MIND, BRAIN AND BIOCHEMISTRY 



c*o 



MAN lives in a fascinating, kaleidoscopic world, and the 

 microcosm that is man is itself a wonderful complex 

 of the changing and the abiding. There is constant 

 change at every level of his physical and psychological make- 

 up. Yet behind this ever-changing phenomenon there is a 

 permanent substratum, a human person who undergoes these 

 changes. 



Careful studies have shown that there is a constant turnover 

 of much of the body's chemical components. On the neuro- 

 physiological level the pulsating brain has been called " an 

 enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a 

 dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern, though never 

 an abiding one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns." ^ On 

 the chemical level the unending array of mobile patterns is 

 well known to biochemists. On the level of man's conscious 

 life the constant flux is even more evident: sensory images, 

 ideas, desires and emotions tumble over one another in rapid 

 succession. The facts of change are so constant and obvious 

 as to lead many to doubt the reality of anything permanent. 

 Some scientists wonder whether there really is such a thing as 

 a -person, for they point out that even the so-called person 

 seems to undergo marked changes, sometimes to the point of 

 developing a psychosis. Schizophrenia, for example, suggests 

 a split of personality. The schizophrenic reveals himself as one 

 having a dual personality, at one time revealing the behavioral 

 pattern of one personality, and at other times manifesting an 

 entirely different personality. But, we may ask, is this a true 

 split of the person"^ 



^ C. S. Sherrington, Man on His Nature, 2nd ed. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1953) , 

 p. 184. 



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