by Terry 26 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I can't remember what year; I think it was the early 70's.
It was the strangest article in Watchtower history (and that is saying alot!).
To wit: People who get heart transplants also get the PERSONALITY of the donor!
I kid you not. Several so-called "actual incidences" are cited in the article.
Anybody remember this? Can you scan and paste it here? It would be a real eye-opener today in more enlightened times.
Thanks,
Terry
There's an article in the Aid book along these lines. Don't know which article it was, though. Probably "Heart".
Dave
Is this the one Terry? I found it on quotes
Watchtower 1971 March 1 pp.133-9 How Is Your Heart?
How Is Your Heart?
[…]
LOOKING DEEPLY INTO THE HEART
5 Where and what is your heart? You may say, What heart are you talking about? You know you have a heart in your chest, one that is pumping blood throughout your entire body, serving every single cell with that stream of life. But do you have another "heart" in your head, a "figurative heart"? Is it part of your brain or is it that abstract capacity of the brain that we call the "mind"? No! The brain, in which the mind resides, is one thing and the heart in our thorax, with its power of motivation, is another thing.
6 With but few exceptions, the use of the word "heart" in the Bible is limited to the operations of the heart of man as the powerhouse of one's desires, emotions and affections, the place that comes to include the capacities for motivation. The Bible does not speak of a symbolic or spiritual heart in contradistinction to the fleshly or literal heart, just as it does not speak of a symbolic mind, and thus we do not want to make the mistake of viewing the literal heart as merely a fleshly pump as does orthodox physiology today. Most psychiatrists and psychologists tend to overcategorize the mind and allow for little if any influence from the fleshly heart, looking upon the word "heart" merely as a figure of speech apart from its use in identifying the organ that pumps our blood.
7 The heart, nevertheless, is intricately connected with the brain by the nervous system and is well supplied with sensory nerve endings. The sensations of the heart are recorded on the brain. It is here that the heart brings to bear on the mind its desires and its affections in arriving at conclusions having to do with motivations. In reverse flow, the mind feeds the heart with interpretations of the impulses from the senses and with conclusions reached that are based on the knowledge it has received, either at the moment or from the memory. There is a close interrelationship between the heart and the mind, but they are two different faculties, centering in different locations. The heart is a marvelously designed muscular pump, but, more significantly, our emotional and motivating capacities are built within it. Love, hate, desire (good and bad), preference for one thing over another, ambition, fear—in effect, all that serves to motivate us in relationship to our affections and desires springs from the heart.
8 The Bible makes a definite distinction between the heart and the mind. Jesus did so when saying we must love Jehovah with our "whole heart" as well as with our "whole mind." (Matt. 22:37) What we are at heart determines in large measure what we are as to personality. In this regard the apostle Peter speaks of "the secret person of the heart in the incorruptible apparel of the quiet and mild spirit, which is of great value in the eyes of God."—1 Pet. 3:4.
9 Let us consider some significant points about the fleshly organ in your chest, the heart, called in Hebrew lev and le·vav' and in Greek kar·di'a (from which we get the word "cardiac"). Some medical scientists and psychiatrists believe that the heart does considerably more than pump blood. For instance, Dr. D. E. Schneider, a neurologist and psychiatrist of New York, points out that, when the human embryo is forming, the heart and the brain develop from the same area, that the heart is in part nerve tissue and, additionally, has the capacity for manufacturing and storing certain highly potent chemicals that exercise a regulatory effect on the body, including, according to this research, the brain. His conclusion is that there is "evidence for a two-way relationship between mind and heart," and that, even as the mind has its effect on the heart, "the heart [yes, the fleshly one in your chest] in turn may influence the mind intensely." Certain other researchers have arrived at rather similar conclusions.
10 It is significant that heart-transplant patients, where the nerves connecting the heart and brain are severed, have serious emotional problems after the operation. The new heart is still able to operate as a pump, it having its own power supply and timing mechanism independent of the general nervous system for giving impulse to the heart muscle, but just as it now responds only sluggishly to outside influences, the new heart in turn registers few, if any, clear factors of motivation on the brain. To what extent the nerve endings of the body and the new heart are able to make some connections in time is not clear, but this cannot be ruled out as one of the several factors causing the serious mental aberrations and disorientation that doctors report are observed in heart-transplant patients. These patients have donor-supplied pumps for their blood, but do they now have all the factors needed to say they have a "heart"? One thing is sure, in losing their own hearts, they have had taken away from them the capacities of "heart" built up in them over the years and which contributed to making them who they were as to personality.
