The Future of Mental Health by Eric Maisel

Author:Eric Maisel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 2016-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

Executive Awareness

How can we recognize that we are stuck if we are stuck? Well, human beings sometimes can, though whether the mechanism that allows them to step back and act more freely is a hugely complicated one or a radically simple one is completely unknown at the moment. Let’s opt for simplicity and imagine that there is some single mechanism that allows a person to “be as free as one can be.”

Imagine that you had the ability to snap your fingers and create enough distance between whatever you are thinking, feeling, doing, and experiencing to allow for thoughtful reflection. Even if you were at the height of a compulsion—say, to drink, to join a gathering mob, or to spend extra time at your job against your better judgment—you could nevertheless snap your fingers and inquire of yourself, “Should I have this drink?” “Should I join this mob?” or “Should I really keep working?” By snapping your fingers, you would provide yourself with the opportunity to be smart and sensible.

Picture that for a moment. Let’s call this skill, ability, mindset, or personality trait “executive awareness.” Let’s suppose that this executive awareness is some mix of conscience, ego, rationality, thoughtfulness, and so on. We don’t need to define executive awareness too carefully, as it is just a metaphor. But it may prove a useful metaphor since it is one possible way of conceptualizing two things: what human freedom might look like and what a person might hold as a personal mental health goal.

Isn’t the essence of what we mean by both human freedom and mental health that an individual has the “space” in which to make a thoughtful choice? By obtaining that space, a person has the chance to, say, not administer electroshock to a stranger for no good reason or not agree that two lines of different lengths are the same length. Isn’t it this “space” that allows us to refrain from having an affair that ruins our marriage, volunteer to fight in a war waged for shadowy motives, or stay locked in our sadness? Isn’t this “space” both a breath of fresh air, one that allows the mustiness in our mind to dissipate, and also an opportunity to do the next right thing? Picture a skill, ability, or mechanism of this sort and ask, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have that?”

Anything that helps a person step back from the causal chain, the complicated chains of cause and effect discussed in the last chapter, and apply thoughtfulness to a situation must be counted as a boost to freedom. The opposite would be impulsivity, lack of insight, rigidity, straightjacketed personality, thoughtlessness, and so on. Even if that “stepping back” is itself caused, as of course it must be, isn’t that felt sense of freedom and the consequences of that felt sense of freedom—consequences like mindful choosing, value-based meaning-making, heightened executive awareness, etc.—so vital to mental health that we ought to come down on the side of promoting it?

Indeed, we might go a

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