«WHY DOES MIND MATTER? »

        Many people believe that it is enough just to be out there and doing – why waste time with thoughts and feelings? This was certainly very much the argument in the first half of the 20th Century, when the Behaviourists argued that triggers in the environment (stimuli) gave rise to behaviours (responses). Anything that happened in between was irrelevant. The mind was simply a “black” and uninteresting “box”.

So why bother to try and open the box? How does it make any difference to me as an individual if I think about what and why I have thoughts and feelings? Well an important answer to that is, that the more I understand about myself, the more control I have.

From earliest times people have tried to offer rational explanations for human behaviours so that they could find solutions to the problems. Nowadays some of these ideas would strike us as very strange in the light of the strides made by modern medicine. For example Hippocrates in around 400 BC hypothesized that hysteria was only a woman’s problem and it was caused by the uterus wandering mournfully around the body, yearning for a child. The cure for this malady was thus obvious, and Hippocrates prescribed marriage.

But not all cases are as clear-cut as this and over the next few weeks, I would like to look at ways of opening the black box of our mind in order to try to make sense of some common human experiences. What makes us happy, sad, anxious or depressed? What gives meaning to our lives as human beings? And most importantly, if mind does indeed matter, how can psychology help us to live more full, complete lives?

Mind Matters is a regular Times column by Pamela Glyn, a Howick-based psychologist. Tel/Fax: 535-2224. Email: glynpsy@pl.net Web site: www.glyn-psychology.co.nz