Download Conflicting Theories of Self: Dickinson and Neuroscience

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Alex Lenkei
Professor Noble
LIT 496
28 April 2014
Conflicting Theories of Self: Dickinson and Neuroscience
Philosophers, theorists, and authors have struggled with the question of who we are for
millennia. During the 19th century, Emily Dickinson bravely confronted this question as she
pondered and probed the philosophy of self. When most scholars examine the subject of self in
her poetry, they tend to focus on her spiritual and metaphysical language and her use of concepts
such as the soul. But both during and after Dickinson’s lifetime, the examination of nerves and
senses as well as the discovery of specific brain functions gave rise to the notion of a corporeal
self, one whose selfhood is deeply intertwined with his or her body in the world. Dickinson
incorporated these findings into her poetry by thinking deeply about the brain and its relationship
to the self. Like other writers of her time, she tended to place the self within this corporeal
framework, often conflating the bodily and the divine, the material and immaterial. Recent
scientific progress has only cemented these early thoughts on the body, and today neuroscience
often characterizes the self as emerging from consciousness in a material brain (Edelman 134).
But conflicting theories of self in neuroscience, such as whether the self is a single entity or
multiple, limit research of the self.
The self that is evident in Dickinson’s poetry appears fragmented yet cohesive. This
sense of self she puts forth is characterized by a negotiation of two sets of opposing ideas:
spiritualism and materialism as well as unity and division. But how can such negotiations
alleviate the conflicts between theories of self in neuroscience today? By understanding these
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two ways in which Dickinson grapples with the idea of self, the “limits to growth,” as Thomas
Insel calls them, of neuroscience may be alleviated. Specifically, Dickinson’s merging of these
disparate ideas may be a model for how merging conflicting theories of self in neuroscience can
lead to collaboration across disciplines and “large-scale science” that can result in “rapid
progress in understanding the brain and its disorders” (Insel 426).
While Emily Dickinson was composing poetry in the seclusion of her Massachusetts
home, the issue of selfhood troubled her greatly as advancements in science challenged her way
of thinking. Established ideas from mental scientists such as Thomas Brown and Thomas Upham
argued that the self was whole, healthy, and endowed by God, but examination of the brain
challenged these assumptions (Kearns 23). Unlike Brown and Upham, Dickinson argued for a
divided self, one characterized by dissociation and a frightening, conflicted interior. As these
ideas developed, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience were making moderate
advances as these fields began to separate from the introspective philosophy of the
Enlightenment and form their own scientific fields that relied on empirical research. As science
writers Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi describe in The Three Pound Universe, research into the
source of consciousness made slow advancements until the 1980s. But throughout Dickinson’s
life, scientists and physiologists mapped personality traits, located the source of human speech in
the brain, explored electrical impulses between neurons, and examined personality changes
resulting from traumatic head injuries (Hooper and Teresi xvii). Evidence from scholars like
Sabine Sielke suggests that these scientific advancements may have contributed to Dickinson’s
conception of a divided self. In “‘The Brain—is wider than the Sky’ or: Re-Cognizing Emily
Dickinson,” Sielke argues that Dickinson’s preoccupation with a divided self is the result of
exploring memory and emotion in the brain as well as identifying various parts of the brain,
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including the cerebellum and cerebrum, and the human sensory apparatus (Sielke 76). This
division and compartmentalization of the anatomy of the brain may have allowed Dickinson to
imagine a self that was just as divided.
Dickinson’s treatment of the brain in her poetry reflects her “deep interest in science” and
a desire to understand “the immense scope of our mental universe” (Sielke 74, 68). Reflective of
the time period she was living in, Dickinson often situated her poetry between the philosophical
and the scientific. Perhaps as a result, the self that Dickinson imagines seems contradictory at
best: divided yet also cohesive, material yet also spiritual. In some of her poems, such as “One
need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted” and “I felt a cleaving in my mind,” Dickinson portrays
a divided self, one whose numerous faculties and entities were “at times in conflict, at times in
concert, always multiple” (Kearns 29). According to Simone du Plock in “Emily Dickinson:
Metaphorical Spaces and the Divided Self,” Dickinson’s poetry is an attempt “to describe the
experience of being a ‘divided self’ – of fragmentation or splitting of the mind” (du Plock 268).
