Regina Pally - The Mind-Brain Relationship

This accessible review by Regina Pally of aspects of the neuroscience literature relevant to psychoanalysts performs an immensely valuable service. The explosion of knowledge in this area over the past few decades makes it almost impossible for the uninitiated psychoanalytic reader to find his or her bearings in it. And yet find their bearings they must, for there is little doubt that the scientific study and treatment of mental disorders (indeed our understanding of the human mind in general) in the twenty-first century will proceed from the fundamental insights that recent neuroscience has generated. Psychoanalysts who fail to assimilate the new knowledge will be increasingly marginalised both scientifically and professionally, and will be unable to participate in this important intellectual revolution.

The first chapter of this book describes how neural circuitry develops epigenetically, in a manner that directly reflects early environmental influences. These experience-dependent circuits might literally be described as the fabric of the ego. The second chapter reviews perceptual mechanisms, emphasising top-down influences (i.e. the impact of memory, motivation, emotion and attentional factors on current perceptual processing). Pallys review of these mechanisms seems to provide a basis for new insights into a host of clinical phenomena (e.g. transference, projection, hallucination) that have played an important part in the development of psychoanalytic models of the mind. The third chapter discusses the structure and function of memory. Few topics are of more importance for psychoanalytic practice than an understanding of the varieties and vagaries of human memory. The contemporary models surveyed by Pally demonstrate the ongoing fertility of Freuds conception of the dynamic properties and constructed quality of memory. The fourth chapter concerns emotion. Pally correctly emphasises the embodied basis of emotional processing, and draws attention to the unconscious basis and deep evolutionary roots of our emotions, conceptualised by Freud as reproductions of very early, perhaps even pre-individual, experiences of vital importance (1926, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, S.E. 20, p. 133). The fifth chapter deals with the perennially fascinating topic of hemispheric asymmetry. Pally provides an introductory overview of right/left differences and describes some of the striking phenomena revealed by split-brain studies. She also offers some speculations on the possible implications for psychoanalysis of the bicameral organisation of the forebrain. The sixth and final chapter addresses the fashionable topic of consciousness, the final frontier of neuroscience. This last chapter provides a systematic and comprehensive overview of the state of the art in the field. Here we see how deeply engaged contemporary neuroscience isno less than psychoanalytic metapsychologywith its philosophical underpinnings.

This book makes it possible for the non-specialist reader to graspalmost in a single sittingthe main thrust of contemporary brain research on a range of topics of vital interest to psychoanalysis. Readers are bound to want to learn more about one or another of these topics, and in this way, they will be effortlessly inducted into this exciting new era of exploration and discovery in mental science.

Mark Solms,

London, 2000