Recent scientific studies have brought significant advances in the understanding of basic mental functions such as memory, dreams, identification, repression, which constitute the basis of the psychoanalytical theory. This book focuses on the possibility of interactions between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: emotions and the right hemisphere, serotonin and depression. It is a unique tool for professionals and students in these fields, and for operators of allied disciplines, such as psychology and psychotherapy.

The Unconscious explores the critical interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and contemporary cognitive neuroscience. Characterised by Freud as ‘the science of the unconscious mind’, psychoanalysis has traditionally been viewed as a solely psychological discipline. However recent developments in neuroscience, such as the use of neuroimaging techniques to investigate the working brain, have stimulated and intensified the dialogue between psychoanalysis and these related mental sciences. This book explores the relevance of these discussions for our understanding of unconscious mental processes. Chapters present clinical case studies of unconscious dynamics, alongside theoretical and scientific papers in key areas of current debate and development. These include discussions of the differences between conceptualisations of ‘the unconscious’ in psychoanalysis and cognitive science, whether the core concepts of psychoanalysis are still plausible in light of recent findings, and how such understandings of the unconscious are still relevant to treating patients in psychotherapy today. These questions are explored by leading interdisciplinary researchers as well as practising psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. This book aims to bridge the gap between psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience, to enable a better understanding of researchers’ and clinicians’ engagements with the key topic of the unconscious. It will be of key interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of psychoanalysis, cognitive science, neuroscience and traumatology. It will also appeal to practising psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinicians.

When the first edition of Clinical studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis was published in 2000, it was hailed as a turning point in psychoanalytic research. It is now relied on as a model for the integration of neuroscience and psychoanalysis. It won the NAAP's Gradiva Award for Best Book of the Year 2000 (Science Category) and Mark Solms received the International Psychiatrist Award 2001 at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting. The authors have added a glossary of key terms of this edition to aid their introduction to depth neuropsychology. 'Freud, in his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology, attempted to join the emerging discipline of psychoanalysis with the neuroscience of his time. But that was a hundred years ago, when the neuron had only just been described, and Freud was forced - through lack of pertinent knowledge - to abandon his project. We have had to wait many decades before the sort of data which Freud needed finally became available. Now, these many years later, contemporary neuroscience allows for the resumption of the search for correlations between these two disciplines.

This book gives a multi-disciplinary overview of the psychological and emotional development of children, from infancy to adulthood.

Can the psychodynamics of the mind be correlated with neurodynamic processes in the brain? The book revisits a question that scientists and psychoanalysts have been asking for more than a century. It brings together experts from Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Neurology to consider this question.

The book gathers some papers concerning the dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Following the Introduction written by Georg Northoff, concerning the possibility of overcoming the highly impasse generating contraposition between localizationism and holism, G. Vaslamatzis deals with a “Framework for a new dialogue between psychoanalysis and neurosciences”. In this chapter the author describes three points of epistemological congruence: firstly, dualism is no longer a satisfactory solution; secondly, cautions for the centrality of interpretation (hermeneutics); and, thirdly, the self-criticism of neuroscientists. David W.Mann in his contribution “The mirror crack’d: dissociation and reflexivity in self and group phenomena” tries to show how reflexive processes generate each of three levels of the human system (self, relationships, group) and integrate them one to another, while dissociative processes tend throughout to pull them apart. Health and illness within the self, the relationship and the group can be understood as special states of the dynamic equilibria between these cohesive and dispersive trends. In “Sleep, memory and plasticity” Matthew P. Walker and Robert Stickgold outline a review of the researches following the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep, and specifically of those that began testing the hypothesis that sleep, or even specific stages of sleep, actively participated in the process of memory development. The last two chapters, “Clinical implications of neuroscience research in PTSD” by Bessel A. Van Der Kolk, and “Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of PTSD” by Allan N. Schore, demonstrate how the psychopathology of traumatic conditions can be a fertile field of dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.

Building crucial bridges between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences, this compelling volume brings together prominent authorities from multiple disciplines. The volume highlights the contributions of Eric R. Kandel, whose seminal articles helped launch the fledgling field of neuropsychoanalysis. Contributors address what contemporary neuroscientific research reveals about how psychoanalytic techniques work and why they are effective. Also examined are ways in which psychoanalysis can contribute to scientific explorations of the mind. Each chapter is followed by a thoughtful response. This material was originally published as a special issue of The Psychoanalytic Review (Vol. 99, No. 4, 2012), editor, Alan J. Barnett, PhD.