Notes on the Imagination

      by Edward Bond

          written for the International Centre for Studies in Drama in Education

                at the Faculty of Education of the University of Central England.

                      Edward Bond is a Patron of the Centre.

 

12. There is no homunculus in the brain, no 'ghost in the machine',
no soul in the imagination, no centre in the psyche.  The brain is a
complex nexus of relations to the world itself.  The brain structures
a map not a person. There is no unified ego, instead there is a 'chorus'
which is collectively the self.  Imagination is an aspect of the brain's
ability to function consciously, at first at the need of the child's body
and later also of its mind.  The brain's inter-relations perform the
imagination's story.  Imagination, in the world, is theatre and its story
is drama.