Right

Within the depth-psychology and neuropsychological corpus assembled in Seba, ‘Right’ operates almost exclusively as a marker of hemispheric laterality — specifically, the right cerebral hemisphere — and it is Iain McGilchrist who most comprehensively theorises its significance. Across The Master and His Emissary (2009) and The Matter With Things (2021), McGilchrist constructs the right hemisphere as the seat of holistic, contextual, emotionally resonant, and truth-oriented cognition: it grasps wholes rather than parts, mediates insight rather than serial search, and places a ‘premium on truth’ where the left hemisphere is prone to confabulation and social masquerade. Julian Jaynes anticipates this architecture by associating the right hemisphere with the archaic ‘hand of the gods,’ the synthetic and spatial-constructive mode that the gods once commanded. Oliver Sacks documents the clinical consequences of right-hemisphere dysfunction — hemi-neglect, literal-mindedness, loss of proprioceptive self-correction — rendering the theoretical stakes viscerally concrete. The crucial tension in the corpus is normative as well as empirical: the right hemisphere is not merely different from the left but, for McGilchrist, epistemically and existentially prior — a master whose emissary has usurped dominance. The term thus carries a diagnostic weight in cultural critique as much as in neuroscience, indexing what is lost when analytic, reductive, left-hemisphere modes of attention colonise human experience.

In the library 29 passages

‘unlike the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere, in our view, places a premium on the truth’ … ‘The right hemisphere, in fact, truly interprets the mental state not only of its own brain, but the brains (and minds) of others.’

McGilchrist marshals Gazzaniga and Keenan to argue that the right hemisphere is the locus of veridical interpersonal and self-knowledge, in direct contrast to the left hemisphere’s susceptibility to deception and social performance.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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‘unlike the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere, in our view, places a premium on the truth’ … ‘our left hemisphere – the one that typically speaks to others – may be more adept at lying and constructing a social masquerade’

This passage establishes the normative hierarchy at the heart of McGilchrist’s project: the right hemisphere as truth-seeking master, the left as self-deceiving emissary.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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‘the right hemisphere plays a unique role in insight’ … the right (but not left) frontal and parietal regions are strongly associated with the actual (‘aha!’) moment of recognition.

McGilchrist cites imaging and EEG evidence to establish the right hemisphere as uniquely responsible for the creative moment of insight, distinguishing it sharply from the left hemisphere’s serial, computational search.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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‘the right hemisphere plays a unique role in insight’ … the right (but not left) frontal and parietal regions are strongly associated with the actual (‘aha!’) moment of recognition.

A convergent finding across imaging and EEG methodologies: the right hemisphere, particularly right frontal and parietal regions, mediates genuine insight rather than algorithmic solution.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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Lesion studies clearly demonstrate that individuals with right hemisphere damage exhibit inappropriate literal thinking … patients with right hemisphere brain lesions … are generally literal-minded, and tend to select a picture representing the literal rather than the figurative meaning.

McGilchrist uses lesion evidence to show that the right hemisphere is indispensable for metaphoric and figurative understanding, its damage producing the clinical reduction of meaning to the literal.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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Lesion studies clearly demonstrate that individuals with right hemisphere damage exhibit inappropriate literal thinking … patients with right hemisphere brain lesions … are generally literal-minded, and tend to select a picture representing the literal rather than the figurative meaning.

Right hemisphere damage eliminates metaphorical comprehension, reducing patients to literal-mindedness — a clinical demonstration that the right hemisphere underwrites the figurative dimension of language.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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the right hemisphere is far more involved than the left in emotional expressivity and receptivity – picking up other people’s feelings and sympathising or empathising – it is absolutely not the case that the right hemisphere is ‘emotional’ and the left hemisphere ‘cool’ and rational.

McGilchrist refines the hemispheric distinction, arguing that the right hemisphere’s superiority in emotional receptivity does not reduce to mere emotionality but constitutes a richer, more accurate engagement with human reality.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis

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the right hemisphere is more involved in synthetic and spatial-constructive tasks while the left hemisphere is more analytic and verbal. The right hemisphere, perhaps like the gods, sees parts as having a meaning only within a context; it looks at wholes.

Jaynes offers an early formulation of right-hemisphere holism — its tendency to see wholes and context — and provocatively aligns it with the archaic divine voice of the bicameral mind.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976thesis

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it is easier for the right hemisphere to adopt the attentional role of the left, if required, than for the left hemisphere to adopt the role of the right. This asymmetry is by no means limited to attention.

