People rely on intelligence to solve problems, and they are naturally baffled when comprehension proves impotent to effect emotional change. To the n… - Thomas Lewis

Recordings of encephalographic electrical waves show, amid their jagged spikes and hieroglyph swirls, a signature downward dip signifying that a neuronal mandate for motion is under way: the so-called readiness wave. While the motor cortex produces motion, the readiness wave appears to signal intent. So we should look here for will. When experimenters placed their subjects in front of a clock, however, they found that the conscious experience of a decision to move occurs after the readiness wave has already passed. What we feel as the conscious spark of resolve in this case proves to be an afterthought, not the majestic nexus of initiative we might imagine. Just where and how the early glimmers of intention coalesce, like glittering dust motes into the swirling jinni of action, remains beyond the ken of today’s science. The more we discover, the more we find that we do not know.

The limbic connectedness of a working psychotherapy requires uncommon courage. A patient asks to surrender the life he knows and to enter and emotional world he has never seen; he offers himself up to be changed in ways he can't possibly envision. As his assurance of successful transmutation he has only the gossamer of faith. At the journey's end, he will no longer be who he was, and his guide is someone he has every reason to mistrust...only human love keeps this from being the act of two madmen. (190)

An ironic revelation of the television-computer age is that what people want from machines is humanity: stories, contact, and interaction.