56 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
African women may actually decide as adults to undergo genital mutilation,
or choose to inflict this sexual abuse upon their daughters, in order to
create a defining experience which can keep the mental fragment of their
culture „alive.‟
The emotional pain involved in reintegrating a person suffering from
multiple personalities is just as intense. It is common for patients
undergoing treatment to attempt more than once to commit suicide. Mental
fragments often do not want to come together because they are afraid that
integration will result in their „death.‟ The process of mental unification is
like peeling layers from an onion. Each mental revelation uncovers another
set of hurts and it may be only at the end of a long road that the core
trauma is unveiled. The pain of these latter stages can be excruciating
because each suppressed memory which comes to the surface will be re-
experienced by the patient in all of its original emotional intensity.
Mercy Strategy and the Brain
Let me introduce this section by describing how the neurologist goes
about determining the functions of the various parts of the brain. This will
help us to see why neurology is still somewhat of an inexact science.
The researcher cannot just open up a person‟s head and start poking
with needles. This type of intrusive research fell into disuse, thankfully, at
the end of the Third Reich. Today, a brain researcher has four options:
First, he can do his experiments on monkeys and rats. While monkeys are
not human, their brains are similar and much of what we know about the
human brain comes from work with animals. Second, he can wait for some
human to lose part of his brain in an accident, and then try to find out
which mental function is now missing. This is the study of brain lesions.
Third, since the invention of PET scanners and other brain imagers, it is
possible for the first time to see the functioning human brain in action.
However, images are still somewhat blurry and scanning for one picture
takes several minutes. Fourth, the brain surgeon must at times poke around
in a live human brain. For instance, in the case of extreme brain seizures,
the doctor may open up the skull of the patient and remove the part of the
brain which is malfunctioning. Before doing the actual cutting, though, he
will probe the cortex with electrical signals and look for responses from the
patient. That way he can know which sections can be removed and which
are absolutely essential for normal functioning.
Now that we know the conditions under which neurologists must do
their work, we can frame the question. Is there a location in the brain
whose operation corresponds to Mercy thought? Unfortunately, the answer
is not totally straightforward. Instead, the answer must be pieced together.
As far as neurology is concerned, first of all, we are starting our
analysis of the mind from the wrong point. The modern study of brain
regions began in 1861 when Paul Broca, a French physician, discovered