But as Kearns notes, her experiences of fragmentation seem to “take place within a unitary ‘I,’”
which implies Dickinson’s uncertainty as to whether the self was divided and whole (Kearns 21).
In other poems, such as “The Brain—is wider than the Sky” and “I felt a Funeral, in my
Brain,” illustrating the debates of her day, Dickinson is also skeptical of whether the self is
material or immaterial, biological or spiritual. In “Emily Dickinson: Anatomist of the Mind,”
Michael Kearns writes, “There was a true conflict here, between identifying the mind with the
brain and localizing functions within the brain, on the one hand, and on the other treating the
mind as divine, immaterial, and unified” (Kearns 20). Here, Kearns illustrates a tension that is
central in many of Dickinson’s poems, a tension she wrestled with and encountered in her
reading and education (Kearns 20). These two sets of conflicted concepts Dickinson seems to
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have incorporated into her thinking of the self suggest that merging similarly conflicting theories
of self can lead to “rapid progress” in the field of neuroscience (Insel 426).
In “The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” Dickinson illustrates the two sets of opposing
ideas she seems to grapple with regarding the nature of the brain and the self, and understanding
how she merges these two ideas may lead to greater collaboration between neuroscientific
theories of self.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
Dickinson’s exploration of materialist and spiritualist perspectives, and her merging of
the two, are recurring themes throughout her poetry. In the first two stanzas, Dickinson describes
the brain’s material capacity to comprehend and mentally construct physical phenomena much
larger than itself, such as the sky and sea. The second stanza expands Dickinson’s materialist
conception of the brain by comparing it to physical objects like a bucket and sponge. Both
metaphors, when scrutinized, seem to suggest two different descriptions of the brain. As a
bucket, the brain appears static and as something merely to “fill up.” On the other hand, as a
sponge, the brain appears more flexible with the ability to grow, expand, and adapt rather than
merely contain. The incongruity of these metaphors perhaps represents the still-limited
information Dickinson had on the brain. She is also unclear as to what this metaphorical water
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may be, what actually fills the brain—knowledge, experiences, memories, cultural influences, or
some combination—but she clearly imagines the brain as a material organ capable of forming
mental representations of both physical phenomena and the self.
The last stanza turns from the material to the divine, illustrating her struggle with the role
of spirituality in the brain and self. She writes, “The Brain is just the weight of God,” drawing on
the tension between two popular ideas: the Biblical idea that man was created in God’s image
and the humanist idea that man has psychological need of a God and so invents one (9). The
difference between this weight, if they differ at all, Dickinson writes, is the difference between
“Syllable” and “Sound” (12). Brunner argues that the fact Dickinson does not know if they will
differ is significant and adds to her internal conflict regarding the possible divinity of the brain.
She writes, “One part of her consciousness insists that the brain ‘will differ’ from the Holy, but
some other part of her mind questions the equation and implies equivalence” (Brunner 4).
Dickinson’s consistent ambiguity about whether the brain is completely material or somehow
endowed by God suggests her deep conflict with these opposing ideas. By arguing that the “brain
is just the weight of God,” she is effectively merging the two by implying a sense of
equivalency.
Dickinson also explores the conflict between a unified self that mental scientists uphold
and a divided self that scientific advancements seem to suggest, and this poem appears to
illustrate a self that seems whole. In the first stanza, Dickinson argues that the brain can “contain
/ With ease” the sky and “You—beside” (3-4). If the poem is read with the brain belonging to the
addressee, then it shows that Dickinson locates the self, one that seems healthy, unified, and selfaware, explicitly in the brain. Furthermore, her portrayal of a self that seems whole and unified
comes into conflict with later poems that stress division and fragmentation. Ultimately,
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Dickinson’s merging of materialist and spiritualist ideas signals her ability to negotiate between
the two perspectives and perhaps offers a method for how neuroscience can approach conflicting
ideas of the self.
Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” is another poem that shows the poet’s conflict
with ideas of materialism and spiritualism as well as fragmentation and cohesion.
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then The location of the funeral illustrates that, for Dickinson, the brain is the site of activity for the
self. Like the previous poem, Dickinson mediates between two popular ideas: a unified, healthy
self and a fragmented self. But unlike “The Brain—is wider than the Sky,” this poem draws an
important distinction between different parts of the self—the brain, mind, and soul—with the
brain “containing” the two latter entities. These multiple entities, or multiple selves, are also
reflected in the fact that there are multiple people, mourners, at the funeral. In Lyric Time:
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Dickinson and the Limits of Genre, Sharon Cameron suggests, “the mourners represent that part
of the self which fights to resurrect or keep alive the thought the speaker is trying to commit to
burial” (Cameron 97). This notion of multiple selves “contained” in the brain reflects
Dickinson’s conflict with a unified and divided self as well as her efforts to merge them into
what Kearns refers to as a “unitary ‘I,’” a self that can narrate its experiences by hearing and
feeling the sensation of the funeral (Kearns 21).
This poem also illustrates Dickinson’s struggle with merging materialism and
spiritualism. While thinking of a material self, Dickinsons relies heavily on the body’s senses,
and throughout this poem, there is a strong indication to suggest that these senses are central to
the self. Not only is the narrator continuing to feel, hear, and think during the funeral despite the
apparent death, but there are also a number of images that conjure up the senses, particularly
sound—lead boots, tolling bells, creaking floorboards, and the drumming service. Later, “Being”
is reduced to “an Ear” and, in “Silence,” the “I” becomes “Wrecked, solitary” (14-16). Since the
brain is the interpreter of our senses, it follows that without them our idea of self breaks down.
Other scholars, such as Katie Peterson in “Surround Sound: Dickinson’s Self and the Hearable,”
have made similar connections between sense and self. “Stranded inside an overpowering
moment of extreme sensation, Dickinson finds herself alone but deeply present to herself.”
While “engaged in a dramatic relationship with Silence as its listener and its active interlocutor,
she doubles herself even as she’s reduced herself to pure perceptual receptivity” (Peterson 76).
The result, Peterson suggests, is a complete “collapse of the self into pure perception without
personal history” (Peterson 76). Dickinson’s reliance on the body’s senses, and the self’s
subsequent collapse without them, demonstrates the role of materialism in her idea of the self.
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In addition to this material perspective, Dickinson also relies on spiritual ideas such as
the soul to form her idea of the self. Continuing with her funeral metaphor, Dickinson writes,
“And then I heard them lift a Box / And creak across my Soul” (9-10). This line portrays the soul
as the creaking floorboards of the funeral home, which may be interpreted as the foundation of
the brain and possibly the self as well. The use of the term “soul” here is interesting to note
because in an unedited draft she originally used “Brain” instead, but then ultimately crossed it
out (Dickinson). While this may have simply been done for rhyming purposes, Dickinson clearly
thought quite deeply about the brain, soul, and self and the revision may have more to do with a
specific quality or function “Soul” has that “Brain” does not. Her use of “soul” shows how
Dickinson still found value in the divine when her materialist views were limited. By having a
material brain contain the soul, Dickinson effectively merges these conflicting ideas, and this
collaborative technique may prove useful for uniting opposing ideas of the self in neuroscience.
In “One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted,” Dickinson extends her idea of the
divided self by imagining multiple selves in conflict with one another.
One need not be a Chamber—to be Haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain has Corridors—surpassing
Material Place—
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting—
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase—
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter—
In lonesome Place—
Ourself behind ourself, concealed—
Should startle most—
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.
