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Recent technologic developments and advances in the neurosciences offer us an opportunity to better understand the complex neurobiologic substrates of human behavior. Neuroimaging methods such as positron emission tomography (PET), SPECT, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (Garber et al., 1988; Trzepacz et al., 1992; Wong, 1986; Young, 1991) are providing useful information in the study of brain-behavior relationships. Neuropsychopharmacology, electrophysiologic studies such as ERPs (event-related potentials) and BEAM (brain electric activity mapping) (Guenther et al., 1988; James, 1989) are also making significant contributions to our knowledge. Taken together, these investigations and their clinicopathologic correlations are providing new and valuable insights into the substrates of normal and abnormal human behavior.
Besides the immediate clinical and diagnostic relevance of these investigations and findings, there are also challenging heuristic implications that extend beyond gross brain-behavior relationships. Indeed, there is the opportunity for the development of a more differentiated understanding of psychodynamic concepts such as transference, object relations, defense, trauma, conflict, and so on. These concepts have existed in limbo between our intuitive clinical understanding and an arcane, abstract realm analogous to Plato's “World of Forms.” It is this unchartered region that needs to be explored and developed using contemporary models to bridge and integrate psychodynamic theory with neurobiologic knowledge.
Transference has been traditionally conceptualized as an intrapsychic process and has been elaborated on by numerous authors