With thanks to:

Alternate title:

The Brain - is wider than the Sky - For - put them side by side - The one the other will contain With ease - and You - beside- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

• Historical antipathies, mutual mistrust
• Possibility that they aren't
• Discomfort that one disappears
• Discomfort that mind/self are matter, subject to "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"
• Helps make sense of observations (trauma, psychopharmacology, brain imaging)
• Can broaden psychotherapeutic repertoire to include BOTH historical events AND genetic influences
• Can broaden neurobiological repertoire to include .... story-telling, conflict?

Finding Common Cause in an Unconscious/Conscious Distinction The unconscious as fundamental, rather than derivitive
Is that about oneself which, at any given time, one doesn't know ...
Distinction between neurobiological and psychodynamic unconscious necessary?

The Bipartite Brain/Mind

Updating Freud (and Slap): there is no way in other than through the unconscious

Finding Common Cause in Story-Telling?

"Story teller"/conscious as a distinct part of the nervous system (neocortex) having a distinctive kind of organization

Stories

• are not essential components of behavior
• can be causally significant for behavior, create things not otherwise there
• are not the only possible ones given inputs from unconscious
• are "coherent", involve relatively small numbers of variables, relatively simple cause/effect relationships
• typically involve "self"
• can generate meaning/purpose, or express its absence
• creates conflict

How make sense of "repression", "projection", "transference", of conflict ... and of therapeutic efficacy?

Conflict = differences between unconscious and story? evident in behavior, sometimes also in internal experience (Nash)

Can result from

• brain damage (sensory neglect)
• genetic factors (schizophrenia)
• life experiences (trauma)

Task of psychotherapist:

• to faciliate story telling by suggesting ways to incorporate unconscious signals
• to facilitate conscious/unconscious exchange by helping conscious cause experiences that alter unconscious
• to model effective and ongoing unconscious/conscious exchange

References

• This talk: http://serendipstudio.org/sci_cult/mentalhealth/neuropsychotherapy/31march05/
• Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: Enemies, Acquaintances, Bedfellows?, A Conversation
• The Bipartite Brain and its Significance for Idealism, Pragmatism, and Other Matters
• A Biological Perspective on Mental Health
• Who's Afraid of Emily Dickinson, Or ... How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Brain
• Making the Unconscious Conscious, and Vice Versa: A Bi-directional Bridge Between Neuroscience/Cognitive Science and Psychotherapy?

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