ABSTRACT
The germ of the idea to be developed in this book lies in a paragraph early in my 1993/96 book, How Humans Relate: A New Interpersonal Theory. Here, I was trying to make the point that much of our relating behaviour occurs quickly and spontaneously, without conscious deliberation. I drew the distinction between what I then called the cortex, which I considered to be concerned with the conscious and the deliberate, and the subcortex, which I considered to be concerned with the quick and the spontaneous. “The logic of the subcortex” I wrote, “is often so profound that it feels as though it is the prime mover and that the cortex trundles along some distance behind, long after the main action has taken place” (page 6). I now realise that the terms cortex and subcortex were inappropriate, since the greater part of cerebral cortical activity is not conscious or deliberate; but although the terms were wrong, the point I was making was probably right. By my 1999/2002 book, Relating in Psychotherapy: The Application of a New Theory, this short paragraph had grown into a complete chapter (Chapter 2) in which I had replaced the cortex and subcortex with the outer brain and the inner brain. I concluded that the distinction between what I considered to be these two major components of the brain is relevant to our understanding of a broad range of mental activities; but I also suspected that we might underestimate the extent of the inner brain’s influence. I wrote:
A point that cannot be emphasised too strongly is that the inner brain must be responsible for far more of our mental activity than we are normally prepared to admit. Since we have no conscious awareness of what goes on within it, this is a sobering thought (page 28).
