Implications of Left–Right Cerebral Specialization for Psychoanalytic Data Collection and Evaluation

Through the use of a specific form of psychoanalytic data, the dream, I have attempted to show that there are two cognitive styles among psychoanalysts, leading to the controversy over the position of the dream in clinical practice. That these two styles, which I propose to call a 'logical cognitive style' and an 'intuitive cognitive style', affect the more general collection of primary psychoanalytic data has also been illustrated. I have then speculated that the recent work on left–right cerebral specialization may provide the biological bases for these psychological cognitive modes. Unitary psychoanalytic models of the functions of the work ego are presented, and I have suggested that the alternating and/or simultaneous functionings of the dominant and non-dominant cerebral hemispheres may be the neurological correlates of such psychological functions as primary data collection, data collation and evaluation, regression in the service of the ego, evenly suspended attention, and verbal interventions. It is not to be expected that all psychoanalysts will be equally adept or gifted in each of these functions.

You are a hard man to persuade. Zeus gave you mastery in arms, therefore you think to excel in strategy as well. And yet you cannot have all gifts at once. Heaven gives one man skill in arms, another skill in dancing, and a third man skill at gittern harp and song; but the Lord Zeus who views the wide world has instilled clear thought in yet another.