It is often call it a soul. Some have termed it a will (from which all desire and the resulting suffrage is born), true will, or inner being. Neurologists examine the chemical and physical reactions of the human brain from various stimuli. Dominant religions have terminology for responses to emotions like love or lust or the urge to steal or deviate from norms. Philosophies address ways of managing emotions and inner-conflict. Law has its various mens rea requirements of intent. Yet, nobody seems to be able to adequately describe the full extent of connections between mental aspects of an individual human and their physical and psychological states.
While many are quite common, the only reason diagnoses ever “fit” the problem is because it is something that can be understood by other parties. There are not psychological terms for things that I have experienced, for example. It is more complicated than them, and certain conceptions in psychological sciences certainly overlap or are in the ballpark, they rarely hit the nail on the head with particular interpretations of my experience.
So what happens when someone’s entire nature and being is such that they cannot describe who they are, or what they are feeling, to anyone in the world because they are experiencing something unique and in a way that the rest of the world is inexperienced in.
Perhaps, it would be like describing a heartache to a non-mammal, a reptile. Assuming a reptile doesn’t bond to the point where loss of companionship is never bothersome to any extent, this analogy should serve its purpose. One cannot separate some use of metaphysical terminology to adequately describe anything related to human ontology, regardless of whether their position is one in some scientific field doing research or medical work or something like a priest.
Don’t believe me?
Then why does the entire “valid” field of psychology still reference the ancient Greek terms based in philosophical conceptions like “dysphoria” to describe the loss of sense of one’s self? Not only does this illustrate the importance of wars in human history because of the resulting fate of all humankind as future subjects of the victorious ideology, but also that there is not the level of rational interpretation of persons psychological dilemmas that “science” likes to claim.
(Ex. “Fight or flight” as a simplistic generalization of a concept applied far more sporadically than is actually apt…another one of human’s shortcuts to understanding or explaining their world. It is considered an actual instinctually conditioned aspect of the mammalian brain but reduced to a colloquialism.)
The reality is that human beings are special, unique, and in many cases should not be subjected to a cookie cutter analysis when they have issues. They need to be fully listened to, engaged with, and helped with a sense of genuineness that most institutions don’t do without charging a fortune which negates the “genuine” aspect altogether.
In an incredibly populous society, it becomes more apparent and significant that if a person ever decides not to follow the herd, as strong as the pressure is, the inevitable result they will experience is a sense of self that cannot be understood by others well. Psychology even has a term for this, but it hardly gets recognized because the field is largely responsible for crafting bounds of normality. The term is individuation. It broadly describes a social creatures deviation from the group in identity in some regard, often occurring through a unique experience not shared by other members of a group.
Uniqueness of experience is always worth it. Considering that one only gets one existence in this life, to live it the way an entire world around them does so doesn’t seem to be making the most use of it.
What does it even mean to “listen to one’s heart.” There is some sort of mental wiring in the brain that attaches to the heart through a nervous system wherein the heart experiences some sensation when the mind has some experience be it positive or negative for the subject?
The idea of a heart-mind connection is certainly recognized as early as several thousand years B.C. when Egypt had created Anubis to conduct his post-humous ceremony. Perhaps, then, the idea is even significantly more ancient than that. It would be difficult to analyze whether other cultures agreed about such a concept. It would be worth exploring, though, since, even in our so highly rationalized world, the medical fields still use metaphysical terminology in their protocols and procedural descriptions. Traditional Chinese spirituality describes the Qi as an energy felt throughout the body. Many high-level athletes have different sensations of how they hold themselves and adjust their own center of gravity, usually lowered for enhanced mobility when competing. Often, in retirement, athletes experience difficult in resuming a more sedentary lifestyle like their simple-minded social counterparts (ordinary people).
The question remains: How can a connection between the mind and body accurately be described without metaphysical terminology?
Starting with what is known, that every single human being experiences feelings within their mind and that their body experiences some sort of response to them as well. Thus, there is indeed a connection of some sort. Attempting to universalize this, however, into a language to be adopted on a planetwide basis and applied to generations to come is a horrific thing that actually steals their reality and renders their experience void of sincerity. They need to craft their own lives and identity, such that progressing too far toward developing this field is sacrilegious. True sympathy transformed into empathy can induce a bonding experience whereby people might share an experience of real growth in understanding some phenomena. It’s called shared experience, and they might even decide to name the particular thing. This is how ghosts from various horror films developed (or stories about Banshees in Ireland), but the concept can apply to anything.
When a person experiences something they deem negative, the result is most often clenching of some sort of muscle, but is that universal or cultural? If something like anger were a socially-induced then would it be possible to re-condition human beings response to anger-triggers in a way that is healthier for them? This could be helpful considering that the stress of anger and other similar causes of clenching can reduce lifespan and quality of life simultaneously. Mental tricks and games someone learns in an anger-management class might work…but more likely to work for/on someone who falls into the type of group that was in the mind of the person who designed the types of tactics for tackling ones own anger issues. So, yes, we live in a world where someone who is given an anger management class will be taught to restrict, harness, or deflect their anger or manage their triggers at the discretion of someone who designed it with the idea to help them, with some preconceptions in mind.