Explorations Between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience brings together the life's work of David Olds, pioneering psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, philosopher, and key figure in neuropsychoanalysis. Throughout the chapters, the reader is taken on a journey through Olds' theories on psychoanalysis and neuroscience as he develops new ways of examining the brain and human thought. Olds instills in the reader the importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach to psychoanalysis, psychiatry and working with patients. He expands upon his philosophical background and integrates evolutionary biology, neurobiology, cognitive science and semiotics to show the importance of dual aspect monism in neuropsychoanalysis. The theories developed by Olds and presented in this volume will help analysts working with patients facing issues with memory, affect, consciousness, cognition and trauma, among other difficulties. This book will be essential reading to psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, as well as anybody interested in neuropsychoanalysis and the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to analytic thinking and practice.

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.

This book is an exploration of contemporary understanding from philosophy, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and metaphysical studies, which seem to verify the value of the Epicurean sentiments in terms of the wisdom of lived experience. It portrays the authoritarian culture of the Rome.

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.

There has been a long-standing and mutually-informing association between psychoanalysis, literature and the arts. Surprisingly, given the oral/aural basis of the ‘talking cure’, music has largely been overlooked by psychoanalysis. Notably, neuroscientific research investigating music reception and production has been steadily increasing in range and scope over the years. However, in order to avoid confounding factors, empirical studies have focused primarily on non-vocal music. Remarkably, operatic vocal music has not featured prominently in either field. Yet the multi-dimensional, multi-layered nature of opera, which fuses together a number of different arts, would appear to provide fertile soil for both disciplines. This book aims to fill that gap, providing a stepping stone for further research. It leverages the individual strengths of psychoanalysis and neuroscience both separately and jointly as the inter-discipline of neuropsychoanalysis. By combining various theories of mind with knowledge about music processing in the brain, this book comprehensively examines the operatic reception experience, providing an account in subjective as well as objective terms. It explores the bittersweet enjoyment of operatic vocal music, which can literally move an operaphile to tears. The explanation for this may be found in a number of subjective dynamics that are unique to the reception of opera, rather than in any distinct objective neural processes, which are common to the reception of all music. These subjective dynamics, which are recruited during neural processing, are triggered by the equally unique features of the operatic voice, in combination with a number of auxiliary elements that are specific to opera. This book will be of interest to academics in a broad range of science and arts disciplines related to music perception and performance, such as music psychology and operatic performance. It may also appeal to passionate operaphiles who wish to understand what drives their addiction!

Emotion is an integral aspect of musical experience; music has the power to take us on an emotional and intellectual journey, transforming the listener along the way. The aim of this book is to examine the nature of this journey, using a variety of perspectives. No one discipline can do justice to music's complexity if one is to have a sense of the whole musical experience, even if one has to break up the whole experience into various elements for the purposes of clarification. The issues raised have some relationship to psychoanalytic understanding and listening, as after all psychoanalysis is a listening discipline; its bedrock is listening to the patient's communications. While of course there are significant differences between understanding of, and listening to, a musical performance and a patient in a consulting room, the book explores common ground. Evidence from neuroscience indicates that music acts on a number of different brain sites, and that the brain is likely to be hard-wired for musical perception and appreciation, and this offers some kind of neurological substrate for musical experiences, or a parallel mode of explanation for music's multiple effects on individuals and groups. After various excursions into early mother/baby experiences, evolutionary speculations, and neuroscientific findings, the book's main emphasis is that it is the intensity of the artistic vision which is responsible for music's power. That intense vision invites the viewer or the listener into the orbit of the work, engaging us to respond to the particular vision in an essentially intersubjective relationship between the work and the observer or listener. This is the area of what we might call the human soul. Music can be described as having soul when it hits the emotional core of the listener. And, of course, there is 'soul music', whose basic rhythms reach deep into the body to create a powerful feeling of aliveness. One can truly say that music of all the arts is most able to give shape to the elusive human subject or soul.

Neuroscience and psychoanalysis initially appear as two fundamentally different, incompatible approaches to human experience and behavior. However, from the very beginning of the development of psychoanalysis, there have been repeated efforts to ground psychoanalytic concepts and processes in neuroscience. On the other hand, psychoanalysis provides a comprehensive model of the human psyche in all its complexity and dynamics, which could help to understand the diverse and often highly specialized findings of modern brain research in their entirety. This book summarizes the current state of research in this area of intersection between depth psychology and brain research and elaborates how both practitioners and basic researchers can benefit from a fruitful exchange between the two disciplines.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores the malaise of the contemporary individual by returning the economic point of view of Freudian thinking, the concept of satisfaction, libido, and pleasure–unpleasure principle to their rightful place as the motivating forces of human existence. For Freud, pleasure stands apart from other human experiences, side by side with unpleasure, always a bonus in the search for satisfaction of the pleasure principle and beyond. Along with libido, emotional fulfillment, and the capacities for sublimation and play, pleasure has not been given enough attention in the psychoanalytic literature. The editors of this book address this lack and highlight the importance of examining today’s social and individual malaise through these specific lenses of inquiry. It is particularly timely and important today to address this lack, and thereby examine the impact of the social phenomena of the pandemic, the crises of ideals and virtuality on the subject who feels in a state of constant emergency, overwhelmed, addicted, and delibidinalized. With contributions from across psychoanalysis, this book is essential reading for psychoanalysts in training and in practice who want to understand how the modern world has shaped our understanding of pleasure.

Advances in science and the humanities have demonstrated the complexity of psychological, social and neurological factors influencing identity. A contemporary discourse is needed to anchor the concepts required in speaking about identity in present day understanding. In Identity and the New Psychoanalytic Explorations of Self-organization, Mardi Horowitz offers new ways of speaking about parts of self, explaining what causes a range of experiences from solidity in grounding the self to disturbances in a sense of identity. The book covers many aspects of both the formation and the deconstruction of identity. Horowitz examines themes including: -The sense of identity -Social learning -Biological learning -Identity and self-esteem - Levels of personality functioning and growth The book clarifies basic questions, defines useful terms, examines typical identity disturbances and presents a biopsychosocial theory which indicates how schemas operate in conscious and unconscious mental processing. The answers to the basic questions lead to improvements in psychotherapy practices as well as teaching and research methods. Identity and the New Psychoanalytic Explorations of Self-organization will prove fascinating reading for those working in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience and the social disciplines.

This book is comprehensive and profound, concrete and symbolic, a Herculean integration of the technical and the psychoanalytic. It explains technology and definitions of cyberspace, virtual reality, and social media, and presents the view that technology is a destructive force in psychoanalysis.