ABSTRACT
Each neural structure supporting brain functions has its own attractors, i.e. the set of states into which the system settles after a long enough period of time, states which are often experienced. It is the coalescing of the individual subsystems which generates the global state space and leads to the final evaluation-interpretation-meaning. I will consider two alternative modes of functioning. In the first, each subsystem is functioning more or less on its own, going from attractor to attractor in its own state space and generating a background feeling of diffused attention which may, if appropriate, be consciously focussed. This is the ego complex and will be dealt with in Chapter 9. The second mode is when something perceived causes attention to be involuntarily focussed and a state transition occurs, coordinating the subsystems into a single workspace. Consciousness is taken away from the ego-complex and the impact of the constellated autonomous complex is experienced.
