“Passive Consciousness Hypothesis” by Takashi Maeno
A theory which I believe is very useful in explaining dissociation and its neuronal basis is so-called “Passive Consciousness Hypothesis” proposed by professor by Takashi Maeno at Keio University. His theory is very clear and it gets along well with neural network model of dissociation.
In his seminal work, Maeno states as follows (Maeno, 2004)
“Why am I who I am, and not who I’m not? Why do I have consciousness? These are essential philosophical questions that are yet to be answered. There is only one way of solving these questions, which is to understand that having consciousness is sort of an illusion. Our way of being conscious is basically passive, and even what we believe we intentionally think, decide, and put into actions are what we feel we are spontaneously doing, which, in fact, are merely brain activities that we are passively experiencing”.(p.24)
Maeno,T (2004)Why Did Brain Create a “Mind”? The Passive Conscious Hypothesis Solving the Enigma of “I”ness. Chikuma Shobo [Japanese]
To put Maeno’ theory in a few words, brain has a “bottom up” system. (It is a difficult question what is exactly “top” and what is “bottom” in this context, but suffice to say that what is “top” is what we believe our conscious activities are, i.e., our perceptual-sensual experiences and physical movements, and “bottom” is the vast neural network systems which form the basis for these activities. )Brain consists of neurons and neural fibers in huge numbers in which innumerable tasks are executed simultaneously and parallelly. We only have illusions that we are doing them willfully. This is very different from “top down” way of thinking, i.e., that there is a central agent which supersedes and integrates everything and has executive control over them, just like a command center or a headquarter of the military.
Now here is what I would like to add Maeno’ theory. His theory explain very well the way the mind of DID works. The neural network systems of DID patients are special in that they are separated into subgroups (modules of very large size, so to speak) which are communicating with each other only partially and inconsistently. Mental activities of different identities are, in fact, the product of each subgroup that consciousness passively experiences, but with an illusion that currently he/she is the center of the initiative. What identity is currently active depends on which subgroup is currently “on line” with the consciousness. This explains why suddenly one identity is taken over by another identity.
Also the way each identity has its autonomy and behaves like an independent and creative individual is well explained by Maeno’s hypothesis. According to his theory, it is the very nature of subgroup, when separated from others, to have its own activities. The more they are disconnected from each other, the more each of them behaves in a free-running manner, I would add.
The nature of bottom up model is that each individual’s autonomy is the product of the ends of neural network. The fact that neural network is devide into several means that consciousness emerge as those who have spontaneity.
Summary
In this chapter I attempted to demonstrate some neuro-scientific basis for dissociative experiences. I indicated that neural network model should be the basis of the understanding of our mind, and the modular nature of our mind goes very well with our understanding of dissociative phenomena. I also indicated that Maeno’s “passive consciousness hypothesis” can also be a useful tool in clarifying some of the natures of each identity in DID.
I believe that understanding of dissociation based on neural network model will be further developed in the future. It is becoming realistic for us to assume that dissociation is the destiny to our mind which has a basis of the neural network with its modular nature. A question of “why does dissociation occur sometimes”? can be paraphrased into “why can we manage not to dissociate most of the time”?
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