Pointsman & the Excluded Middle

Doug Millison millison at online-journalist.com
Thu Jun 20 10:32:03 CDT 2002


Some of you will find  this  interesting, from the PSYART list today:


Date:         Thu, 20 Jun 2002 11:14:29 -0400
Sender: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
              <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
From: Norman Holland <nholland at UFL.EDU>
Subject:      Very Important Psychoanalytic Book!


HI, gang,

I've just finished reading the most significant book in the world of
psychoanalysis I've come across in a couple of decades. It's THE BRAIN AND THE
INNER WORLD by Mark Solms.  Available from OtherBooks in NYC or Karnac in
London
and, with apparently delay, Amazon and the like.

Solms is a neurologist and psychoanalyst working in London.  He has mounted a
sustained effort to put psychoanalytic theory together with what we learning
about the brain.  He does this by doing a neurological workup of the
patients on
his ward and then interviewing them psychoanalytically.  He demonstrated this
project earlier in Kaplan-Solms, Karen, and Mark Solms. Clinical Studies in
Neuro-Psychoanalysis: Introduction to a Depth Neuropsychology. London: Karnac
Books, 2000.

Solms' basic idea is that we now have (as Freud did not) two ways of looking at
mind.  One is Freud's way: we use free association, interpretation, etc., to
look at mind subjectively.  The other is the neuroscience way: objective
studies
of the changes in behavior wrought by changes in the brain.  To find out fully
about mind, we have to put these two methods together.  And he does!

Frankly, this growing movement of neuro-psychoanalysis seems to me the only
thing that will stave off the impending death of psychoanalysis.  Solms
addresses quite directly the afflictions affecting psychoanalysis and offers
hope, very concrete grounds for hope.

Also, the book can serve as a very nice introduction to what neuroscience
has to
say about the topics of interest to the psychoanalytic community: csness /
ucsness; emotion; motivation; memory; fantasy; dreams; the relation between
genetic and environmental influences; words; the "talking cure."

Let me put it quite bluntly.  Anyone seriously interested in and concerned
about
psychoanalysis who doesn't read this book is simply nuts!

                        --Best, Norm
Norm Holland
nholland at ufl.edu



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