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The articles in this issue contribute to a number of lively contemporary theoretical discussions about fundamental aspects of mental life. They illustrate the powerful creativity that arises when psychoanalysis enriches neuroscience, and vice versa.
The pieces in this issue span a wide spectrum of time and space in human life. This is one of the things we value most about neuropsychoanalysis and the people who contribute to it – we take on very big questions, but always attempt to ground these explorations in lived experience. From the longest-range perspective on the human time spectrum, we have an article by Terry Rogers and Ahron Friedberg entitled “A conjecture on the nature and evolution of consciousness.” They present an extremely big-picture view on this fascinating question. Their deep-time perspective on evolution goes all the way back to the emergence of multicellular organisms, arguing that all animals – not just primates, and not just mammals – may have this profound attribute in common. Integrating work by other contributors to the field, including Bernard Baars, Antonio Damasio, Stanislas Dehaene, Rodolfo Llinas, Jaak Panksepp, Mark Solms, and others, Rogers and Friedberg emphasize the unitary nature of conscious experience, its adaptive function in responding to novelty, and its likely critical role in learning. These aspects of their model, and more, have exciting psychoanalytic implications, and will be of interest to readers following the developments in the consciousness literature.
We open the issue at the other end of the spectrum, however – by zooming in on the individual. A very rich Target Article by Christian Salas and Kenneth Yuen, entitled “Revisiting the left convexity hypothesis: Changes in the mental apparatus after left dorso-medial prefrontal damage,” focuses on a single case study of a man with a prefrontal brain injury. Their careful attention to the dynamics experienced during a psychoanalytic therapy with Professor F enriches an eme