McGilchrist argues for a fundamental asymmetry of neural plasticity: the right hemisphere can subsume left-hemisphere functions more readily than vice versa, reflecting the right’s broader and more foundational cognitive scope.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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activating the right, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increased attractiveness of the faces … activity in the right orbitofrontal cortex increased linearly as a function of attractiveness.

Experimental stimulation and imaging converge to locate aesthetic judgment of facial beauty specifically in the right hemisphere, extending the right hemisphere’s domain to include aesthetic valuation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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activating the right, but not the left, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increased attractiveness of the faces … ‘the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a causal role in explicit judgment of facial attractiveness.’

Causal evidence via TMS and correlational imaging places the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex at the centre of aesthetic judgment, binding the right hemisphere to the evaluation of beauty.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the right hemisphere appears to be crucially involved in the process of deductive reasoning … different types of reasoning problems evoke activity in the right superior parietal cortex, and bilaterally in the precuneus.

McGilchrist challenges the assumption that deductive reasoning is a left-hemisphere preserve, presenting neuroimaging evidence that the right hemisphere is crucially involved in reasoning, especially through the precuneus and its links to selfhood and emotion.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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The plays of Shakespeare constitute one of the most striking testimonies to the rise of the right hemisphere during this period. There is a complete disregard for theory and for category, a celebration of multiplicity and the richness of human variety.

McGilchrist reads Shakespearean drama as a cultural expression of right-hemisphere values — irreducible individuality, contextual complexity, and resistance to categorical reduction — marking a historical epoch of right-hemisphere ascendancy.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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the right hemisphere has its own internal control system, though it also acts as a brake on the left hemisphere. Much depends on whether the right frontal cortex is intact or not.

McGilchrist identifies distinct roles for right frontal and right temporal cortex, establishing the right hemisphere as possessing its own internal regulatory architecture including a brake on left-hemisphere excess.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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In left hemisphere damage, the two most serious consequences are motor impairments, particularly of the right arm and hand; and language impairments.

McGilchrist traces the anatomical basis of the left hemisphere’s dominance over the right hand and language, positioning the right hand as the instrument of left-hemisphere utilisation and world-manipulation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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the right hemisphere is more attuned to colour discrimination and perception … the right hemisphere prefers the colour green and the left hemisphere prefers the colour red.

McGilchrist extends hemispheric differentiation to perceptual preferences including colour, aligning the right hemisphere with green and melancholy — speculative but consistent with the right hemisphere’s association with contextual, organic apprehension.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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the right hemisphere is actually freed, its vigilance also in a state of enhancement, to see the scene afresh, once more authentic, not overlaid by the familiarity that the left hemisphere would normally bring to the scene.

McGilchrist describes how the right hemisphere’s open receptivity — liberated when left-hemisphere focused attention exhausts itself — enables authentic, renewed perception of experience.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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She finds this signally successful if she cannot find her coffee or dessert. If her portions seem too small, she will swivel to the right … until the previously missed half now comes into view.

Sacks documents left hemi-neglect through a patient’s compensatory rightward rotation, illustrating with clinical precision how right-hemisphere damage disrupts the spatial wholeness of the experienced world.

Sacks, Oliver, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985supporting

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from a gene … could arise a skill that would enable further evolution to occur not only more rapidly but in a direction of our own choosing – through empathy and co-operation, the values of the right hemisphere.

McGilchrist argues that imitation — enabled by the right hemisphere’s empathic values — constitutes the evolutionary hinge allowing human beings to transcend genetic determinism through cultural co-operation.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting

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the left hemisphere is the hemisphere of ‘linear processing’; its cognitive style is sequential … This is in keeping with its phenomenological world being one of getting, of utility.

In contrasting left-hemisphere linearity with right-hemisphere circularity, McGilchrist implicitly characterises the right hemisphere as aligned with the cyclical, organic temporality of lived experience.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009aside

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we are not so sure we are making the right choice … when the evidence available to someone else makes him see just the opposite.

Pascal uses ‘right’ in its normative rather than neurological sense, gesturing toward the epistemic problem of certainty and the social instability of moral and practical judgment.

Pascal, Blaise, Pensées, 1670aside

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