Thinking about thinking
You believed her?
Of course I doubted her! But then, how could something like that appear real? Watching a grown woman curl up into a small ball on a couch and talk like a little girl has to seem like acting. But then you have to ask yourself something else: Why would somebody fake this for their entire life? Attention? The rewards are so tiny, compared to the costs. The illness has made her life miserable. Maybe it is possible to have more than one mind or a fragmented mind. Hasn't anyone ever said to you, "You don't seem like yourself today?" What's that all about?
What did you take away from your visit with Castelli?
First is the tremendous suffering any mental illness wreaks on the person and the people around them. And also that there are very practical ramifications to those big questions asked in the book, like "What is consciousness?" Here is a consciousness that's not quite working right. Her illness is evidence of how little we know about this 3-pound enigma.
advertisement
