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Genetics today can provide a framework in which psychoanalysts may integrate their thinking about themselves and their patients, a framework that is not restrictive and demeaning, but rather broad with possibilities. Although not as inconceivably old as the universe, the time span of life on earth has been long enough to evolve in humans and their fellows a most exquisitely fashioned genome, a genetic code, that in turn builds and regulates an organism with its brain and nervous system thus both responsive to and creative of the environment in which it lives and grows.
Only in the past decade and with accelerating progress today have we been able to dissect, map, and begin to spell out the sequence of the genetic message encoded in an identical manner in every cell.
What does this do for us? In many branches of medicine, it supplies the knowledge of genetic expression and transmission by specifying, localizing, and in some cases isolating the small molecule that governs the production of life's chemical building blocks, including enzymatic regulators, neurotransmitters, and receptors. This is a stupendous feat, as there are 80,000 or more genes, each a minute part of the total chromosomal content of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA). With this knowledge, it is possible to do prenatal diagnosis, informed genetic counseling, and eventually definitive treatment and even gene replacement.
It was only 30 years ago that we were first able to see human chromosomes accurately through the light microscope, and less than 20 years ago since the discovery and visualization of their distinctive banding patterns. Molecular biology has now advanced to the point of