IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging

by Daniel J. Siegel M.D.

Overview

Exploring the nature of how our experience of what we call “self” emerges across the lifespan.

Both a personal and general meditation on identity and belonging, Daniel J. Siegel’s book combines personal reflections with scientific discussions of how the mind, brain, and our relationships shape who we are. Weaving the internal and external, the subjective and objective, IntraConnected reveals how our culture may give us a message of separation as a solo, isolated self, but a wider perspective unveils that who we are may be something more—broader than the brain, bigger even than the body—and fundamental to social systems and the natural world.

Our body-based self—the origin of a Me—is not only connected to others but connected within our relational worlds themselves—a WE—forming the essence of how we belong and our identity. If the pandemic has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that we are all connected. IntraConnected discusses that bond, as well as other realities of our intraconnected lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393711691
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Series:	Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	163,257
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Noted neuropsychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles School of Medicine, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute in LA. He is founding editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xv

Synopsis xxi

Welcome 1

Challenge and Opportunity 6

Language Can Liberate 10

Losing to Loosen: Personal Identity 13

IntraConnected 20

Certainty in Identity as Entity 24

Wisdom Traditions 31

An Integrative Self 52

An Ancient Invitation for Modern Times 59

Emergence 65

A Space of Being 65

Formless Into Form, Energy Into Mind and Matter 71

The Force and Matter of Life 75

An Identity Lens: Inner and Outer and a Narrowing of Belonging 77

Conception and Birth 86

A Body Form 87

Our Embodied Brain 89

Simply Being and an Implicit Memory of Wholeness 91

From Being to Doing 95

Refocusing Our Identity Lens from Linear to Systems 97

Infancy 100

Networks, Motivation, and Emotion 101

Doing and the Construction of Perception 107

Inner and Outer: Self and Other 109

Better Together: Relationships, Emotion, Meaning 112

Developing a Core Self 116

Toddlerhood 120

A World of Words 120

Narrative and the Stories We Learn of Self 124

Play, Presence, and Possibility 131

Many States, Many Identities 143

Security, Epistemic Trust, and Our Relational Self 147

School Years 152

The Tree of Knowledge, the Knowledge of Trees 152

Comparison and Competition, Connection and Collaboration 157

Inner and Outer: Private and Public 160

The Stories of Our Lives, the Lives of Our Stories 162

Adolescence 171

The ESSENCE of Adolescence 172

Romance, Relationships, Identity 176

Timeless Wisdom, Timely Action 179

Preparation for Separation and Change 183

Leaving Home 186

A Mindsight Lens 187

From Grief to Growth 191

Lessons from the Wheel of Awareness 195

Science, Spirituality, Subjectivity 198

Travels 205

Selfing as Noun and as Verb 205

Diversity and Possibility 209

Letting Go of Certainty 214

Transcending the Solo-Self with Awe 217

Longing for Certainty in an Uncertain World 220

Let Go and Let G.O.D.: Generator of Diversity 222

Choice 226

Self 228

Identity 229

Belonging 231

Integration 233

Systems 234

Love and Linking 238

Intraconnection 240

Interconnection 242

Our Noosphere 243

Adult Development and the Resistance to Change 245

Hope 253

Appendix 1 Wheel of Awareness Practice 270

Appendix 2 Integrative Movement Series 274

References, Resources, and Readings 289

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

"IntraConnected completely redefines the word ‘self’ as we know it. We often hear ‘we are all connected,’ while the world shows us nothing but separation. Marrying modern science with indigenous wisdom, Siegel illuminates a doorway the world has desperately been trying to find. Walk through the door. Reading this book will change you forever. Dan Siegel has written another masterpiece. A balm for the difficulties we now face, IntraConnected cultivates hope for real positive change in your life, and the world."

Justin Michael Williams

"Dr. Siegel’s work is a love letter to humanity—both a road map and an appeal for us to understand the strength, basis, and innate connection that we all have and must become aware of in order to move beyond survival mode and into thriving mode. The reader of this elegant work will walk away with a deeper sense of intraconnection to all that exists and has ever existed in the universe. IntraConnected is a revelation, an awakening"

Shelly Tygielski

"In his latest book, Dan Siegel explores a pathway toward a more sustainable way of being humans facing the multiple pandemics of our times together. Synthesizing insights from a range of disciplines and ways of knowing, he argues for expanding, evolving the notion of the self, from an isolated and separate ‘me’ to a relational, awe-embracing integrated sense—called, in his intriguing coinage, ‘M We.’ I know of no more encouraging prescription for what ails us at this time."

Rhonda V. Magee

"What a joy it is to be alive in a time when neuroscience, rooted from within the body, offers us liberation, illuminating our inescapable belonging to each other and the living Earth. Dan Siegel's groundbreaking work here is of revolutionary, and indeed evolutionary, importance."

Joanna Macy

"In an amazing dance of intellectual brilliance, heartfelt caring, and wise embrace, Dan Siegel invites us into the depth of his and our human story of development in order to examine, reflect, and melt the nature of the separate self. A new possibility of humanity arises when we authentically allow the possibility of intraconnectedness into our lives."

Thomas Hübl

"In this personally engaging and philosophically illuminating work, Dr. Dan Siegel takes his unique explorations of the human experience of self and mind to a yet deeper level, revealing what he aptly calls the pandemic of solo-self to be based on a delusion, one at odds with both contemporary science and traditional wisdom. Eloquently and expertly, he guides us back towards our true nature: intra- and inter-being with all others and all that is."

Gabor Maté

"In a world riven by polarization and division, Dan Siegel offers a compelling and timely gift to our hearts and minds, an awakening to non-duality that is innate to us all. Siegel’s deep practice and studies take the reader to a place where they can see anew, where the overstimulated mind can recognize the biological and ancient truths of our inseparability from each other and all of life."

Paul Hawken