Psychology and the brain is still firmly in the theoretical. It is not even certain if the soul resides in the brain.
Just thinking of that theory makes my brain hurt ;)
It is not even certain if the soul resides in the brain.
It's just my personal belief, that it resides in the heart.
And at least that, we know, was intact.
Most people who are interested in such matters would say that it does not.
Aristotle said that "the soul is the form of the body." The Catechism of the Catholic Church keeps this formulation. The soul is immortal, but while it is in the body it is the form of the whole body, and is also the principle of life.
It is a modern assumption that somehow we live only in our brains. But in fact the presumption through most of history was that the soul is "tripartite." There's a pretty good account of this in C. S. Lewis's book "The Discarded Image." In another of his books, "The Abolition of Man," Lewis speaks of modernists as "men without chests," because they no longer regard the heart, the traditional center of courage, magnanimity, and the other virtues.
We are our souls, but we also are our bodies--our whole bodies, not just our brains. The whole human being is a combination of soul and body. The traditional presumption is that, if the brain is damaged, the mind persists until the soul leaves the body--i.e. until the body dies, the soul leaves, and the cells start to rot. The mind is essentially a function of the soul, and if the brain is damaged then it cannot communicate through the body. But it is still in there.
I'm not saying that all this is scientifically demonstrable, but it is a lot closer to the known scientific facts than the very limited idea that we live in our heads, own our bodies, and drive them like cars.
I read of a study a few years back that I thought was quite interesting. It seems that no matter what you think or do, the impulse in the brain fires from the same place every time. The impulse then travels to the area of the brain that handles that function.
Becki
"Psychology and the brain is still firmly in the theoretical. It is not even certain if the soul resides in the brain."
Would the intellect i.e. spirit be the brain of the soul, as the brain is the intellect of the flesh body??? Would it not be the case so long as the brain is functioning to send the signal to breathe the soul still inhabits the body???