Do You Ever Feel Like Two Separate People?Bibliotherapy: Of Two Minds/Dual-Brain Psychology
I heard about this book through the Brainspotting Community. In Brainspotting, there are setups that use one eye. Often clients find that one eye is resourced and the other is activated. The connection between our eyes, brain, and the rest of our nervous system is highly complex.
Dr. Fredric Schiffer is a psychiatrist and teaches the theory and practice of Dual-Brain Psychology. In his book, Of Two Minds he describes how after reviewing the split-brain studies of the 1960s, patients who had their corpus callosums cut, manifested two separate minds and personalities! He points out that we each have two cortexes, two amygdalas, and two hippocampuses.
He believes that most of us have two minds, one linked to each hemisphere; one that is more mature, reasonable, and present orientated, and one that is more childlike, emotional, and holds traumatic experience. He shows how this explains changes in mood and personality where someone might seem like two different people.
Images on the right half of the retina of the right eye are transported via the optic nerve for right brain processing, and images that hit the left half of the right eye are transported via the optic nerve to be processed from the left hemisphere. To access, the right or left side of the brain, Dr. Schiffer lateralizes the patient’s vision with special glasses. His Dual-Brain Therapy harnesses the power of the mature side of the brain to nurture, validate, and educate the troubled hemisphere. He’s seen great outcomes treating depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction.
Our minds and nervous systems are wildly complex! Coriander Living Collective values ongoing learning and growth. We are honored to offer neurologically based therapies like Brainspotting and EMDR.