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The Body—borrows a Revolver—
He bolts the Door—
O'erlooking a superior spectre—
Or More—
Here, Dickinson portrays a terrifying interior, indicating that the self is complex and perhaps
even unknowable. Most notable is the way in which Dickinson conflates the material and
spiritual. She writes, “The Brain has Corridors—surpassing / Material Place” (3-4). Here,
Dickinson describes the brain as having physical corridors but notes that these pathways
“surpass” materialism, implying that the brain has a metaphysical or spiritual component as well.
This is a common technique Dickinson used in the previous two poems to merge the two
conflicting ideas of materialism and spiritualism that were prevalent in her day.
Perhaps more importantly, Dickinson’s depiction of a divided self in this poem conflicts
with the more cohesive self found in “The Brain—is wider than the Sky” or “I felt a Funeral.”
The poem’s multiple, or divided, selves seem to be at odds with one another. She parodies the
Gothic form by arguing that typical Gothic images such as a “Midnight Meeting” or an “Abbey
gallop” are “far safer” than meeting one’s self unarmed (5, 9). She writes of a “Cooler Host” and
“a superior spectre” in our brains but clearly notes that it is “Ourself behind ourself, concealed”
that “should startle most” (8, 13-14, 19). Furthermore, “the stanza… offers no judgement as to
which [self] should be running the show, unlike the conviction of mental scientists that God
intended the rational mind to be the highest expression of human development” (Kearns 23). By
suggesting a self that is divided, Dickinson is continuing to break apart from the spiritualists who
believe in a unified self. But despite this, she is still trying to include a sort of metaphysical or
spiritual entity in her conception of the self, such as the “a superior spectre,” signaling her
attempts to merge these opposing ideas (19).
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Two other Dickinson poems, “I felt a cleaving in my mind” and “The Brain, within its
Groove, ” further emphasize the opposing ideas of a divided self and unified self as well as how
Dickinson merged them.
I felt a cleaving in my mind
As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to join
Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon a floor.
The poem describes the sensation of a severed connection with an “I” attempting to “match” the
disconnected thoughts “seam by seam” (3). Not only is the self split by the cleaving, but also by
distinguishing between discrete entities such as the mind and the brain. By viewing the self as
such, Dickinson broke away from the prominent beliefs of other thinkers in her lifetime such as
Thomas Brown and Thomas Upham. The ambiguity of “behind” and “before” in the second
stanza establishes a temporal and spatial displacement in which thoughts are separated. But for
both Brown and Upham, this was impossible. They thought it was absurd to have a person who
thought of him or herself as divided (Deppman 100).
In addition, the very notion of a split brain suggests that it is typically whole, and the fact
that there is an “I” narrating and recording the sensation of fragmentation implies the “unitary
‘I,’” Kearns refers to when discussing “I felt a funeral” (Kearns 21). Dickinson’s merging of
these two opposing ideas in this way perhaps offers a method for how neuroscience can approach
conflicting ideas of the self.
Similar to other poems, “The Brain, within its Groove” explores Dickinson’s conflict
between the two competing ideas of self: unified and divided.
The Brain, within its Groove
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Runs evenly—and true—
But let a Splinter swerve—
'Twere easier for You—
To put a Current back—
When Floods have slit the Hills—
And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—
And trodden out the Mills—
The opening lines reveal that the brain’s natural state is to “Run evenly—and true” (2).
Such lines harken back to the mental capacities of the healthy, unified self in “The Brain—is
wider than the Sky.” (3-4). Sielke notes that Dickinson’s image of the brain simply running
along seems to give it a degree of agency, “living a life of its own,” that a divided self would
lack, noting that it seems as “detached as Emerson’s eyeball” (Sielke 75). This idea of a unified
self comes into conflict when Dickinson postulates the existence of a “Splinter” and notes that
“You,” the reader, would have an easier time uniting flood waters back into a single current than
connecting a splintered brain (3-4).
