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It is becoming increasingly clear that psychoanalysts must begin to revise metapsychology to reflect what is known today about how the mental apparatus processes information on a neuropsychological level. One area of current research, which has the potential of providing an interface between neuropsychology and psychoanalysis, concerns the role of the neuropeptides in information processing. Hormones constitute a major source of neuropeptides. Estrogen and progesterone are thought to affect nerve cell functions directly; thus they would have profound influences on behavior, mood, and the processing of sensory information as they fluctuate during the normal menstrual cycle (Davis and McEwen, 1982). In addition, these hormones modulate central neurotransmitters through a multidirectional process involving multiple interactions of many different chemical substances. We suggest that the hormonal fluctuations of the menstrual cycle provide a readily available phenomenon through which we can clinically view the effects of hormonal fluctuation on information processing in our women patients.
Freud used the interpretation of dreams as a major source of information in formulating his model of how the mental apparatus works (Freud, 1900), since dreams provide access to significant mentation in the absence of conscious waking activity. Clinically, dream interpretation continues to be a major tool in psychoanalytic