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The Mindbrain and Dreams is beautifully written and brilliantly conceptualized, addressing an important and complex area of psychoanalytic thought that pulls together various threads of contemporary discourse in psychoanalysis. Dr. Blechner ably interweaves the richness of psychoanalytic theory with the latest thinking in neuropsychology, with an emphasis on that which underlies the processes and intricacies of the psyche, thought, feeling, memory, creativity, language, and dream. These processes underlie not only the psyche, but the elaborate structures of human culture. Thus, the humanities and the sciences meet in this exploration of the depth of psychoanalysis, in that which Dr. Blechner so wisely calls the “mindbrain.”
In the first sentence of the first chapter, the Introduction, we are introduced to the mindbrain, an integration of a description of our mind, our very human “mental functions and faculties,” with the brain, “the bodily organ located in our cranium, which most scientists think is responsible for the processes we call mind” (p. 1). Dr. Blechner continues, challenging the dualism of Descartes, the separation of mind and brain. He leads us down a path that moves from mind/brain to mindbrain, insisting on eliminating the slash, urging us to a linguistic freedom, saying “Semantic liberation is conceptual liberation” (p. 2).
I find myself in harmony with what may seem to be a radical idea, because I think rational western thought, western philosophy, has been reaching toward this conceptualization, and is “catching up” with what Chinese philosophy also has attempted to do, to reconcile dualities.
My essay, “A Meditation on Energy Healing and the Chinese Concept of Mind: Psychoanalytic Applications,” published in the online journal Other/Wise, identifies a concept in Chinese philosophy, that heart and mind, affect and thought, are one. The Chinese word “xin” can be translated as heart/mind, or heartmind. What is perceived is both understood and