Healing Begins with Self-Knowledge
In the book Sophie's World, one day the little girl Sophie suddenly receives a puzzling letter. It has no sender and no return address; she does not know who delivered it. It simply appears before her eyes, containing only three words: "Who are you?" Not long after, she receives a second letter: "Where does the world come from?"
Sophie is mysteriously drawn into pondering "Who am I?" and "Where does the world come from?" and thus embarks on a philosophical journey. Sophie's World is a long novel about the history of Western philosophy written by the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder; it is an excellent introduction to Western philosophy. If you have never heard of this book and happen to be interested in these questions, I recommend reading it.
Many people confidently believe they have a definite answer to the question "Who am I?" The Japanese physician and author Shigeaki Hinohara, even at 105, still said that the greatest unknown in the world is oneself; he did not yet know himself well enough. Perhaps each of us knows only a part of ourselves; the more one knows oneself, the greater one's ability to control one's own destiny.
Perhaps patients can know themselves better than healthy people. When an intact car speeds down the road, we have little idea what a given part does. But if some component suddenly breaks, we immediately learn what it does, because without it the car cannot work. Patients are the same: when something goes wrong in their body or mind, the malfunctioning part tells them what role that part plays in our life.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an essay collection by the French author Jean-Dominique Bauby. What most distinguishes it from other works is that Bauby wrote it after developing a condition called locked-in syndrome. Jean-Dominique Bauby had been a journalist; in 1995 he suffered a sudden stroke and was comatose for 20 days. When he woke, he had become a "wooden man": except for his eyeballs, he could not move any part of his body.
He had locked-in syndrome, and communicated with the outside world entirely by blinking. Caregivers showed him letters; when it was the letter he wanted, he blinked once. The letters formed words, and the words formed sentences; in this way he communicated with the outside world, and in this way he wrote his essay collection Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). The title is deeply evocative: his body was sealed inside a diving bell, unable to move, while his mind fluttered like a butterfly; he thus saw many things that healthy people cannot see.
Borges is universally acknowledged in literary circles as a deeply learned writer, but he was plagued by eye disease from childhood and eventually went blind; after losing his sight he became a librarian. Because he could not see the colorful world, Borges immersed himself in reading and writing, and instead became a profoundly thoughtful scholar. His blindness made his thinking more focused and more original.
The Chinese-American scholar Hsu Cho-yun is the same. He had poliomyelitis as a child, which made standing and walking difficult. As a young man he went to the United States to study; when a storm hit at sea, the ship rolled so badly that the crew had to tie him to the hull to prevent the waves from tossing him overboard. He could never move freely like a healthy person, but his mind developed all the more for it.
When we are healthy, we rarely think about the question "Who am I," or reflect on what each part of our body does, or what each region of our brain does. Those who have lost health have lost some function and are therefore forced to consider these questions, and develop new functions to replace the lost ones.
People who lose their arms gradually learn to write and eat with their toes; people whose left brain is underdeveloped compensate through the right brain. Geniuses are not necessarily whole. There are geniuses with physical disabilities, like Hawking; geniuses with schizophrenia, like Newton; geniuses tormented by depression, like Hemingway and Churchill. Perhaps this is because lost functions drive evolution in some direction, making such people more intelligent than average.
We are always striving to know ourselves; it is just that most people do not notice it. I am slow; I did not realize I was slow until after forty. Slow people cannot easily detect the scheming of others, so I have evolved a capacity for self-discipline that most people lack, using it to keep myself from stumbling. For example, I will not allow myself to become involved in another doctor's treatment of their patient, nor will I carelessly accept someone who is not serious about seeking care. The former are suspicious and sensitive people whose words do not match their hearts, who distrust both me and the doctor they are seeing; becoming involved in such disputes usually brings trouble either to me or to the other doctor. The latter simply cannot complete an effective consultation. My slowness is not enough to handle these complex matters, so I simply stick to principles.
I may have many other problems; I become aware of my shortcomings through reading and through interaction with others. In recent years it has mostly been through reading. When I read Psychology edited by Daniel Schacter, I learned that my slowness came from having grown accustomed to a delayed-response behavioral pattern, valuing thinking over everyday observation. When I read Dick Swaab's We Are Our Brains, I learned that my angiotensin system is problematic, which is why I urinate frequently. When I read Hinohara's Living Beautifully, I learned that I have not yet achieved, toward my partner, the complete acceptance and tenderness he describes.
