The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
After a prolonged exposure to a neurological stressor such as with drugs or alcohol, the removal of that exposure results in a withdrawal event with an increase of unpleasant symptoms during the withdrawal. The neurological factors and processes that are behind drug and alcohol withdrawal are nerve-cell communication events that can happen anywhere in the nervous system and can be understood with an understanding of the coordinated language of the nervous system.
The process of withdrawal (much like that of drug/alcohol withdrawal) can occur with any change in neurological functioning in overt or extremely subtle ways:
A finger is burnt on the stove. After an initial short period of pain there can be a period of hours (or sometimes days) with a particular lack of feeling or even numbness at the sight of the burn. Then the pain increases as the injury is healing. This later pain is a withdrawal event.
Another form of burn is when a person is exposed to poison ivy or oak. The toxic oils of the plant are only on the skin for several hours and may not be noticed. (A slight sensation of numbness could be experienced by a sensitive person.) Several days after exposure to the oils of the plant the skin erupts in itching and blisters. This neurological reaction is a withdrawal event.
You stress your skin by scratching it and then an itch develops. Scratching the skin gives temporary relief from the itch but leaving the itch alone long enough will allow the itch to eventually go away. Itching is a form of neurological withdrawal.
During the excitement of a sporting event an ankle is injured but the game continues and the athlete does not notice any pain. The next morning is experienced with a significant amount of pain and the athlete is unable to play for several days. This pain was delayed due to the neurological mechanisms behind withdrawal.
A prisoner in a nazi concentration camp is able to get through the experience by becoming numb to the inhumanity of the experience and doing whatever is necessary to survive with surprising amounts of energy. Not long after being liberated and safely back with family and friends this former prisoner sinks into a deep post-traumatic depression. This depression is a form of withdrawal.
A body is exposed to a rapidly reproducing invader (virus or bacteria). It is only after the body has repelled most of these invaders and the person is no longer contagious that the most unpleasant symptoms of sickness develop. Many of these symptoms are caused by the neurological mechanisms of withdrawal.
A person runs a long distance without training for it or lifts a lot of weight beyond a usual amount of exercise and two days later pain is experienced in the muscles that were heavily worked. This pain several days after the stressful event is partly from a withdrawal event.
A patient in psychotherapy spends several years examining his feelings and his past and then has a psychological "breakthrough" with a new awareness or memory that is accompanied by sobbing and a period of depression (that could last for a long time) before it is possible to rebuild the personality, the self-esteem and the mood and effect a "cure." This breakthrough (or breakdown) that comes with waking up a part of the brain is a neurological withdrawal event.
A person lives a life of poverty and suddenly wins millions of dollars in a lottery. The first reaction is to cry. Then there is a period of extreme excitement. Later there is a period of depression dealing with the changed circumstances. The first reaction of crying is a withdrawal event. The later depression is also a withdrawal event.
In the rare events of miraculous cures from supposedly terminal cancer (without using any of the treatments of western medicine), a common experience of these people is of the body feeling like it is on fire for a period of time before the body starts rejecting the cancer. This feeling of being on fire is evidence of a neurological withdrawal event.
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Many of the problems of medicine, biology, psychology and philosophy require an understanding of the basic mathematical principles behind how the nervous system does what it does to achieve function and experience, and that mathematics is not explained using narrowly-focused statistics. Understanding how this math works will be the tool for the discovery of many answers of great importance to humanity. The case for this concept and the offering of an explanation of this kind of math is made in the many essays of this website.
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This website and the podcasts of Everyone's Revolution explain how the brain creates the mind, but many side issues must be resolved in order to teach this material. Once you realize that the "hard problems" are really the first problems to be answered, you then have a tool for changing all of science and medicine by explaining a massive number of discoveries that will fall into line in order to unify the evidence. All of the evidence is good. The interpretations of the evidence are mistaken in many cases. For ten years now there have been new discoveries of evidence that all move in the direction of supporting this theory (or this school of many theories) and its predictions. Quite a few people have started to pay attention to this theory as well.
