The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior
Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris
In the early 1800’s there was basically only one identified mental disorder called insanity or mental illness. Eventually a revolution occurred as doctors and other medical scientists were able to observe groupings of specific symptoms in populations of people and identify these groupings as separate disorders due to similarities in the behaviors of these groupings of people and similarities in their reactions to various medications.
The system is not so much set up to look for similarities as it is for differences. Any time a population of people can be separated into a type by observation of some characteristics, that group of people can also be identified with some kind of disorder (especially those who are extremes of that typing).
Any personality trait, any personal characteristic or behavior, and any personal interest, when taken to an extreme can be identified as a disorder.
This method of behavior identification has gotten out of hand. There are now several hundred disorders of the mind and nervous system listed in the DSM-IV. And the number of disorders is constantly expanding.
With the current rules for identifying new disorders, there will be no end to this expansion of the diagnostic manuals.
When the particular behaviors and abilities of people are the only things that set them apart, this is not criteria enough to conclude that they have different disorders. What if these disorders are caused by the same mechanisms, but mechanisms occurring in different geography of the brain. (Most are.) I accept that if a disorder is created by a particular microbe, or through provable exposure to a particular toxin, then that meets a suitable criteria for identifying a disease or disorder.
I would not have been able to figure out how the brain communicates and thinks without the information that has come from the current methods, but now it is time to discard these ways of looking at behavior and start looking at the processes and factors that are consistent and in common with all of the various problems of the nervous system.
Current trends in medical specialization have made any search for consistent common mechanisms very difficult. The need for time-saving methods of diagnosis that look for differences in patients that can then be categorized (partly for the convenience of insurance companies) also gets in the way of seeking common patterns that can lead to theoretical breakthroughs.
Some years ago I noticed that, within a very short time, three new disorders had been identified and possibly approved for future editions of the DSM. These disorders were observed using all of the rules of medical scientific method and some doctors were able to advance their careers by doing the research and publishing the papers that will forever identify these doctors as the discoverers of these new disorders. (More than likely, these doctors have since been making more money as speakers promoting awareness of these new disorders as well as possibly expanding their clinical business as the experts on the people with these disorders.)
Soon it was clear that the public relations efforts are working for the forces behind Body Dysmorphic Disorder. I was seeing press releases telling people how to identify the disorder in themselves and telling them where they might get help. The other two disorders I’ve listed (and there other disorders being discovered that are just as ridiculous) have gotten less attention because of the public perception of the flakiness of these classifications. (Clearly, the only thing holding these people back is politics.)
Any personality type, any behavior, any weakness, any interest that is taken to an extreme can be considered as a disorder or a disability. Further editions of the DSM are going to be several thousand pages long if they don’t realize the folly of this approach to explaining human behavior.
With these rules, I’m sure that some people are suffering from Leonardo DiCaprio Addictive Disorder, for instance. (The only thing holding these people back from getting the sympathy and recognition and help they deserve is that fewer professionals are willing to risk their careers on a doctoral thesis on a subject that sounds so silly.)
I’ll be showing patterns that can be identified in all disorders (and this includes physical disorders that are caused by nervous system controls - the mind and the body are not separate from each other). This requires a major shift in how the system is perceived and explained.
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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.
On these pages you will find ideas that should haunt you. Included are new concepts in science, medicine, sociology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy and more...
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.
