Right and Left Brain Thinking

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There’s a commonly held view that there are thinking patterns that are attributable to the right side of the brain and thinking patterns that are attributable to the left side of the brain. Usually the left brain is considered logical and scientific and the right side artistic and imaginative. Many conventionally trained psychologists and neurologists hold this view in contempt. My understanding of the hemispheres of the brain is that the left side processes patterns. Patterns in space in time. When we walk into a room we very quickly form patterns from shades of colour and light into a chair or table or bookcase and so on. This process is so quick we are usually not aware of it happening. The right side of the brain processes the immediate sensations, what we might call the raw input from the eyes, the ears and so on.It is analogous to a computer: the left side is the program and the right side is the raw data from the mouse or keyboard etc. Without the program the data is of little use.

From a human perspective, if we get too caught up in our existing programming we become unable to develop new programs. We become stuck and un-adaptable. This is the situation with Aspergers syndrome. These people have developed (one may say over developed) the left side of the brain but are unable to produce new patterns. If they are taken out of their familiar setting to a different place or out of their routine in time, they become agitated.

What we may call conventional Autism (although nowadays Aspergers is described as being on an autistic spectrum), we find the opposite. These are people who are unable to form new patterns. Could you imagine walking into a room and instead of seeing a table and chairs and so on, all you see is colours and shapes? And instead of hearing voices and background noises all you hear is a cacophony of sounds. This is the lot of the autistic.

And so autism and Aspergers syndrome are related but different. One is a disorder of the left brain and one a disorder of the right brain.

There’s a lot of research I’ve done to substantiate this idea but if you work with Aspergers you may want to consider this. I had the thought that if my theory is true, then Aspergers children (and it’s usually children that we deal with), will be unable to relate to senses that I call ‘right brain’ senses. The rational behind this is too complicated to go into here but we can say that hearing and seeing are ‘left brain’ senses and the other three senses are right brain. Simply put it’s because for most people we don’t extract patterns from our senses of touch, smell or taste whereas we need patterns to make sense of what we hear or see. This is not true of blind people of course. Now, I reasoned, if my theory is true then is it possible that children with Aspergers would be unable to identify smells. I have tried this and so far it seems to be born out. I take a number of bottles of essences and hold them up for them to smell. I don’t ask them to identify them, only to say whether that are the same or different, stronger or weaker. What we find is that Aspergers children identify quite different aromas as being the same smell but stronger or weaker. More work needs to be done here but I have subsequently found out that other people stumbled on this same tendency by chance.

I will discuss more on left and right brain thinking in a subsequent post.

Philip Braham
Phil Braham is a hypnotherapist working in Melbourne, Australia. His website is: hypnotherapy.braham.net