I believe it can be broken, maybe not permanently, but I believe it can be.

I think it is possible, yes. Sometimes, even permanently.

Mental processes can definitely malfunction to the point where you would call it “broken”. This can happen by extreme trauma, or actual brain damage, either physical or chemical (drug abuse). If you have any further questions about this, I suggest you do some volunteer work in a nursing home that specializes in brain damage or trauma patients.

Yes.

I certainly believe that it can, even to the point of disability. Depending on the circumstances a person may or may not be able to be reconditioned either. For example, look at military personnel exposed to continuous traumatic events, or victims of all sorts of different abuses. There are tons of case studies where such documentation has been recorded portraying such a “break” in mental sanity.

Yes and there are people out there with great aptitude for it.

Yes, I think it can definitely happen.

Yes – sometimes it’s fixable and sometimes it’s not.

A mind can become dysfunctional certainly but completely broken? It don’t know. Determining that I think that would require determining exactly where the mind begins and the brain ends and where the brain begins and the mind ends.

Of course it can: Just look at torture in war or at totalitarian governments. Another example would be rape or violence towards children: Many people are psychologically harmed through this and this has enormous effects on them. Read 1984 by George Orwell if the subject interests you!

I guess the ultimate sign of breakage would be when the mind turns on itself, a.k.a. suicide, and this is certainly a possibility.

No, I don’t think it can. I think the human mind runs on patterns. At times, certain individuals will get on a certain patterns that are totally incompatible with reality, or away from their ideal pattern, but I think they can always be re-routed back to another, more healthy and beneficial pattern.

Many are born broken

I suspect that the daughter that was held captive and raped for 24 years by her father is broken (and probably most of her kids).

Try the Clockwork Orange approach…

Yes, and as Yarnlady so wisely suggested, a trip to your local nursing home or extended care facility can really open your eyes to just how much of a break the human mind is capable of.

Broken in the emotional sense yes, as in overload.

Yes; one of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed was a 4-year-old foster child whom I had evaluated a few times in his life. He’d been shuffled from home to home, and then found some stability with his grandfather and started to do well. Then his grandfather died, and the poor kid just shut down.

Certainly a brain can be broken and in many ways. You seem to imply a brain that was once working for whatever reason begins to malfunction, as in trauma.

But, dont forget brain disorders that to lead to things like epilepsy which is usually not the result of trauma. Or, think about the host of brain disorders that manifest themselves as “mental health issues” or “behavioral disorders” – mental disease.

These symptoms are the result of brains that don’t function normally and are physiological every bit as much as heart disease, cancer or diabetes. Yet, society has since the dawn of homo sapiens viewed persons suffering from such disorders differently than those with “proper” physiological disorders or plainly diseased.

Our society has tackled issues relating to race, gender and sexual orientation, but lags shamefully in dealing with those suffering (and take my word for it, they do suffer as do their families) from “craziness”.

A brain that is broken is essentially like any other organ that doesn’t work. We need to find ways to ease the suffering of the afflicted not to mention find cures.

“No more physically visible than the wind and yet evident.”

Analyzing Electrical Activity and Magnetic Fields in the Brain:
www.mathworks.com/mason/tag/proxy.html?dataid=5522&fileid=25700

Can it be broken (not working properly)?
http://www.mentalhealth.com/

Can it be broken through torture or physical harm?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Search&Term=effects%20of%20torture%20on%20brain&itool=QuerySuggestion

The brain is only an organic computing device.
Swim in my answers if you will.

@alossforwords I appreciate the sources you have offered but am already aware of much that they portray. Electrical activity and magnetic fields are biological processes willed by the mind no? Is a mental health problem a matter of the mind or body and if the former or both does such imply that ones mind can be broken or simply harmed?
The most stimulating answers to swim in are those in which one feels outside of their depth would you not agree? (this is not my insinuating anything about your answers but instead a mere question regarding your concluding statement)
@YARNLADY @VS Thank you for the suggestions; I have previously worked with mentally handicapped people and have trailed alongside (to the extent that such is possible) clinical psychologists on a couple of occasions leading me to witness the effects of psychological and neurological disorders on many.
@lillycoyote Something i’ve pondered all too often Lilly. Have you any speculation to offer on the matter?
@jo_with_no_space Is it only possible for the mind to break due to emotional issues?
@mattbrowne Tried it but the cinema kicked me out after my third unpaid viewing of Rambo
@avalmez I am not fond of implications and accordingly attempt not to make them when presenting questions or any manner of purposeful text but unfortunately our perceptive natures tend to make anything capable of multiple interpretations.
I concur, there are many people suffering from mental illnesses that have been disregarded and this should not be so.
@James17555 Do such things necessarily break ones mind? 1984 is a novel I have been meaning to read for some time.

