Development of the 'alien self'

Development of the 'alien self'
In early childhood, the failure to find a representation in the primary caretaker mind will fail the mirroring process of a child to the primary care taker. The child will not be able to internalize his or her feeling, and thus unable to generate the agentive self. In other words, the child will develop an alien experience within the self, meaning that the ideas and feelings that created do not seem to the self (Fonagy, 1995).

This means that the infant cannot find herself in the mother's mind, instead, she finds the mother's mind or the mother has colonize the self.

Individuals who have developed an alien self usually do not have enough capacity for mentalization; the capacity to think about the mental states of someone else in terms of beliefs, feelings and desires. Studies shave shown that those care takers who have strong mentalization capacity likely to have secured children attached to them. Interestingly, researches have shown that mothers of girls sexually abused by male abusers appear to have lower capacity to think of their child in mental state other others due to their past traumatic experiences. Thus, they are not able to have a coherent, integrated and meaningful reflection on parenting their children.

emotional stress and the effects of dopamine

12 Feb 2009

From the extract report of dr.Oliver Sacks, Awakings, 1990

It is surprising to know that the level of dopamine has a significant influence for the level of rigidity in a Parkinson patient. PET scan is able to determine the precise level of dopamine in a brain. For example, when the level of emotional stress increases, there will be an obvious drop in dopamine level in a brain, but a 30 to 50% drop may not produce any clinical symptoms. However, if it is further reduce by another 20%, Parkinsonian symptoms may prompt appear. Hence, if one reaches a threshold level or borderline which caused by stress, there may be a depletion of dopamine in the brain, and this may further trigger the Parkinsonian symptoms. In other words, the symptoms may come and go in any given situation. This should not be interpreted as the symptom may just disappear like that.

Rhythms of the brain

In a real life brain networks, there is no top or bottom up process signals because the activities of the neurons can be transmitted to any level. It was reported by Gyorgy Buzsaki in his book mentioned above (2008) that the messages of the neurons between the area of the cortexes can be exchanged by oscillations, resonant loops, or transcient oscillatory coupling.

In the context of a workng memory in human brain, the nested gamma oscillations can be used for grouping cell assemblies from a theta cycles. Holding and shifting the sequences in subsequent theta cycles can serve to represent episodic memories. Repeated episodic memories in hippocampus can translate into sematic memory.

woman vs men

It is reported that women display significantly greater activity in the affect regulating structure than men do during PET scan. The data indicate gender differences in empathic styles between sexes (Schore, 2001).Recent research shows that impaired orbitofrontal corelates to autism, schizophrenia, mania, unipolar depression, phobic states, posttraumatic stress disorder, drug addiction, alcoholism, and borderline and psychopathic personality disorders (Schore, 2001).Early traumatic experience of a baby will result in storing such negative experiences into implicit or procedural memory. It will later manifest in rapid emotional activiation and instability, reflect hyperarousal, and subsequent rapid escalation of intense nagative affect, self disorganized, explosively and implosively (Schore, 2001)

disassociation and reconnection

The state-regulating emotional experience mostly occurs in the preconcious mind mainly because the temporal sulcus (amydala) is not well connected to the orbitofrontal lobes. It means that the emotional response is not well connected to the executive function of the brain, and therefore, the brain is not able to control much about the emotional responses (such as depression and anger). This is mainly due to the fact the obitofrontal lobes of human being have evolved recently whereas the temporal lobes have been there since a long time.


The recent evolution of the emotional brain have started to integrate ideas and thoughts, and thus form 'empathy', a form of intelligent that a person able to understand how others' feel. A person with understanding of empathy usually has a superior skills in critical human functions such as social adjustments, control of moods, drive, and responsibilities, and all these factors are crucial in shaping the personality of an individual (Cavada & Schultz, 2000, p.205).

2nd Sept 2008

Today is the 2nd day of Hari Raya in the year of 2008. it is a rare opportunity to spend time with the family especially with the kids. I have so far finished 2 important books about attachment theory. In summary, maternity care is crucially important during the first two years of an infant, where the right hemisphere of the emotional brain about to develop.

In any event where care is not presence during the first two years of a baby, the right brain will be impaired and it may develop trauma. Such traumatic depression will be stored in the unconcious mind of the right brain. As a result of these unintegrated displacement in the psychological mind, it will develop a rigid character as well as inflexible behavior.

The rigidity of the personality will be reflected in day to day life, and it may also transfer to other generation within the family.

Rage and Aggression

The premise of rage, anger, and aggression are rooted in the early stage of human relationship, and later became reactivated in the later life. In Alexander and Der Heide (1997) article, it was high-lighted in a case study that one would trigger rage an anger is to protect himself from being hurt. It may be due to a series of humiliating events in his early life.

The unresolved shame and embarrassment would further disintegrate the human connection. Without human connection, it further undermine the flows of energy and information in any dyad relationship.

If a child is treated by a cold,icy, and withdrawn mother, the child is unlikely to receive an attune needs, and the chance of having a positive self esteem development will be significantly diminished. To make the matter worst, if the child is consistently receiving negative and rage information from his mother, he will be likely to establish a defensive mode to protect himself. With the on-going anxiety caused by the family, the child's affect synthesizing capacity will be compromised. 'Rather than becoming integrated into a complete sense of self experience, the unacceptable affects, together with the experience, the unacceptable affects, together with the experiences associated with them, are segragated from other affective experience' (Alexander and Der Heide, 1997). Such trauma experience will further result in fragmentation and disorganization in affective development of oneself.

Activation of an intense feelings like rage can serve to protect oneself from preventing the emergence of painful feelings of despair, worthlessness and hopelessness. In other words, the expression of rage and anger is to protect a fragile sense of self from disintegration in the face of the traumatic experience in the childhood life.