You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychoanalytic evolution, to most observers, appears to proceed somewhat noisily by organizational schisms, disputes, or fashions. Recent trends have centered around object relations schools and Kohut's controversial highlighting of the self and the role of empathy. Yet much more important changes are taking place silently, changes that in time will have profound effects on theory and practice. Our view of the unconscious is changing, for example. It is no more just the playground of the primal forces of the libidinal id; it is the realm of learning, orientation, and integration. Our new knowledge derives from many sources: from new brain research, dream lab research, and new visions of the formative, creative functions of the brain.
I wish to highlight some of these visions of the biological basis of our creative and formative abilities. A basic premise of the views I will present is that our manner of perceiving or of conceiving involves two modes of mental representation, the verbal one used in everyday discourse, also called the discursive mode, and the nondiscursive mode, which includes representational forms, such as are found in all art forms including poetry and literature, but also in myths and, of course, dreams.
Two examples from recent writings about the brain with similar important messages but written in very different styles will illustrate these two modes. The first excerpt is from an essay titled, “The Attic of the Brain” by Lewis Thomas (1983).
My parents' house had an attic, the darkest and strangest part of the building, reachable only by placing a stepladder beneath the trapdoor, and
* Associate Clinical Professor, Psychoanalytic Institute, New York Medical College.
Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis in New York City, May 1990.
Page 620filled with unidentifiable articles too important to be thrown out with the trash but no longer suitable to have at hand. This mysterious space was the memory of the place. After many yea