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/social work repertoire to include historical events AND cultural influences AND genetic influences ...
• Can broaden neurobiological repertoire to include .... story-telling, conflict?

Finding the Self: saying good bye to the mind/body and biology/culture dichotomies?

Not mind and body, not biology and culture but ....
Body with nervous system inside with part of nervous system inside that, all influenced by genes, all surrounded by (among other things) culture (itself influenced by genes)
Self is ....

Within the Nervous System: 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 - a distinctive architecture

Updating Freud: there is no way in other than through the unconscious

Finding Common Cause in Story-Telling?

Conscious/experiencer/"story teller" 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 in general (intra-personal and interpersonal) ... and of therapeutic efficacy?

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

Can result from combinations of

• genetic factors (schizophrenia)
• life experiences (trauma)
• individual/cultural mismatch

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

• same need for story telling mediation?

One case in point ...

From Jenny Boylan:

• "plumbing and electricity work fine"
• "enlarged bed nucleus of stria terminalis"
• "knew from inside that I was a girl"
• "gender preference" ... "gender identity" ... ?

Using biology/neurobiology to move forward ...

The Medical Model

The Biological/Neurobiological Model

presumption of "illness" as distinct category presumption of perfectibility presumption of all people as aspiring to same "ideal" presumption of "patient" as object search for efficient "quick fix" therapies neglects (particularly for "mental health") to deal with important issues of personal responsibility, cultural influences

accepts existence of continuous variation among individuals, both now and in future - indeed encourages diversity emphasizes importance of innate influences, as well of experience and of personal choice acknowledges that some kinds of changes take extended time at best, may not be achievable at worst incorporates cultural context dependence helps to define both potentials and limits of personal responsibility

References

• This talk: http://serendipstudio.org/sci_cult/mentalhealth/neuropsychotherapy/8april05/
• Looking to the Brain for Psychotherapeutic Insights and to Psychotherapy for Insights into the Brain: Notes for a New Story
• 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?
• Some Thoughts on Academic Structure (and Socio-Political Structures Generally): A Biological Metaphor as an Alternative to Both State's Rights and Federalism at Bryn Mawr College (and Elsewhere)
• The Brain: Insights into Individuals and Complex Organization

| Conversations | Mental Health | Science in Culture | Serendip Home |

Send us your comments at Serendip

© by Serendip 1994- - Last Modified: Wednesday, 02-May-2018 11:57:08 CDT