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This book brings together in a scholarly, yet accessible form, insights from the world of the neurosciences. It is Dr Pally's application of these insights to day-to-day technique in the consulting room that I have found so valuable, especially in work with traumatized and borderline patients. Mark Solms points out that this book enables ‘the non-specialist reader to grasp - almost in a single sitting - the main thrust of contemporary brain research on a range of topics of vital interest to psychoanalysis’ (p. iv).
The first chapter makes clear the experience-dependent nature of the development of the brain. The three subsequent chapters cover perception, memory and emotion. The last two chapters deal with particular aspects of the bilaterality of the brain, and consciousness. The book presents data drawn from animal and human research to chart new understandings about the mind-brain relationship and draws out the implications for the consulting room of each major area of research. The book is referenced in a way that gives pointers to the reader for further exploration.
Dr Pally emphasizes the importance of both nature and nurture; while half the human genome is devoted to brain development, much development has been shown to continue after birth and to be dependent on a satisfying and stimulating relation to the care-taker, especially in the period, proposed by Schore, of six months to one year after birth. It is exciting to see Fordham's theory of the importance of deintegrative and reintegrative experiences for the infant underpinned by the later insights of neuro-science. The balance in the brain's design between circuit permanence and circuit plasticity is emphasized and Dr Pally speculates that ‘Since it is known that consciously attending to and verbalising something can enhance cortical activation, it could theoretically be argued that treatments such as analysis enhance cortical functioning, and take advantage of cortical plasticity, to modulate deeply engra