BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

neuropsychological studies that demonstrate a striking correlation between brain structure and
personal identity. Recent studies of brain activity using non-invasive functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) show that human perception of social realities involves an integration
of separate functions carried out in the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The
self-differentiating, protective, emotional reactions associated with right brain activity appear to
undergo mediation by the rationalizing, evaluative, socially adaptive and self-justificatory
capacities of left brain regions. 69 The bizarre phenomenon of brain lateralization not only
produces clinical abnormalities such as the “Dr. Strangelove” or alien hand syndrome suffered by
split-brain patients, it also implies the existence of an internal division, or even conflict, between
preconscious impulse and rational judgement which must be reconciled with cultural values in
self and group identification. 70 Other recent studies have confirmed a similar structural
correlation involved in cognitive dissonance and attitude change. 71 Most recently, David
69 Marek Cielecki, “A Neurocognitive Model of the Self,” chap. 3 in Tomasz
Maruszewski, Ma»gorzata Fajkowska, and Michael W. Eysenck, Personality from Biological,
Cognitive, and Social Perspectives (Clinton Corners, NY: Werner, 2010), 57-61. The theory
parallels Freudian conceptions of a rational ego reconciling the conflict between unconscious
drives and cultural traditions—id versus superego—with the corpus callosum acting as a physical
bridge between opposing tendencies.
70 Todd E. Feinberg, From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of
the Self (New York: Norton, 2009), 191-196. Dr. Strangelove, the ex-Nazi doctor played by
Peter Sellers in Stanley Kubrick’s classic Cold War film of the same name, could not control his
Hitler-saluting, self-strangling arm. The comic portrayal essentially mimics the real condition of
severe epileptic and stroke patients who have undergone surgery to disconnect right and left
hemispheres of the brain, a condition in which the “anarchic” right-brain-controlled left hands of
these patients act with a will of their own. Feinberg conceives of the sense of self as largely
dependent upon organizational unity within the brain, particularly in nested or recursive neural
hierarchies at the most advanced levels of brain structure (pp. 182-185, 189, 198, 209-213).
71 Vincent van Veen, Marie K. Krug, Jonathan W. Schooler and Cameron S. Carter,
“Neural activity predicts attitude change in cognitive dissonance,” Nature Neuroscience 12, no.
60