Sublime

with her clients, she says, “three lacks” are typical—lack of control, identity, and self-worth—along with a need to numb pain. “In a relational world . . . the human psyche devises a brilliant means to emotionally survive,”

Creating a useful, accurate picture of something complex and abstract is very difficult. And there is nothing more complex and abstract than the human mind.

Arthur M. Jacobs, an experimental psychologist and professor of experimental and neurocognitive psychology in Germany, examined a number of methods and models that were being used at the time for investigating the neural bases of poetry. The new research was suggesting that poetry, more than any other literary form, demonstrates “the complexities w

The contrast with the scans of the eighteen chronic PTSD patients with severe early-life trauma was startling. There was almost no activation of any of the self-sensing areas of the brain:

The arts, as you will read throughout this book, trigger the release of neurochemicals, hormones, and endorphins that offers you an emotional release. When you experience virtual reality, read poetry or fiction, see a film or listen to a piece of music, or move your body to dance, to name a few of the many arts, you are biologically changed. There