11 Medical World News (May 23, 1969), in an article entitled "What Does a New Heart Do to the Mind?" reported the following: "At Stanford University Medical Center last year, a 45-year-old man received a new heart from a 20-year-old donor and soon announced to all his friends that he was celebrating his twentieth birthday. Another recipient resolved to live up to the sterling reputation of the prominent local citizen who was the donor. And a third man expressed great fear of feminization upon receiving a woman's heart, though he was somewhat mollified when he learned that women live longer than men. According to psychiatrist Donald T. Lunde, a consultant to surgeon Norman Shumway's transplant team at Stanford, these patients represent some of the less severe mental aberrations [italics ours] observed in the Shumway series of 13 transplants over the last 16 months." The article continues: "Though five patients in the series had survived as of early this month, and four of them were home leading fairly normal lives, three of the nonsurvivors became psychotic before they died last year. And two others have become psychotic this year."
12 While the giving of the drug prednisone and the mind-wearying effects of a serious operation and a long confinement under intensive care are given by Dr. Lunde as the chief causes of these strange personality disorders, it is interesting to observe that Dr. Schneider, "a New York psychiatrist-neurologist and a student of heart-brain interaction, sees other factors modifying Dr. Lunde's explanations for the psychoses encountered in the Shumway heart transplant series. Dr. Schneider . . . maintains that 'the heart is more than a plumber's pump—it is a neuroendocrine battery. It has a little brain all its own, the S-A and A-V nodes and the conduction bundle, and the little waves from this bundle can be discerned along with each heart wave on an ECG [electrocardiogram]. Beyond this, the heart's extensive manufacture and storage of catecholamines may affect the levels of these neurohormones in the hypothalamus.'" (Ibid., page 18) Dr. Schneider observed that many non-heart-transplant patients who were given prednisone or confined for long periods did not get psychoses.
13 Whatever medical science may yet learn about the human heart, the Bible definitely makes a distinction between mind and heart, separating them. And, with the heart playing such a vital role, how important it is to safeguard it, not just by dietary self-control and other physical means, but by watching what sinks down into our hearts as impressions come to it from the senses and as the result of interactions of heart and mind! If the heart stops and the body does not get lifegiving blood, we perish, including our heart and mental faculties; but even though we are living, if there is not a steady flow of proper motives, desires and affections from our heart, we cannot expect to please the Life-giver, Jehovah. "The one that goes in for sensual gratification is dead though she is living." (1 Tim. 5:6) In this light, "out of it are the sources of life" takes on greater significance. It is from the heart that we are motivated to worship. "With the heart one exercises faith for righteousness." (Rom. 10:10) We must love Jehovah with the whole heart and worship him "with spirit and truth." (John 4:24) In creating man, Jehovah made a special place in the heart of man for himself, which, of course, needs to be cultivated and nurtured by each one. It is the fool or senseless one who "has said in his heart: 'There is no Jehovah."' God can be replaced in the heart by other persons, objects, or concepts, if one chooses to have this done, but human creatures are made naturally at heart to worship their Creator.—Ps. 14:1; Prov. 3:1-7.
14 It is interesting to observe, too, that the heart is one of the first organs of the body to be affected by emotional circumstances. Our hearts leap with joy; sudden danger brings a violent racing of the heart. Fear causes trepidation of the heart. Grief and sorrow bring it pain. From the heights of joy and pleasure to the depths of despair and pain, the sensations of the heart are felt throughout the body. Appropriately we have many words and phrases that incorporate the word "heart." To name a few: Take to heart, fainthearted, tenderhearted, hardhearted, with all your heart, heartrending, set your heart on, heartening, change of heart, and so forth.
How about this?
