ABSTRACT
The papers represented in this collection are the outcome of a program of clinical research initiated about 10 years ago with the publication of my book Mind, Brain and Consciousness (Brown, 1977). This monograph—little more than an outline of a theory at the time—sought to develop a new approach to the interpretation of symptoms of brain injury, one based on the concept of micro-genesis. A central feature of this approach is the assumption that the symptoms of brain damage represent normal stages in the microtemporal processing of cognitions and behaviors. Symptoms are not aberrations that point to defective mechanisms, but have a deeper meaning. The abnormal behavior that constitutes the symptom is, in reality, a normal processing stage beneath the surface representation. The significance of this interpretation is that the various types of symptoms associated with brain damage—since they represent stages in normal function—can be aligned in a series that captures the formative direction of normal processing. Symptoms are data points in clinical investigation, experiments in nature that help us to see—as research studies often do not—the processes that occur within cognitive structure.
