuss her work with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

#3 Exposure and response prevention, or ERP, was a perfect expression of behaviorist tenets. In ERP therapy, the patient is almost completely passive. The therapist presents them with triggers of varying intensity, and they have to rank the level of distress those objects cause.

#4 I was becoming more and more convinced that a patient undergoing behavior therapy didn’t need to do anything that a normal, healthy person would object to doing. I was beginning to suspect that the treatments based on the principles of behaviorism were missing the boat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822528581

IRB Media

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Insights on Jeffrey M. Schwartz and M.D. & Sharon Begley's The Mind and the Brain

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The book has a virtual third coauthor in Henry Stapp, whose research into the foundations of quantum mechanics provided the physics underpinning for JMS’s theory of directed mental force.

#2

The UCLA Department of Psychiatry holds grand rounds, at which an invited researcher presents an hour-long seminar on a topic of clinical relevance. One afternoon in the late 1980s, I saw an announcement that a leading behavior therapist was going to discuss her work with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

#3

Exposure and response prevention, or ERP, was a perfect expression of behaviorist tenets. In ERP therapy, the patient is almost completely passive. The therapist presents them with triggers of varying intensity, and they have to rank the level of distress those objects cause.

#4

I was becoming more and more convinced that a patient undergoing behavior therapy didn’t need to do anything that a normal, healthy person would object to doing. I was beginning to suspect that the treatments based on the principles of behaviorism were missing the boat.

#5

The prevailing view among behaviorists was that normal standards of judgment and taste could be set aside during behavioral interventions. I had already had qualms about how mechanistic the treatment based on behaviorist principles was.

#6

What determines the question a scientist pursues. For some, it’s purely objective, walled off from the influences of the surrounding society and culture by built-in safeguards. But for others, it’s a social construct.

#7

The questions of science are not objective. They are, rather, a reflection of the fact that science is a human endeavor. The will does not exist in modern scientific view, because a mind independent of brain does not exist.

#8

I had always had a interest in the brain and how it functions, and in 1990, I joined the faculty at UCLA to study it. I was drawn to the practical aspect of Buddhist philosophy: the systematic development and application of a clear-minded observational power.

#9

The core of Buddhist philosophy is the concept of mindfulness, or mindful awareness. It is the ability to observe your inner experience in a non-clinging way. Through mindful awareness, you can stand outside your own mind as if you are watching what is happening to another rather than experiencing it yourself.

#10

The disease of obsessive-compulsive disorder is marked by two things: the persistent, exhausting intrusion of an unwanted thought and an unwanted urge to act on that thought. The brain side of the equation can be traced, and the mind side of the equation is marked by an ego-dystonic character, which means that some part of the patient’s mind knows that his hands are not really dirty or that the door is not really unlocked.

#11

The idea that the brain can’t cause mental phenomena such as OCD is being dismissed out of hand by the psychiatric community. To suggest that anything other than brain mechanisms is the causal dynamics of a mental phenomenon is to risk being dismissed.

#12

The chapters that follow explore the new vistas opened by the UCLA research on obsessive-compulsive disorder. We will explore both historical and current approaches to the mind-brain enigma surrounding how mental phenomena emerge from three pounds of grayish, gelatinous tissue encased in the human skull.

#13

The connection between consciousness and the brain is a problem in physics, and it can be solved by physics. The physics that underlies the neuroscience I describe is one of the features that makes this book different from those that have come before.

#14

The will is a fundamental part of OCD, and it is clear