4. Body and mind
The Cartesian dualism of mind and
body has been heavily debated by
philosophers
for centuries and has recently been
challenged by some neurologists
(some of whom argue that the mind
is simply a creation of the physical
brain.
5.
6.
7. This example shows a third person’s perception of
another’s changing personality
(see 2.2 below for a discussion of the changing self).
The notion of a new
person taking possession of a body can also be used
to express self-alienation.
12. In extreme circumstances, though, the continuity can break down. Lessing’s
character Matty in A Proper Marriage (1966, a novel in the same series as The
Four-Gated City) experiences a rapid alternation between different selves during
the pain of childbirth, caused by the fact that the cycles of pain and painlessness
are so all-encompassing and so radically different experientially that she cannot
even recall what the previous state felt like:
13.
14. This moment-by-moment fluctuation of self during waves of pain
lasting for
Several hours is rather different from the splitting into a “before”
and “after”
State following a major life-event (presumably, a rather different
“split-self”
Metaphor could be used to represent a character before and
after childbirth.
