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Much has been written about how neuropsychoanalysis has come about, especially in the sense of modern attempts to bridge neuroscience and psychoanalysis, without losing the strengths of these two disciplines in the process. For example, Figure 1 summarizes some of the work in this area, particularly as seen from the following perspectives: (1) how spontaneity activates working memory for what we are learning (Levin, 1991, 1997, 2003, 2009); (2) how activity primes memory generally, adding valuable associations to our thinking; (3) how our being interested can activate the primary association cortices for various sensory systems, facilitating “aha” reactions; and (4) how actions can be seen as a part of our experience of what we call emotions and can lead to neurological cascades with profound results in what we know and how we store that knowledge and later use it more effectively (see Browning, 2006, specifically her elaboration on Susanne Langer's thinking that emotions not infrequently involve actions that serve a role in their being decoded by the recipient of such communications).
In other words, there is reason to believe that, in the case of adaptive learning, mind creates brain as much as brain creates mind. This follows from the fact that often new (NMDA) synapses involved in learning are created by what has been called emotional attention. I have summarized (Levin, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c) this work, “illustrating the emotional (psychological) cascade associated with learning, and the corresponding biological cascade associated with the emotional cascade (Kandel, 1983,