Inherent Instability

One of the major themes throughout Richard Powers’ Echo Maker is that of “the self” as a fluid and constantly changing entity. Each character challenges the assumption that members of our species—biologically endowed, as we are, with the prefrontal cortical advantage of self-concepts and self-awareness—are inherently coherent, consistent, or predictable. In Mark’s case, his very disorder (Capgras) is a direct reversal of such supposition, as are the unravelings of Karin’s and Weber’s respective personalities, David’s stoic and tolerant perspective, and Barbara Gillespie’s personal history (morphing from high-functioning journalist to mysterious nurse’s aid). Frequently, in fact, Powers addresses the notion that it may be delusional to believe in the constancy of self, or the qualities that define us as individuals. As Weber reflects, “our sense of physical embodiment [does] not come from the body itself. Several layers of brain [stands] in between, cobbling up from raw signals the reassuring illusion of solidity” (Powers 258). Or, as Karin sums it up: “the whole race suffer[s] from Capgras” (Powers 347).
Interestingly, each character’s “self” seems to be primarily determined by its relation to others (either another person or another thing). Mark, for instance, gains his identity as his sister’s brother, as his father’s son, as an accident victim, as a sufferer of Capgras, as an employee at IBP, as a buddy of Rupp and Cain, etc. Karin, likewise, gains her identity as Mark’s sister, as the daughter of Marks’ parents (her parents), as a caretaker, as someone who has been unfaithful in relationships, as a former smoker, and so on. Weber’s, in turn, is based upon his research, his publications, his relation to his wife (Sylvie), his holistic stance in neuroscience, and his role as a father (amongst other things). Thus whenever any of these external or “other” entities change, so the “self” that is reliant upon them for its definition changes. In the broadest and most apparent situation, Mark’s accident alters not only his perception of reality and his functional capabilities, but also alters his sister’s perception of reality and her functional capabilities. The latter alteration is a direct byproduct of Mark’s personal alteration—which, ultimately (as the reader discovers) has been precipitated by the entrance of Barbara Gillespie (an “other”) into an element of Mark’s self (in this case, his extended peripersonal space, just beyond his car on a highway in Nebraska). Simply put, the “self” is interdependent upon the “other.”
This notion fits in quite well with Nancy Cantor’s and Hazel Markus’s concept of a “working self,” as outlined by Ledoux in Synaptic Self. As the author summarizes, the working self is “…a subset of the universe of possible self-concepts that can occur at any one time—it is the subset that is available to the thinking conscious person at a particular moment, and is determined in part by memory and expectation, and in part by the immediate situation” (Ledoux 256). In turn, the manner by which certain motives are acted upon (and the manner by which certain goals are pursued) contribute to this sense of self, inasmuch as they endow a person with agency—or the free will to direct his/her actions. (As a mundane example, a person with a preference for dark chocolate is a separate individual from a person who dislikes dark chocolate and prefers hard candy, inasmuch as each—when a craving arises—pursues a different entity: the one with the relative incentive salience. Given some conditioning, however, such tastes are surely subject to change: if the dark chocolate, say, is mixed with ipecac, a taste aversion may develop that steers the former chocolate-lover in the opposite direction. Likewise for the hard candy fan)
Another similarity between Ledoux’s and Powers’ takes on the self is the acknowledgment of innate mechanisms that seem to underlie the more fluid and changeable personal identity. As Ledoux explains, one neural correlate of behavior is rooted in the dopaminergic pathways that exist in organisms whose brains possess an amygdala, tegmentum, accumbens, pallidum, and motor cortex. At the presentation of a novel conditioned stimulus (in this case, one that seems threatening—i.e. a tone associated with a painful shock), the lateral nucleus of the amygdala is activated, “…which, in turn, activates the central nucleus of the amygdala…[whose outputs] initiate the expression of species-typical defense responses (like freezing and associated autonomic changes) as well as activate arousal systems in the brain stem” (Ledoux 248). These structures, and their neurotransmitters (dopamine being the most important here) are universal, much like the postulated primary incentives and the respective drives to acquire them (i.e. food, sex, water—in no particular order). Thus, in contrast with the inconsistency of the less concrete self (i.e. the personality, labels one adopts, one’s individual preferences or secondary incentives like fame, money, or dark chocolate), the system that gives rise to basic responses and evolutionarily conserved functions (i.e. defensive reactions or defensive actions is quite consistent. Thanks to the central and basal amygdalar nuclei (amongst other structures), there exists an innate, unchanging response system, regardless of the personality built on top of, in reaction to, or as a byproduct of its functioning.
This notion of an inherent sameness or consistency as the basis upon which fluidity is constructed is also apparent in Powers’ writing. Most obviously, it is evident in his depiction of the Cranes’ migratory patterns: “Something in the birds retraces a route laid down centuries before” (Powers 4), wherein he underlines the innate (yet unconscious) tendency to return to some sort of root or home base. This is also apparent in his human characters, as Karin (for one) constantly complains of Nebraska’s inescapability and her futile efforts to escape her homeland (while also acknowledging her repeatedly unfaithful endeavors with David and Robert). In fact, Powers seems to point out benefits of a slight reversion to this earlier, ingrained, and unconscious behavior, frequently noting the advantage of losing the gauze of identity. Often, he casts Mark’s ostensible reversion in a positive light: “with an animal precision [Karin’s] had lost, his ears picked up stray pieces of surrounding conversations and wove them together” (Powers 37); “Damage had somehow unblocked him, removing the mental categories that interfered with truly seeing. Assumption no longer smoothed out observation…The lower the brain, the slower the fade. Love, in an earthworm, might never extinguish at all” (Powers 198). Perhaps this viewpoint is best expressed in Weber’s conclusion that “older creatures still inhabited us, and would never vacate” (Powers 231).
Both Ledoux and Powers point to several aspects of personhood: the malleability of the self, its inexistence without an “other,” and the innate, implicit basis upon which this fragile structure is seated. Thus individuation, in the human sense of personal identity, is not negated; rather, our uniqueness—our senses of self—seem to rest upon a firm and consistent base. This base, our innate evolutionarily conserved mechanisms (i.e. fear reaction and action, incentive sensitization, etc.) provides us with a secure jumping off point from which we can construct the less reliable and inherently unstable (yet explicit) selves—selves that we strive to establish continuity in, against all odds (even if that means confabulating from time to time).

The Illusion of Normalcy and the Mercurial Self

Before I started writing my post, I read Tina’s, and her closing questions got me started on a train of thought traveling back through the landscapes of The Echo Maker and other portions of this course’s material, and I came upon an idea that took me by surprise: In neurological medicine, there is no such thing as going back to normal.

In class discussions, we’ve made an effort to avoid the implied value judgment of the word “normal” by using “neuro-typical” or its synonyms. I think that the difficulty we have experienced of cutting this bias out of our language reveals how deeply ingrained that assumption of the superiority of normalcy is. The goal of normalcy applies to several levels of human organization. Culturally, the norm is the status quo, and any group that follows the biological imperative of self-preservation will probably recognize maintaining the norm as necessary for its survival. We can see this in our own governmental process: setting Liberal and Conservative labels aside, all but the furthest fringe elements of our political system take the preservation of the vast majority of the Constitution for granted; we trustingly follow the traditions of law and procedure that have accumulated for two centuries – and why not? To abandon the norm would be to take on unknowable risks. The same instinctual fear of the unknown that helps sitting politicians remain in office - sometimes regardless of popularity and competence compared to their competition – is part of what inspires the infamously impenetrable social unit, the clique. People group together with others that remind them of themselves, and in those groups, surrounded by friends more identical than family, they are normal. They cling to each other as naturally as drops of oil in water. Types and genres (goth, geek, jock, prep, mods, rockers…) of people are coagulated from a sea of formerly solitary uncategorized persons, allowing for each group to establish its own us-against-them dichotomy and to create a localized sense of normality, of sameness, coexisting simultaneously with an expression of rebellion, individuation, or exclusivity. On a personal level, it is natural to distinguish what is familiar or relatable from what is alien or surprising as normal and abnormal, respectively. Neurologically and psychologically (these two fields seem to be on a collision course towards unification), the normal brain can appear almost indistinguishable from the ideal brain. If we allow the easy layman’s conflation of brain and identity, it follows that to be normal is ideal. If normal is best, shouldn’t everyone want a normal brain, and isn’t it medicine’s responsibility to strive to give the gift of normalcy to all?

Of course this issue is much more complicated. Two problematic variables that immediately spring to mind are the issues of degree of abnormality and its danger to the patient, and whether a condition is damaged-induced or inborn. Regarding the first, if the condition is life-threatening, medical intervention is not going to encounter nearly as many moral hang-ups. But under physically non-threatening circumstances, as Tina suggests, the right path is increasingly difficult to discern. And whose choice is it to make whether a surgical or pharmaceutical measure is to be taken? As with a lethal abnormality, a lucid patient able to understand her condition and step outside of its influence to make an informed decision on whether to normalize herself, as with Sister John of the Cross, is a moral Get Out of Jail Free card from the medical perspective. But what about Mark, who understands that something is wrong, but is unable to step outside his delusion, or Weber’s “David,” who, like so many of the people we’ve read about, has incorporated the products of gradual brain damage into his personality (Powers 363)? For me, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate self and personality from neurology and brain structure. A change to one is a change to the other, and neither is ever constant. There is no "true" self for each brain, only a multitude of ever-changing potentialities for what that self might be. 