The self that emerges from the “brain” of Dickinson’s poetry is characterized by her
negotiation of two sets of ideas: materialism and spiritualism as well as unity and division.
Reflecting the opposing ideas of her time, Dickinson’s poems offer conflicting views of whether
the self is material or divine, and she resolves the dilemma by imagining a self in the material
brain that is comprised of the body’s senses as well as the divine soul. Dickinson also mediates
between whether the self was unified or divided, which she resolves by conceiving the brain as a
container of sorts that could form a cohesive and unitary “I” out of the multiple selves she
imagined. Dickinson’s blending of these opposing ideas allows her to arrive at a self that is
layered and multifaceted, and this may be a model for how merging different theories of self in
neuroscience can lead to a self that is similarly layered and complex.
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Though Dickinson appears to have been influenced by scientific conclusions to inform
her developing ideas of a corporeal self, there is evidence to suggest that she was quite cognizant
of its limits (Sielke 76). For example, Sielke writes, “For her, instruments that measure width,
depth, and weight are as fallible as the scientific inquirer” (Sielke 73). But a closer examination
reveals that Dickinson’s methods for uniting the opposing ideas in her poems may help
neuroscience resolve conflicting theories of self within its field. Ultimately, these conflicting
theories in neuroscience hinder progress because they lead to a narrow perspective. In “Imaging
the Human Brain: Reflections on Some Emerging Issues,” Marcus Raichle notes, “both
neurophysiologists and cognitive neuroscientists, because of the narrowness of the focus of their
inquiry, have overlooked a major fraction of the functionally relevant activity in the brain”
(Raichle 109). By borrowing Dickinson’s techniques of melding different ideas, neuroscience
can conceive of a self that takes advantage of multiple perspectives and overcome its narrow
focus.
In the journal Nature Neuroscience, Thomas Insel advocates for a call to action in which
he urges “collaboration, coordination and computation from a broad neuroscience community” to
make “rapid progress in understanding the brain” (Insel 426). He advocates for “large-scale
science,” using the Human Genome Project as a model, that can result in widespread
advancements (Insel 426). Insel’s call for collaboration can be applied to the self in neuroscience
where conflicting theories ultimately undermine the progress he seeks.
Within neuroscience, there are a number of different theories regarding the precise nature
of the self. Some neurologists, such as Gerald Edelman in his book titled, interestingly enough,
Wider than the Sky, suggest that a self emerges only from a higher-order consciousness, which is
the ability to be conscious of being conscious and the ability to conceptualize the past and future
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(Edelman 134). This is the self that most people tend to think of, one with beliefs, memories, and
life history. It is a more reflective, “content-rich self” and is our “center of narrative gravity;”
Antonio Damasio calls it our “autobiographical self” (Asma and Greif 28). In short, “we make
ourselves… through the stories we tell ourselves” (Asma and Greif 29).
By contrast, in “Affective Neuroscience and the Philosophy of Self,” Stephen Asma and
Thomas Greif argue that the source of the self actually resides in primary consciousness, which
is concerned with the present. Asma and Greif write, “The self accompanies the content of
experience with something like an ‘awareness tone’—and this moment of self-awareness, this
crystallization of subjectivity, is a ‘thin subject’ lacking ‘ontic depth.’ Each new activity—indeed
each new moment—brings a new self” (Asma and Greif 27). Unlike Edelman and Damasio, they
believe the self lies deeper in the brain. By arguing for an “archaic self” that is “based more on
affectively rich action than rarefied intellectual reflection,” Asma and Greif suggest a self that
includes emotions and a “biological notion of self-identity,” essentially rewriting Descartes’s
famous line and claiming “I feel, therefore I am” (Asma and Greif 29).
Other theories of self seem quite similar to Dickinson’s. The notion of multiple selves
that was so prevalent in Dickinson’s poetry seem just as widespread among some neuroscientists.