In the process of reading, certain words always leap into the depths of our mind, awakening our soul and letting us know ourselves more clearly. I have kept up daily reading for decades, so although I am slower than most people, I have accumulated a reservoir of knowledge that many cannot match. My teacher once told me that the path suited for me was "thick accumulation, slow release; a late bloomer." I now understand that someone of merely average intelligence like me can achieve something only through perseverance and gradual, daily accumulation.
Our minds may contain piles of erroneous cognitive garbage, yet we do not know it — all because we do not yet know ourselves well enough and have not studied hard. For instance, some people tell me that Einstein and Newton studied theology in their old age because ultimately all truth returns to mysticism; this is just the kind of wrong rumor that gets repeated. Einstein did not study theology; Newton was simply driven by schizophrenia into a state of mental derangement. Acquiring correct cognition costs time and effort, and most people are too lazy to spend it.
In a doctor's eyes, patients' lifestyles and cognitions contain many problems, and it is these problems that cause them to develop various diseases. But patients themselves may not know, or may know yet be unwilling to accept. For example, when I previously wrote about the harms of cigarettes, someone told me that people who insist on eating will eventually die 100% of the time. This is seizing on wordplay to ignore one's own bad habits; when such people actually fall ill one day, the suffering they inflict on their families is especially severe.
Books are the ladder of human progress and the best mirror for self-knowledge. But the books suitable for one person are not necessarily suitable for another. So people often ask me for reading lists, but I decline; the reason is simple: books I am suited to read may not suit them. If a person loves reading, they need no one to give them a list; in the process of reading they will naturally find the books they truly like and that suit them. My principle in choosing books is "like it, then follow the trail" rather than asking anyone for a list.
Sometimes I spend a whole morning at the shelves of a library or bookstore, browsing new books and buying those I like. If I really like an author, I look into the books he mentions in his writing; if after learning about them I want to read them, I buy them too — this is following the trail. Over time my knowledge forms its own system. This is a networked learning method based on personal interest, possibly the most efficient method, because it combines individuality with the principles of comprehension and memory; it is also the freest and most joyful way to learn. But those who learn this way need a certain courage: they must dare to give up many things in conventional society — for example, I myself have never cared about academic degrees or professional titles.
People should know themselves better through learning; I regard the process of self-knowledge as a process of "curing stupidity." Because I am ignorant, I need the light of others' wisdom to illuminate my own heart. When the heart is illuminated, many mind-body diseases are cured without treatment.
Likewise, interacting with others helps us know ourselves more deeply. "Seeing the worthy and striving to equal him" and "seeing the unworthy and examining oneself inwardly" both deepen self-knowledge; besides these, hearing criticism from others is another good way to know oneself. Unfortunately, too many people cannot tolerate half a word of criticism. Of course, for psychiatric patients whose self-evaluation is already very low, criticism only worsens their illness; what they need more is self-affirmation rather than negation. Their excessively low self-evaluation is, like other people's self-importance, a mistaken cognition of the self.
Self-knowledge is also limited by the level of scientific development. In the past we might think someone was short-tempered because they were difficult to get along with, doing so on purpose. But with the development of brain science, we now know that this may simply be because, under the influence of various factors (such as viral or bacterial infection, or family upbringing), their brain has been damaged — damage that can be improved through medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. Everyone's brain has been damaged to some degree. There is a book called The Brain's Way of Healing that introduces various emotional disorders caused by brain damage; interested readers may wish to read it and check whether they have problems in some area.
All methods of self-knowledge are individualized. What we need to do is strive to know ourselves, not to seek a fixed method that never changes; there is no method of self-knowledge that works for everyone. When we know ourselves more deeply, we find that many things we once clung to no longer trouble us, and many bad habits can be given up.
Knowing others is hard; knowing oneself is truly no easier. Some psychologists believe that there is no such thing as inner freedom; each person is simply a prisoner confined by mistaken ideas they themselves have built. To liberate the self is truly no easy task.