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Unlocking the Mind

Hungarian-born Joseph Kovach was only 15 when he was sent to a Russian prison. He spent four years in a bleak and meaningless world. Dr. Kovach later said: "When I look at the months,the years, they were empty. There's nothing in terms of thinking, of planning, of remembering the past or planning for the future. It felt almost as though I was hibernating" (The Mind, Richard M. Restak, M.D., 1988, p. 271).

Eventually he was moved to a gulag that contained a small library. Reading opened his mind to ideas and creativity. When he was finally released, Dr. Kovach moved to the United States, where he attended the University of Chicago.

In the landmark Public Broadcasting System series The Mind, Dr. Kovach concluded: "Ultimately, it is our mental apparatus, our capacity to think, our capacity to deal with ideas, our capacity to find unities, coherences in variations-that's what makes us human. We have a way of creating worlds for ourselves, in our heads, and sharing those worlds" (Restak, p. 273).