Dr Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist and writer, delves into his hemispheric hypothesis explaining societal addiction. Topics include the decline of Western civilization, left hemisphere dominance, ingredients for human flourishing, and the concept of the sacred and embedded values in being.
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insights INSIGHT
Why The Human Brain Is Divided
The brain split into asymmetric hemispheres solves the tradeoff between focused manipulation and broad vigilance.
The left hemisphere narrows attention to known, graspable bits while the right sustains open, contextual understanding of wholes and novelty.
insights INSIGHT
How Civilisations Fall From A Divided Brain
Civilisations flourish when right-hemisphere depth and left-hemisphere focused skill balance each other, then decay when the left mode dominates.
McGilchrist traces Greek and Roman rises and falls to this shift from lived richness to abstract rule-following.
insights INSIGHT
Signs Of A Left Hemisphere Society
A left-hemisphere dominated society loses wisdom, nuance and embodied skill, replacing them with bureaucratic rules and measurable data.
This produces paranoia, factionalism, de-skilling of professionals, and a spectator rather than actor relationship to life.
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In this insightful episode, Dr McGilchrist discusses how his hemispheric hypothesis may help to account for the widespread addiction in our society. Dr McGilchrist is a psychiatrist and writer, who is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context. He is the author of several books, including the international bestseller: “The Master and His Emissary”, and most recently: “The Matter with Things”.
In this conversation, we explore:
— The extent to which we may be entering into the third major decay of Western civilisation and how Dr McGilchrist’s hemisphere hypothesis may help to account for this
— The differences in how the two hemispheres attend to the world and how we are becoming an increasingly left-hemisphere dominated society
— The three most important ingredients for holistic human flourishing
— Dr McGilchrist’s views on the “sacred” and whether or not we can view values such as goodness and truth as being embedded into the structure of being itself.
And more.
You can learn more about Dr McGilchrist’s work by going to: www.channelmcgilchrist.com
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Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Psychiatrist and Writer, who lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. He was formerly a Consultant Psychiatrist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, where he was Clinical Director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services.
Dr McGilchrist has published original research and contributed chapters to books on a wide range of subjects, as well as original articles in papers and journals, including the British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. He has taken part in many radio and TV programmes, documentaries, and numerous podcasts, and interviews on YouTube, among them dialogues with Jordan Peterson, David Fuller of Rebel Wisdom, and philosopher Tim Freke. His books include Against Criticism, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning, and Ways of Attending. He published his latest book: The Matter With Things, a book of epistemology and metaphysics. You can keep up to date with his work at https://channelmcgilchrist.com.
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6 Books Dr McGilchrist Recommends Every Therapist Should Read:
— The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World - Dr Iain McGilchrist - https://amzn.to/3IUXPKn
— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World - Dr Iain McGilchrist - https://amzn.to/3oOSFIW
— Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the light of modern art, literature, and thought - Louis Sass - https://amzn.to/3qpm5Og
— The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind - Louis Sass - https://amzn.to/3N6ct3Q
— The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics - Henri Bergson - https://amzn.to/43DMC8O
— Lived Time: Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies - Eugène Minkowski - https://amzn.to/45IyuNG