The dislocated mind : in the heart of reverie

Abstract

The dislocated mind is a condition common to us all: it speaks about the innate ability of the human mind to take conscious leave of its body in dwelling in the past of memory and in contemplating the future . The effects of dislocation are minimized in children: having a limited quantity of memory, the young conscious mind spends much of its time at the instant of perception, highly aware of the fleeting sensuality of its bodily experiences, and in intense absorption of the feeling associated with perception. As memory accumulates, so does the wandering of conscious thought increase, so much so that rarely, if ever, can the conscious mind perceive as it did in childhood. Mostly, in our over-dependence on the knowledge of the past, we neglect the knowledge that our senses still provide. Sensual knowledge, however, does not merely refer to the raw, perceived information that is then assimilated by our logic, it concerns a profound relationship which our minds share with our bodies; for at the heart of this dislocated mind itself is a particular condition which relates the metaphor of poetry to the creation of architecture. This condition will be explored through a consideration of the phenomenon of reverie.