Harris, J: How Culture Runs the Brain

For the past 38 years, Al Santos has lived in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with his wife and two children; he enjoys holidaying with his family. Called by God when he was still a preteen, Al's passion for and devotion to God is palpable in all he does. He describes himself as a servant of God, doing what He requires him to do. While he has faced many disappointments in life, Al doesn't regret any of them and looks upon those disappointments as transformational points, without which he wouldn't be who he is today.Al's covenant with God drives him in his desire to provide enlightenment to those who are, as he puts it, "in the dark in this dark world" about God's truth, His secret wisdom, and eternal life in heaven. His deep connection to the Lord has assisted him in his writing, enabling him to share God's revelations with others who have chosen to walk the narrow path....

Freud was right: mind and brain evolved together, adapting progressively to cultural change; responding regressively to wars, genocides, and forced migrations. Freud traced innate conflicts between pleasure and aggression in each stage of individual development to corresponding development in cultural stages. Cultural trauma that induces PTSD with a loss of secure identity in one generation induces collective phantasies (mythologies) among succeeding generations, and this may form cultural syndromes of revenge and restitution. Families, tribes, clans, and religious communities can regress together to infant and childhood stages. They may breed heroes, sociopaths, revolutionaries-or potential terrorists vulnerable to the siren call of internet shamans.How Culture Runs (and sometimes ruins) the Brain presents neuroscience findings, revealing fantasy as the brain's default mode, as it alters identity during unbearable trauma or loss. The book presents case histories of cultural conflicts among individuals, tribes, and nations, using the examples of the Boston Marathon Bombers, Bowe Bergdahl's iconic trial, the Orlando Shooter, and regressive American players in the election of 2016. Conflicting forms of cultural narcissism determine economic survival: the immature narcissism of Trump and his followers challenges the mature narcissism that hid Hillary Clinton's hubris. Immature narcissistic oligarchs can act out their economic dominance to deal with the fear of extinction of their own identity. Some terrorists groups use mature global technology in the service of immature fundamentalist identity.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Contemporary Cultural SyndromesChapter 2: The Cultural Regulation of identityChapter 3: The Freudian BrainChapter 4: How Mind Enters TraumaChapter 5: From Gilgamesh: The Oldest Culture We KnowChapter 6: Darwin through Freud's EyesChapter 7: From the Primal Horde to the Primal SceneChapter 8: Freud's Self-SpecimenChapter 9: Freud As GoetheChapter 10: Modernism and Cultural DisciplinesChapter 11: Gender and Surrender: Lessons in Ego IdentityChapter 12: Freud's Ambivalence about AmericaChapter 13: The Pretense of Cultural LeadersChapter 14: The Evolution of FantasyChapter 15: Syndromes of Restitution and Retribution: The Tsarnaev CaseConclusionReferences