Comment

Dr Rossi's stimulating attempt to give neurophysiological substance to Jung's metapsychology achieves its goal of drawing attention to the implications of Sperry's important observations on cerebral lateralization. The spate of research unleashed by this seminal work has resulted in unequivocal evidence that of man's two recently evolved sociocultural brains—the one works as a critical analytic information processor, the other in a non-verbal gestalt mode. The analytical psychological aspects of this left and right cerebral specialization are of the highest importance, as are the medical implications of the possibility of their functional disconnection by inhibition of neural transmission across the corpus callosum.

It is an exciting idea that Jung's concept of the transcendent function or individuation and many of the activities in religion and art may depend on transcallosal interaction. It is indeed possible that the right hemisphere may play a dominant role in active imagination and dreaming, for Schwartz et al. have recently demonstrated the special role of the right hemisphere in the regulation of emotional responses in man, (SCHWARTZ, DAVIDSON, MAER 18) and the neurophysiologist Jouvet has presented evidence that fantasy and dreaming are times when the brain processes the interaction of innate behaviour with recently acquired cognitions (JOUVET 7).

There is also growing evidence that susceptibility to chronic diseases can be exacerbated by a deficit in the mechanism of expression of emotions. Kissen has shown this to be the case in lung cancer (KISSEN II) and Greer and Morris in breast cancer (GREER & MORRIS 4). The condition may be an expression of the operational thinking that Nemiah and Sifneos has described in patients with psychosomatic disease. It is marked by an impoverished fantasy and dream recall (NEMIAH & SIFNEOS 13). It may be relevant that Friedman and Rosenman have indicated that this is one of the deficiencies of the coronary prone in what they d