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My commentary on Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World concentrates on several aspects of bihemispheric functioning of the brain. I will make links between McGilchrist's ideas and the psychoanalytic concept of the self, the bihemispheric asymmetry, the detached stance of scientific method, and psychoanalytic neutrality. I will also look at the concept of truth and the two different types of knowing relevant to neuroscientific research and psychoanalytic work and how neuroscientific findings are achieved in view of brain laterality. Although the author does not refer much to either mental processes or psychoanalysis, I thought it pertinent to make these connections, particularly as neuropsychoanalysis is the thrust and focus of this Journal.
No one can read The Master and His Emissary and be indifferent to its arguments. This is a book written with great clarity, purpose, and ardor. McGilchrist's erudite and cogent language will attract people from a multiplicity of disciplines