Read ebook In the Mind Fields : A Personal Exploration of Neuropsychoanalysis by Casey Schwartz in EPUB, MOBI, TXT
9780307911520 English 0307911527 "Everywhere I looked it seemed that we were being defined by what our brains were doing . . . Everywhere, there were hucksters and geniuses, all trying to colonize the new world of the brain." "I'd never been a science person," Casey Schwartz declares at the beginning of her far-reaching quest to understand how we define ourselves. Nevertheless, in her early twenties, she was drawn to the possibilities and insights emerging on the frontiers of brain research. Over the next decade she set out to meet the neuroscientists and psychoanalysts engaged with such questions as, How do we perceive the world, make decisions, or remember our childhoods? Are we using the brain? Or the mind? To what extent is it both? Schwartz discovered that neuroscience and psychoanalysis are engaged in a conflict almost as old as the disciplines themselves. Many neuroscientists, if they think about psychoanalysis at all, view it as outdated, arbitrary, and subjective, while many psychoanalysts decry neuroscience as lacking the true texture of human experience. With passion and humor, Schwartz explores the surprising efforts to find common ground. Beginning among the tweedy Freudians of North London and proceeding to laboratories, consulting rooms, and hospital bedsides around the world, Schwartz introduces a cast of pioneering characters, from Mark Solms, a South African neuropsychoanalyst with an expertise in dreams, to David Silvers, a psychoanalyst practicing in New York, to Harry, a man who has lost his use of language in the wake of a stroke but who nevertheless benefits from Silvers's analytic technique. In the Mind Fields is a riveting view of the convictions, obsessions, and struggles of those who dedicate themselves to the effort to understand the mysteries of inner life., A thorough, witty, and accessible journalistic exploration of the culture of modern psychiatry, focusing on the nascent reconciliation of neuroscience and psychoanalysis--historically opposed approaches to understanding how human beings think, feel, and behave. As part of a pioneering program to unite the disciplines of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Casey Schwartz spent 2006 immersed in the masterworks of psychoanalytic theory at the Anna Freud Centre in London, and 2007 studying the brain among Yale's cutting-edge neuroscientists. She came away with a clear picture of the distance between the two fields: while neuroscience is lacking in attention to the lived experience of the individual, psychoanalysis is often too ephemeral, arbitrary, and subjective. Armed with this awareness, Schwartz set out to study the main players in the ongoing struggle to reconcile these disciplines. "In the Mind Fields" is the product of her rigorous study and her remarkable access to the lives and work of several pioneers in the budding field of neuropsychoanalysis. Ultimately, she presents us with a trenchant argument for the molding of the culture of psychiatry into a hybrid shape that will allow the two approaches to thrive together.
9780307911520 English 0307911527 "Everywhere I looked it seemed that we were being defined by what our brains were doing . . . Everywhere, there were hucksters and geniuses, all trying to colonize the new world of the brain." "I'd never been a science person," Casey Schwartz declares at the beginning of her far-reaching quest to understand how we define ourselves. Nevertheless, in her early twenties, she was drawn to the possibilities and insights emerging on the frontiers of brain research. Over the next decade she set out to meet the neuroscientists and psychoanalysts engaged with such questions as, How do we perceive the world, make decisions, or remember our childhoods? Are we using the brain? Or the mind? To what extent is it both? Schwartz discovered that neuroscience and psychoanalysis are engaged in a conflict almost as old as the disciplines themselves. Many neuroscientists, if they think about psychoanalysis at all, view it as outdated, arbitrary, and subjective, while many psychoanalysts decry neuroscience as lacking the true texture of human experience. With passion and humor, Schwartz explores the surprising efforts to find common ground. Beginning among the tweedy Freudians of North London and proceeding to laboratories, consulting rooms, and hospital bedsides around the world, Schwartz introduces a cast of pioneering characters, from Mark Solms, a South African neuropsychoanalyst with an expertise in dreams, to David Silvers, a psychoanalyst practicing in New York, to Harry, a man who has lost his use of language in the wake of a stroke but who nevertheless benefits from Silvers's analytic technique. In the Mind Fields is a riveting view of the convictions, obsessions, and struggles of those who dedicate themselves to the effort to understand the mysteries of inner life., A thorough, witty, and accessible journalistic exploration of the culture of modern psychiatry, focusing on the nascent reconciliation of neuroscience and psychoanalysis--historically opposed approaches to understanding how human beings think, feel, and behave. As part of a pioneering program to unite the disciplines of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Casey Schwartz spent 2006 immersed in the masterworks of psychoanalytic theory at the Anna Freud Centre in London, and 2007 studying the brain among Yale's cutting-edge neuroscientists. She came away with a clear picture of the distance between the two fields: while neuroscience is lacking in attention to the lived experience of the individual, psychoanalysis is often too ephemeral, arbitrary, and subjective. Armed with this awareness, Schwartz set out to study the main players in the ongoing struggle to reconcile these disciplines. "In the Mind Fields" is the product of her rigorous study and her remarkable access to the lives and work of several pioneers in the budding field of neuropsychoanalysis. Ultimately, she presents us with a trenchant argument for the molding of the culture of psychiatry into a hybrid shape that will allow the two approaches to thrive together.