The Two of Me: The Rational Outer Me and the Emotional Inner Me

This book attempts to answer the question: How much of what we do is the result of conscious and deliberate decisions and how much originates in unconscious, unthought out, automatic directives? The answer is that far more than what we might imagine falls into the second category. We tend to assume responsibility for our unconsciously determined thoughts and actions, and even though we do not know why we think and act the way we do, we make up reasons for it, which we truly believe. Each one of us is really two people in the same body, who in many respects, function quite independently of each other, and yet somehow manage to get along with things, while the other, the outer brain, serves as the spokesperson for both of them. The inner brain is the source of our objectives and generates the emotions that keep us on track in our attainment of them. This book explores the strange relationship between these two parts of us across a spectrum of mental processes including, memory, language,problem-solving, dreams, delusions and hallucinations, and more complex pursuits sucs as the arts, humor and religion.

John Birtchnell is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry.