CLASSIFYING OUR MODES OF THOUGHT The idea that there are two ways of processing reality has been around for a long time. These ways have been identified and labeled by a variety of researchers, not to mention poets and philosophers. It is only recently, though, that these classifications have been associated with the right and left hemisphere processing we have been exploring. In other words, there now seem to be physiological analogues that we can connect up with these two modes. Joseph Bogen has thought much about the meaning of seeing the world in these two modes and has compiled a list of several of these dichotomies. His list (including their originators) provides a perspective for further discussion of our dual brain.21 Other dualities that have been suggested include temporal-spatial, symbolic-concrete, logical-intuitive, focal-diffuse, and verbal-nonverbal. What pervades the list of adjectives associated with the left hemisphere is a sense of time, sequence, differentiation, analysis, and breaking the whole into pieces. Those adjectives describing the right hemisphere, on the other hand, all have to do with the perception of relationship, the whole, the concrete without a sense of time. Continue to "Half Brain Role Reversals" Return to first page