"Most psychiatrists and psychologists tend to overcategorize the mind and allow for little if any influence from the fleshly heart, looking upon the word "heart" merely as a figure of speech apart from its use in identifying the organ that pumps our blood. . . . The heart is a marvelously designed muscular pump, but, more significantly, our emotional and motivating capacities are built within it. Love, hate, desire (good and bad), preference for one thing over another, ambition, fear-in effect, all that serves to motivate us in relationship to our affections and desires springs from the heart." (The Watchtower, March 1, 1971, p. 134)
From: http://www.ajwrb.org/science/organ.shtml
Dave [edited to add] of the "too little, too late" class (beaten to the punch!)
I brought this assinine article up to my jw, his response was still, 'well, we don't know for sure it could happen'. I know I brought it up at least in 2006, I could harldy believe my ears when he tried to defend it. I will say he didn't have his whole heart in defending it!
I've just been reading this, I'd never seen it before, having joined the
watchtower in 1991. What a load of crap! Was this a wt study article?
I can hardly believe anyone with a brain would believe this stuff.
I'll read your article later in it's entirity.
I thought, pity the man with an artificial heart. Didn't see it mentioned. Didn't they at one time do pig heart transplants? Oink, oink!
Oh my. Gotta go to work.
A colleague of mine recently recommended a book called "Change of Heart" or something like that, which was apparently written by a heart transplant surgeon, and chronicled the experiences of heart transplant patients - and basically made the same assertions as in the WT articles back in the early 70s. I asked her if I could borrow it - haven't been able to find it on Amazon - so I could read it for myself. I'm waiting for her to bring it to work.
One of the "highlights" she mentioned was that the heart has a "memory" of sorts - for example if the heart transplant donor was used to eating certain things prior to the transplant, the recipient often had cravings for those things even if they'd never eaten that kind of food before.
Personally, I'm extremely skeptical about all of this - mainly due to rejecting WT bullcrap or anything remotely resembling it.
Here's an abstract from a study that was done in Vienna in the early 90s:
Qual Life Res. 1992 Aug;1(4):251-6.
Does changing the heart mean changing personality? A retrospective inquiry on 47 heart transplant patients. Bunzel B , Schmidl-Mohl B , Grundbock A , Wollenek G .
Second Department of Surgery, University Hospital Vienna, Austria.
Heart transplantation is not simply a question of replacing an organ that no longer functions. The heart is often seen as source of love, emotions, and focus of personality traits. To gain insight into the problem of whether transplant patients themselves feel a change in personality after having received a donor heart, 47 patients who were transplanted over a period of 2 years in Vienna, Austria, were asked for an interview. Three groups of patients could be identified: 79% stated that their personality had not changed at all postoperatively. In this group, patients showed massive defense and denial reactions, mainly by rapidly changing the subject or making the question ridiculous. Fifteen per cent stated that their personality had indeed changed, but not because of the donor organ, but due to the life-threatening event. Six per cent (three patients) reported a distinct change of personality due to their new hearts. These incorporation fantasies forced them to change feelings and reactions and accept those of the donor. Verbatim statements of these heart transplant recipients show that there seem to be severe problems regarding graft incorporation, which are based on the age-old idea of the heart as a centre that houses feelings and forms the personality.
PMID: 1299456 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Here are some more abstracts:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k51335l4k4676577/
This one appears to be discussing the book my colleague mentioned - called The Heart's Code (rather than "Change of Heart" as she told me):
http://www.med.unc.edu/wellness/main/links/cellular%20memory.htm
link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Code-Paul-P-Pearsall/dp/0767900952
Psychologist Pearsall had a personal experience with "energy cardiology" when he had hip cancer. His logical, directing brain struggled over his disease and what it meant to him with his sensitive, more accepting heart. He began to study the heart and learned about its "L energy" and how to recognize its warnings. He went on to study heart transplants and how the background of a new heart could affect its recipient; for example, one man began to yearn for spicy foods and to study Spanish before he knew that his donor had been Hispanic. Documenting the stories he tells with medical and psychological literature, Pearsall states that we have been too brain-focused and have not listened to all the heart has to offer. We should learn to be patient, connected with others, pleasant, humble, and gentle, Pearsall says, and for those who want to find out whether they are cardiosensitive, he presents a personal inventory. Although hardly a work of completely hard science, Pearsall's effort has much to offer thoughtful readers. William Beatty--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
