Introduction

This special issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis is devoted to recent proceedings of the Psychoanalysis-Neuroscience Research Group of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. This group was established in 1990 under the chairmanship of Dr. Arnold Pfeffer in collaboration with Dr. Edward Nersessian. The aim of the group was to study the implications for psychoanalysis of new findings regarding the physical correlates of mind emerging from the neuroscientific field.

To begin with, over a period of two years, the Research Group acquainted itself with the current status of this field through a series of nineteen presentations by basic neuroscientists.1 These distinguished colleagues were invited by Dr. James Schwartz, of Columbia University Medical Center, who had kindly agreed to act as Visiting Scholar to the Research Group. Next, in 1992-1993, the group held a series of nine further meetings led by leading cognitive neuroscientists.2 These meetings were convened by Dr. Jason Brown, of New York University Medical Center, who had succeeded James Schwartz as Visiting Scholar to the group.

Having prepared itself in this way to tackle directly the relationship between the neurological sciences and psychoanalysis, the group invited me to present a series of lectures on the neurological correlates of subjective mental life—a topic that I was researching together