Chapter 8 Dissociation and Neuroscience (1) the “Hidden Observer” (1)

A Scene from “Men in Black”




The scene in question in Men In Black, 1997

 

 A Holleywood movie "Men in Black" (1897) was one of my favorite. I saw the movie repeatedly with my little son who also liked it. There was a scene that especially caught my eye. After a contact with UFO, Edger, a decent farmer became like a different person. He got very thirsty and asked to drink thick sugar water. He then began behaving erratically, got insane and was finally killed. When he underwent an autopsy in the morgue, the examiner found a strange lid in the back of his head. When the lid was open, there is a tiny alien operating with control bars. It was revealed that Edgar was totally controlled by this alien. It really captured the movie watcher’s imagination. A tiny man inside of a man controlling his behaviors….. This is called Homunculus model which has a long history.



Nicolaas Hartsoeker Essai de dioptrique　published in Paris, 1694, page 230）



I will quote from Junji Hotta's book (2008).

"In olden times, Johannes Kepler , who is known for his theory of planets' movement had a model of human cognition: that there is a small man inside of the human’s head who is observing outside. People in the early 17th century came up with an idea about why children look like their parents. They thought that inside of the sperm of a man there is a small man, his miniature. Probably that is why people often think of sperm in this type of story. However, although there is no homunculus in the sperm, there is DNA which carries all the information about the man, and their views in the 17th century, therefore, were not quite off the mark. As for Kepler’s model of cognition, it is not reasonable to assume that inside of a man is another small man (because immediately people might ask who is operating that small man, etc) it might make sense to think that there are many small men doing their own tasks as a reflex" (Hotta, 2008).

Hotta, J. (2008) The Secret of Men and Robots. Kodansha.

Of course, the idea of homunculus is absurd from a scientific point of view, but it stirs our imagination if we allow ourselves to speculate a conscious existence inside of our brain. Our model of multiple personalities in individual with DID is a little like this version of homunculus model.
Hilgard’s experiment of “hidden observer”: do we all have multiple personalities ?

Some specialists have suggested that every one of us has an observing part of our mind, regardless of whether we have DID or not. In his already classical experiment, Ernst Hilgard demonstrated that there could be one (Hilgard, 1977).

Hilgard, E. (1977). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action. New York, NY: Wiley.

The experiment is well designed. A hypnotist hypnotized a person and gave a suggestion that he would become deaf. The person did not respond to any of noise, even large sounds next to his ear. Then the hypnotist said ,‘‘Perhaps there is some part of you that is hearing my voice and processing the information. If there is, I should like the index finger of your right hand to rise as a sign that this is the case’’(Hilgard, 1977, p. 186). The finger rose. At this moment, the person requested that the experiment be stopped. After he was ‘‘awakened,’’ the person said ‘‘I felt my finger rise in a way that was not a spontaneous twitch, so you must have done something to make it rise, and I want to know what you did’’ (p. 186).