In “Reconsidering Self and Identity Through a Dialogue Between Neuroscience and
Psychoanalytic Theory,” Michael Gerson argues that as research “moves toward greater
specificity, the understanding of self has become parceled into more than two dozen subselves”
(Gerson 214). He cites a number of scientists who have identified a facial self, verbal self, and
emotional self, as well as selves that narrate and interpret our experiences (Gerson 214-215).
Other neurologists have also noted the wide range of selves we may have by referring to
the brain’s two hemispheres in split-brain patients. It is not uncommon for split-brain patients to
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experience a left hand that seems to have a will of its own, controlled by the nonlinguistic right
brain. By examining a number of these cases, Hooper and Teresi in The Three-Pound Universe
ponder, “If each hemisphere has an inner life… why does a single, imperious ‘I’ take credit for
all our thoughts, beliefs, and actions?” (Hooper and Teresi 220). In one experiment on split-brain
patients, researchers flashed the message “smile” on one screen and “frown” on another, and the
patient tried to perform both actions at the same time, signaling how both hemispheres attempt
conflicting actions without a unified “I” deciding which to do first. Harkening back to the
conflicted selves in Dickinson’s “One need not be a Chamber,” Hooper and Teresi propose that
the brain may actually consist of an “uneasy coalition of multiple subminds” (Hooper and Teresi
235). Without collaborating with other scientists who have different perspectives, these theories
of self ultimately seem isolated and undermine progress with their narrow focuses.
The first example of mediation that neuroscientists may look at is between the bodily and
the divine. Although Dickinson merges the two ideas in her notion of selfhood, there is no such
negotiation in neuroscience, since neuroscience typically disregards the soul and other divine
entities as unnecessary for the existence of a self. But in “Science, Technology, and Emily
Dickinson,” Christine Avery suggests that Dickinson’s commitment to including the divine in a
material brain has value. “Though there is much complexity and imperfection in Emily
Dickinson’s reaction to science… the viewpoint she unmistakably writes from has a
comprehensiveness and validity which is both poetically and humanly valuable” (Avery 55).
Although discussions of the soul and spirit may be inappropriate for neuroscience because such
entities are not considered real, Dickinson’s strong commitment to closing the distance between
disparate ideas may prove a beneficial technique since those who research the self often struggle
to broaden their perspective and merge ideas from disciplines such as philosophy, psychology,
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and neuroscience. Such an interdisciplinary approach may yield surprising results as further
research on the self is conducted.
One neuroscientist who is merging these ideas and offering a new perspective of the self
is Michael Gerson. His essay, “Reconsidering Self and Identity Through a Dialogue Between
Neuroscience and Psychoanalytic Theory,” considers the self from the perspective of two
different disciplines, which offers him a broader perspective than many other neuroscientists.
Like Dickinson, he argues for the existence of multiple selves while still defining unity and
continuity as primary characteristics of selfhood. Unity, Gerson says, “refers to feeling integrated
and whole, as opposed to feeling fragmented, dissociated, or depersonalized” (Gerson 221). For
Gerson, a unity of self is easily available through simple reflection and introspection. Continuity,
on the other hand, is a “sense of ‘going-on-being’ wherein consciousness achieves a temporal
dimension” (Gerson 222). Perhaps if other neuroscientists followed Gerson’s model of exploring
self through a variety of different perspectives and disciplines, new ideas of the self may arise.
The scientific fields that began during Dickinson’s lifetime culminated in a deeper search
for self than she could have imagined. For both Dickinson and neuroscientists of the 21st
century, the self is a complex entity, at times divided between multiple, conflicted selves, at
times unified in an autonomous “I.” Even with advancements in science and technology, the
answer to who and where we are, both in the universe and within ourselves, remain out of reach
for the moment. But examining Dickinson’s negotiation between opposing ideas in light of the
immense strides in neuroscience suggests ways our interrogation of the self can be expanded. By
doing so, we move one step closer to uncovering the precise nature of selfhood.
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Works Cited
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