What I am realizing, and what I learned from The Echo Maker, is that there is no going back to normal neurologically. We cannot approach the health of the brain like we do the health of the rest of our bodies. There are some overt parallels, but also important distinctions. We could think about purely psychological dysfunction (although I am starting to think it doesn’t exist in isolation) as physical fitness. By thinking the right way and following the right routines, we can work ourselves out of a bad mood much like we can exercise ourselves into better shape. But neurosurgery and neurochemical medication are much more complex and dynamic than putting a scalpel to another part of the body or taking a fiber pill to help with digestion. The brain is not a machine that can have parts replaced. To borrow from the principles of physics, we cannot modify one aspect of the brain without inspiring an unpredictable change in the brain as a whole. Weber muses, “Always the water changed, but the river stood still. The self was a painting, traced on that liquid surface” (Powers 382). If a neurosurgeon takes out a piece of the brain, a bucketful of the water, how can he control the shifting of the surface where the self is manifested? Or if a nurse gives an injection of a neurotransmitter, drops in a pebble for the sake of the ripples, how can the change be reversed, the ripples recollected or the pebble plucked from the bottom without greater disruption? The pebble, the chemical addition, is incorporated into the river. Deliberate changes evolve, and the brain outpaces us in our ability to modify it. The water of the river is always new, and the surfaces that patterned the self yesterday cannot be recreated by modification just as a person with a bucket can reverse the direction of the river. So when we try to restore some kind of familiarity to the deep and wildly dynamic structures upon which the ever-changing self is borne, we cannot hope to recreate what was, only to guide what is in the right direction, and even that is uncertain. 

Karen had to come to terms with this principle regarding her brother’s condition. We all know that experiences change us, but the profundity of structural changes that occur on a daily basis is hard to comprehend. Karen learns that she must approach neurological change seeking not restoration but reconciliation and adaptation. Mark could not return to the same person he was before his accident, but he could, with the right pebbles tossed in the river, move toward a more recognizable pattern of self less muddled by delusion. 

Personal Melodies in Dissonance

How was everyone's break? I hope you all had a good rest and got some work done and traveled safely and all that. My break went a little awry right at the top--I was greatly enjoying the Echo Maker. I started reading it before break, and in the first week took it on my plane ride back home--and promptly left it in the seat pouch after I'd landed in Austin. Over the next couple of days, as I waited for my dad to pick up another copy at the bookstore, I found myself thinking a lot about recognition and homecomings, some of the themes in the book, if only because I no longer spend a lot of time in my hometown (which, being somewhat sheltered from the recession, is still vibrantly and rapidly changing all the time). I was struck by niggling feelings that something was wrong as I drove down the street where I lived after high school--and then realized the new owner of my old studio apartment had the door open, and she'd painted, and the color was different. Or I'd I find myself searching for an old friend in one of the enormous crowds sweeping the city for South by Southwest, and recognizing her from afar by the way she flicked her cigarette. As Karin does in the novel, I was instantly "at home" again both physically and psychologically, in an emotional and geographical place I'd left long ago--and it reminded me that mapping is still ever-present in my mind.

I'm not sure I ever wrote about this, but I was captivated a few weeks ago when we read a Sacks article online and someone referred to a patient's "motor melody" being disturbed. I think that is one of the most comprehensible metaphors I've come across to explain these altered states of being, altered relationships of mind to body. In the novel, the entire melody of Mark's life had been disrupted by the accident, and yet he didn't see himself as different, but the whole world, and most specifically, his sister, or her impersonator.

Because there's simply no way to comprehend inhabiting a Capgras mind, I kept reaching for strange metaphors to explain it to myself. For instance, when Richard Powers was talking to Terri Gross about the artificiality of typing and composing at once, I turned that into a way to understand the artificiality--or mechanicalness, I suppose is more correct--of how we recognize and represent the outer world to ourselves. I tried to imagine what it would be like to not simply know my sister, but to have most of the elements there and then have others ask me to convince myself that she was really the one. This problem that Capgras patients simply don't "feel" like the person is their loved one is awful. Few people, in other circumstances, have to consciously construct their most intimate relationships, they simply are.

Powers eloquently describes the effects of this emotional brain-damage on the bystanders. It seems that Mark makes everyone doubt themselves (except perhaps Barbara, who is in her own way shaping a double identity)--or perhaps not doubt, but re-examine the way they are positioned against other people. As Dr. Weber's mid-life crisis (for lack of a better term) creeps over him, he has the added uncertainty of this young man who for all intensive purposes seems functional--and yet is very, very damaged. Karin slowly becomes convinced, and begins to voice her belief, that Mark is right, that she can't be his real sister. Her pain in dealing with this disconnect is haunting. We've seen other spouses, siblings, and parents dealing with a loved one who is taken from them by a malady or condition--but never before someone who loses *themselves* because of another's illness.

Reading this novel just after Lying Awake brings us again to the issue of a patient's role and involvement in their treatment. Sister John, though she went through turmoil in the process, was actively involved in planning the course of action and had a great deal of input into how her illness was going to be viewed. Mark, on the other hand, because of the very nature of his deficit, was unable to productively participate in treatment and actually effectively blocked people from helping him. So would it have been right or wrong of Karin to have left him to his own devices, to wash her hands of the matter because this new, strange brother before her believed he was fine and the rest of the world was crazy? It's hard to say, especially because she needed him to "recover" to regain her own sense of self, so in a way her actions were almost as selfish as those Dr. Weber was punishing himself for. How do you treat someone who thinks they don't need treatment? And who is to say that a nonlife-threatening condition must be corrected?