From Chemicals to Psychology
Briefly, I am very interested in understanding just how our brain can give rise to what we call our state of consciousness. This is something that I have always been interested in, even obsessed over, since I was in my early teenage years, if not before that.
Something that confounds somebody who is trying to understand the mind is the wide array of perspectives on this subject, and the myriad ways in which the study of the mind can be can be approached - ranging from the study of neurochemistry and neurobiology on the scale of molecules and individual neurons, the so called bottom up approach, to looking at the mind from a top down approach, looking at the mind as a whole, and then dividing it into a set of subsystems that interact, and so on, much as Freud divided our selves into ego, superego, and id.
We are still a long way from a complete synthesis of all these approaches, a long way from a comprehensive understanding of the brain/mind. In fact, we don’t even have a definition of consciousness that is acceptable to all brain/mind researchers. However, what we do have is a rapidly increasing amount of information about the brain, from many different points of view - evolutionary, developmentally, neurologically, pscyhologically, and spiritually. I am going to try to present some of what I have learnt (and am learning) over the years, and hopefully come to some sort of an understanding on how these interact, with a final goal of understanding myself, and learning how to come to peace with myself (this last goal being my ultimate goal).
Basic Pharmacological Stuff
Psychopharmacology - A Definition
From Chemicals to Psychology
More Specific Stuff
Psychedelic Tryptamines
