PARAPSYCHOTIC GRIEF, THEORY OF MIND AND THE CONCEPT OF THE SOUL

The ability to deceive is regarded as the best evidence of the cogniti ve ability separating humans from other primates. An alternative would be to look at the concept of the soul, which has an archetypal signif icance, emerging in various geographically remote cultures over the co urse of history. The soul will be an elusive but not an impossible con cept to study with neuroimaging. In parapsychotic grief the deceased m ay appear to the bereaved person without these hallucinations being co nsidered as indicative of mental illness. If this is the sort of norma l human experience which has led to the emergence of the belief in the immortality of the soul it may be a useful starting point for definin g the neuroanatomical basis of souls which do not necessarily seek to deceive. As the human prefrontal cortex expanded and developed and str ove to understand mental activity derived from subcortical structures the human attained an awareness of his own mind which has been constru ed as a separable insubstantial but indestructible entity. This idea w ould be bizarre if it were not archetypal and therefore must be closel y linked to the development of the human central nervous system.