As Russell Brain (1951a) explained one form of this hypothesis: “What we call events in the physical brain are happenings about which we may have indirect knowledge inferred from our perception of other peoples brains and what they tell us about their experiences: but we have direct awareness of the physical events in our own brains and when we thus perceive them we find them to be thoughts, sensations, feelings, and so on.”
According this hypothesis there is thus only one kind of events, but they appear different to us because we have knowledge of our own minds in terms of perceptual symbols and knowledge of the physical world, including other peoples brains, expressed in conceptual symbols.
If for the moment we accept this hypothesis, then it seems to me that the questions I asked have little meaning. Brain states and mind states are two aspects of one series of events which appear different only because we perceive them in different ways. One cannot then imagine purely physical disease or purely psychological disease, and it makes no sense to ask whether mental states can cause physical states. If one asks whether emotions like anxiety or anger can cause physical disease what one is really asking is whether mind-brain states like anxiety or anger can cause physical disease elsewhere in the body. If, indeed, we watch someone losing his temper, can we really say that this is something in the mind-something purely mental- causing something in the body? And I do not think it makes much differences to the argument if we suppose that brain states and mind states are different events, but events moving, so far as we know, exactly in parallel.
Common Sense Dualism.
I would like to ask those who talk about physical diseases arising in the body and psychological disorders arising in the mind and who argue whether disorder in the mind can cause physical disease in the body, to explain to what kind of a hypothesis of body-mind relationships they are subscribing? So far as one can see, it must be a so-called common-sense dualism, which conceives of an independent immaterial mind in some mysterious way interacting with a material brain and body.
But I suspect that this popular dualism again depends on the two kinds of knowledge to which Russell Brain (1951b) has drawn attention. We have difficulty in equating events in our own minds which we perceive directly as thoughts and feelings with events in brains of which we have only indirect knowledge by inference, and we therefore regard our thoughts and feelings as more or less independent things, without pausing to consider the implications of this view.
But wherever ultimate belief or philosophical hypothesis we my entertain, so far as our observation can go, a person is surely a body-mind unity. We have no experience of mind separate from ourselves, and we cannot imagine such a state of affairs in anyone else. So far as our own observations and the inferences we can make from them go, a person is a body-mind unity; body and mind are in some way inseparable aspects of a person.
It would seem, therefore, that we must regard all diseases as states or modes of behaviour of a person who is a body-mind unity, and it follows, surely, that all disease must be regarded as psychosomatic, in the sense this word is generally used. All diseases must affect in some degree both body and mind. We have no right, then, to divide diseases into physical and psychological, in the sense of that which arises in or affects the mind and that which arises in or affects the body, nor to say that something happening in an entity mind can cause something else to happen in an entity body.
But we can study diseased persons by different methods. If we study them by methods which provide information in physical terms we obtain information in physical terms. If we study them by methods which give an answer in psychological terms, we obtain information in psychological terms.
What we can do then is to group disease states roughly into these in which most of the relevant and useful information seems at present to be obtained by physical methods; those in which most of the relevant and useful information seems at present to be obtained by psychological methods; and those in which both methods supply relevant and useful information. The last group corresponds, of course, to what are often now referred to as the psychosomatic disorders.
But even this division can be no more than a rough and temporary grouping for the sake of convenience. For I believe it is true that the more diseased persons are studied by both physical and psychological techniques. the more disease states we find in which both methods produce relevant information.