@Nially_Bob No Nially, it could break from over-exertion too :)

@Nially_Bob If you’re only talking about the semantics, in my definition; broken = not working properly

@YARNLADY Valid point, the term ‘broken’ is very open to interpretation. I would consider ‘broken’ to mean a state in which something is not working properly and cannot be fixed unless a significant change is made.
@jo_with_no_space I can’t foresee myself experiencing that too soon puts feet up and sips milkshake through a straw casually ;)

@Nially_Bob in your @avalmez above…um, are you saying that ain’t what you meant and i misunderstood you?

“Can a humans mind ever be broken?”

The phrase “be broken” implies a change from a state that was “not broken” and you give examples of how such a change of state might come about. the examples you give are external events that lead to the “breaking” of the mind.

My opening comment about implications in your question are needed simply to frame the remainder of my response – i didn’t mean to come across as critical of your phrasing of the question.

i simply pointed out a mind can also be “broken” as the result of internal events, pathological events. and as you point out to yarnlady, “broken” is open to interpretation.

hope this clarifies my earlier response.

@avalmez Forgive me my friend, upon re-reading my previous comment I feel I came across with a quite aggrivated tone when this was intended. Basically, I concur with what you said but simply wanted to make it evident that the sub-text for the question was meant only as an introduction to the topic itself and not my perspective on it, so any implications you feel I made (“you seem to imply a brain that was once working for whatever reason begins to malfunction, as in trauma”) are likely not a clear reflection of my opinions.

@Nially_Bob That certainly won’t happen to YOU, Nially :)

I do think so, yes. I think that any process or function or organic component of a human being can be impaired or destroyed through disease, stress, congenital weakness, harmful chemicals, and a number of other things. Given what can happen to eyes, skin, liver, heart, feet, and everything else, there is no reason to think the brain is exempt.

@Nially_Bob I was implying that I had provided an ocean of information which I felt, more than answered those questions that were posed from a couple of different perspectives. Now if you were to ask me, “Why is the sky blue?” I can give you a simple answer and link you a source to back it up. I can’t add depth to something with an obvious response. Can the human mind be broken? Despite the definition of “broken” the answer is “yes!” The mind is part of the body, both exist because of each other, like the sky and the ocean. I don’t like to provide answers to simple questions. I supply links to allow people to draw their own conclusions. As far as souls and magical human spirit and all of that… I don’t believe in those things any more than a child believes in Santa Claus after he finds out his mom and dad are slipping the presents under the tree. <<<Sorry for the spoiler.

Broken. No.
Busted. Yes.

Yes. Read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine or Lorna Rhodes’ Total Confinement. The whole point of torture during interrogation is to introduce a “hurricane in the mind in which the person becomes incapable of acting in his own interest.” If that isn’t breaking a person’s mind, I don’t know what is.

Unless it is keeping someone in solitary confinement until they go psychotic, and their environment takes on a menacing hallucinatory quality—something 40,000 people endure in America in our Supermax prisons and in the “disciplinary” Administrative Segregation units of ordinary prisons and jails.

Military manuals prescribe no more than 14 days of solitary confinement as the absolute limit on what a person can or should endure, but we routinely confine people, often vulnerable, mentally ill people, for months and even years on end. Solitary confinement is often inflicted on people who misbehave because they have undiagnosed neurological impairments. In solitary confinement, their conditions worsen, they “misbehave” again; and they are punished with even more time, in even more restricted sensory-deprived conditions, creating a vicious downward spiral. It’s one of the terrible human rights abuses happening right under our noses, and it has has made our country a virtual pariah in the international human rights community.

My mind is broken just by reading this!

Broken? Most certainly yes.
Can it be repaired? Yes to a certain extent, but there will always be flaws because of the trauma

Broken is a state of mind.

Some of the greatest minds were “broken”.