Michael Miller

Psychology 115W

Joe Lappin

10/08/02

Anosognosia

This defect that Damasio describes absolutely amazes me. While just reading the chapter, I realized that memory was vital to the extended consciousness, and the idea that diseases such as Alzheimer’s would eliminate the extended consciousness as we know it popped into my head. When I first read about Anosognosia, I was amazed that the extended consciousness could be limited but still exist in such a powerful way. These patients knew everything that was going on around them, but they were in what seemed a state of denial about their hindrance. I though to myself, “how could you possibly say you are alright when half of your body is useless?,” and then I realized that maybe if I brought the severity of the problem down a little bit, then I could rationalize it. I have read of parents involved in car crashes who are wounded severely, but they are able to save their child before they have the slightest inkling of the problems that afflict them. I realize of course that what Damasio referred to in his book was caused by lesions in a particular portion of the brain, but to be able to understand something more easily related to by myself, I had to make the problem smaller. It is not so hard to force pain out of one’s mind, and in thinking thusly, it is easier to understand how pain and disability can be pushed out of one’s mind by something interior that is uncontrolled by the self. One is almost a conscious effort to force the problem away while the other is being forced away for the individual.

As a side note, if the mind can’t recognize that there is a problem with the body, it is also plausible to say that the body can’t recognize it has a problem with itself. Damasio gives a chart of consciousness, and extended is of course at the top, but its foundation lies on the proto self. Therefore it is possible that if a portion of the proto self were to breakdown, then the extended consciousness could also be hindered in a very limited way as well; therefore, the possibility of a partial proto self breakdown is possible with the admittance that there is the possibility of an extended consciousness encumbrance.