Abstraction Implosion and the Return to Wholeness

In The Master and His Emissary, psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist draws on cognitive neuroscience and psychiatry to paint a complex picture of right and left hemispheric brain function. The hemispheres differ not in what they do, but in how they do it: the right is attuned to wholeness, interconnectivity, empathy, and relationality; the left, to separating, categorizing, abstracting, and theorizing.

He argues that much of Western culture can be understood as a form of pathological left-hemispheric dominance, where abstraction has come to replace the very thing it was meant to represent. He urges a return to balance, where the world of the right hemisphere—of context, relationship, and embodiment—is given its rightful place as primary.

This episode is an exploration and summary of McGilchrist’s important work. This will set the stage for the next episode, where we will weave these ideas back into what we’ve been discussing in the previous several episodes.

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