There\u2019s a word, \u201cconfabulation,\u201d that refers to the way some people\u2019s minds rather obviously make up a reality, memories, consistent thinking, that jibes with a slight suggestion. It\u2019s more obvious in some patients than others. I daresay that in subtle ways it\u2019s ubiquitous!<\/p>\n
We do this far more naturally in dreams. Then when we wake up we forget the dream\u2014but more importantly, we forget the way we half-made-it-up. It\u2019s very complex, because the unconscious mind feeds the conscious mind far, far more than it can handle. It selects some bits and lets the others go.<\/p>\n
I can fabulate<\/em> (consciously confabulate). This word, \u201cfabulation,\u201d is new\u2014I just made it up. The point here is one way to manage the human tendency to believe what one has made up is to more consciously fabulate, and by so doing you take on a new level of responsibility. You recognize that you\u2019re doing it, confabulating, at least a little. That is, you weave your thoughts together so they make sense. As I said, dreams, too.<\/p>\n So to exert a bit of conscious will, do it on purpose. As I say, to \u201cfabulate,\u201d is to make up stuff and know explicitly that you are making it all up. Then you begin to realize gradually how much you do make up less consciously, more automatically.<\/p>\n I’ve become more aware of the scope and power of the unconscious mind, or the borderland\u2014the subconscious\u2014and how it plays off with the conscious. I had underestimated the ratio of the subconscious mind to the unconscious. The thing to notice\u2014as difficult as it may seem, is that there\u2019s much more unconscious mind and it doesn\u2019t follow the rules of conscious thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a word, \u201cconfabulation,\u201d that refers to the way some people\u2019s minds rather obviously make up a reality, memories, consistent thinking, that jibes with a slight suggestion. It\u2019s more obvious in some patients than others. I daresay that in subtle ways it\u2019s ubiquitous! We do this far more naturally in dreams. Then when we wake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,14,26,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-foolin","category-psychology","category-world-of-almost-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2082,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}