Recently, my daughter (who
is an artist) came home and started talking about how we have two brains, right
and left. Other than the difference between our limbic system (the so-called
mammalian brain) and our cortex, I had not thought much about the bilateral
brain. Carole Brooks Platt has proved me wrong.
Platt’s In Their Right Minds: The Lives and Shared
Practices of Poetic Geniuses (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2015) is a cogent
and lucid argument for the origin of creativity in the brain. Platt is
multi-knowledgeable across various disciplines, including the literary arts,
neuroscience and consciousness studies, and psychology. The book offers a
fascinating account about how the brain works in terms of inspiration: for some
the fine line between transcendence, dreams, and wakefulness, the blurring
between oneself and a literary creation. The book is packed with scientific details
and biographical information (in a parallel form) about William Blake, John
Keats, Victor Hugo, Rainer Maria Rilke, W.B Yeats, James Merrill, David
Jackson, Sylvia Plath, and Ted Hughes. Looking to prehistory, Platt notes that
we became fully human when our emotional side developed as much as our rational,
and with these poets the emotional goes far beyond anything typical.
Of course it’s more
complicated than saying the left hemisphere equals language, math, and logic
while the right hemisphere equals spatial ability, facial recognition, and
visual/musical imagery. So Platt gets down to the individual level, how
childhood trauma, mood disorders, and dissociative thoughts act as a
springboard for right-hemispheric dominance in some people. The right
hemisphere, borrowing from Arthur Koestler (according to Platt), puts thinking aside. So while the left
hemisphere produces syntactical speech, the right hemisphere deals with
subtleties. Referring to neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, Platt notes that the
right hemisphere (contextual perception) sees reality while the left hemisphere
(textual detail) interprets reality. Nevertheless, in order to completely
understand anything, the right hemisphere is ultimately important.
In terms of these writers
dealing with dissociation, Platt covers reincarnation, séances, automatic
writing, the Ouija board, telepathy and other paranormal events. Normally I’d
be skeptical about all of this, but Platt has convinced me that in line with
highly sensitive and creative right-hemispheric individuals these were truly crucial
exercises as part of the process in their imaginative output. That is, the
metaphorical-driven right hemisphere takes control for those who, because of
early trauma (like the loss of a parent), are seeking emotional balance.
I’m not exaggerating by
saying this is one of the most remarkable books I’ve recently read. There is a
surprising blend of interest in poetic creativity and neuroscience, invaluable
for anyone engaged in the making or interpretation of the literary arts. D.H.
Lawrence once said something about how Cézanne
did not just paint apples but went behind the apples to show us what was there.
Platt does not just chronicle the visions of poets and their inspiration but
goes behind the scenes of their brains – she shows us how the mind of poetic
genius works. While Platt focuses on the writers mentioned above, she is also
well versed in many others. The book is a goldmine for the interdisciplinary
synthesis of scientific and literary matter related to the brain as a creative
mechanism.
- Gregory F. Tague, Ph.D.,
author of Making Mind: Moral Sense and Consciousness.
Copyright©2015 by Gregory
F. Tague
