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For decades, psychoanalysis has focused on the study of intrapsychic experience, but increasingly analysts are turning to neuroscience as a mode of understanding our internal worlds. Although this focus has been bolstered by recent advances in neurobiological research, the endeavor itself is not entirely new as even Freud, at least initially, also hoped to reconcile his understanding of metapsychology with neurological science in his early work, Project for a Scientific Psychology (Freud, 1895/1950). In The Neuropsychology of the Unconscious, Efrat Ginot, an instructor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, who has written and lectured on the relationship between psychoanalytic and neurobiological understandings of the mind, joins this renewed focus. She sets out to explain the neurobiological underpinnings of unconscious mental processes, particularly those that might underlie intractable psychological problems. In her words, “Why are emotional and behavioral difficulties so pernicious, enduring, stubborn and repetitive even when we gain insight and are determined to change them?” (p. xxxi). Accordingly, in addition to summarizing much neurobiological literature, she attempts to apply it to complex clinical phenomena, including narcissism, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the nature of the psychotherapeutic process.
Ginot's project is an ambitious one as she attempts to use neuroscience to explain complex psychological phenomena. She boldly attempts to address emotions, learning, and unconscious defensive processes, as well as the intersubjective experience of two brains interacting with one another, from the mother–infant pair to the psychotherapy dyad. In taking on this challenge, she joins the ranks of such contemporary analytic writers as Gabbard, Westen, and Schore (Gabbard & Westen, 2003; Schore, 2002). However, the field she is joining, increasingly referred to as “neuropsychoanalysis,” warrants reflection, on whether it is reaso