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This year's Congress, on “Splitting, Denial, and Narcissism: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Right Hemisphere,” took place at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome. As in previous years, it was preceded by an Educational Day, this time on the anatomy and physiology of the right hemisphere. It is always most interesting to attend this day, as it reviews a number of basic concepts in the field—which can be very useful for the later parts of the meeting.
This year the Education Day reviewed the findings on the right hemisphere and concrete space, “real” objects, and global processing, and on left-hemisphere abilities relating to more abstract space and linear processing. Also reviewed was that anosognosia (after Babinski) results from pathology of patients with a right-hemisphere lesion, who are often unable to perceive the contralateral space around them and so neglect their left-side hemiplegia. We have learned through recent research that while perception was thought to be the cause of this neglect, there are emotional factors involved as well.
It was interesting to hear during the Education Day about some of the flaws underpinning the oft-cited claim that the right side of the brain is the seat of the system unconscious. Rather, it appears that patients having suffered from lesions in the right hemisphere specifically fail to mourn the lost object, regressing to the part-object. The object is denied, split, projected—presumably because the right hemisphere is where the relation with the whole object is found.
On the first day of the main meeting, Guido Gainotti spoke of his work on the neuropsychological relationship between emotion, unconscious processes, and the right hemisphere—reviewing the claims that the right hemisphere is mainly involved with negative emotional feelings, while the left side of the brain is the home of positive emotions.
Todd Feinberg gave a wonderful presentation on the right hemisphere and the self. He talked about asoma