Cohesive Identity vs Mind/Body Binary

The mind/body binary is a well known concept. Last year, I had two professors quote Descartes' "I think therefore I am" as evidence of how the binary works as a hierarchy, with the mind generally seen as superior and more intrinsic to one's identity than the body. For one professor, the binary was an explanation for how the body can be used to create fear in horror films and novels. For the other, it was an explanation for why dance has so little respect as compared to other art forms.

The concept that the separation of mind and body is a social construct continues to spring up in classes, sometimes ones that I don't expect it to. Today I took a sociology class that I expect to drop (if only there was time to take all the classes I want to!) called Medicine, the Body and Society. We talked about a perhaps necessary separation between identity and body for patients experiencing invasive surgeries. We talked about the ways people relate to their tumors (some people name them, some people only call them "it") and the constructed perception of cancer as an outside invader - technically cancer cells are the patient's own cells, they are just cells gone wrong.

In biological psychology we talked about the limitations of a scientific approach, studying the body, in understanding the mind. MRI scans may make it look like distinct regions of the brain start working only when someone is experiencing a certain emotion. But those distinct colors we see on MRI scans actually represent levels of activity that vary only slightly. We're reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks, and so far it's fascinating. It's a collection of case studies, many of which lack complete scientific explanations. Of course in the class we'll be learning about what is understandable about the human mind through the biological functions of the body, specifically the brain and nervous system. The whole field of study does work within ideas about mind and body as discrete entities, but the investigation of their intersection should be interesting.