who we are * monthly meetings * announcements * proceedings * how to join
Workshop, Lectures and Conference Proceedings
Member
Pages/Publications
Upcoming events of interest
The NeuroPsychoanalysis Workshop is a study group of clinicians grounded in psychoanalytic theory and practice who welcome practitioners and researchers from adjacent disciplines, such as neurology, linguistics, and philosophy.
In our monthly meetings over the past decade, we have explored many topics, including affective neuroscience, complexity theory, connectionist theories, consciousness studies, linguistics, cultural evolution, schematic and symbolic thought, category formation, memory, infant research, sleep and dream research, yoga, and meditation.
The founding members of our group are practicing psychoanalysts with decades of combined clinical experience. We believe that psychoanalysis involves the sharing between analyst and analysand of lived, embedded emotional, somatic, and cognitive experience. The psychoanalytic process has the capacity to recontextualize brain, body, and mind at the implicit level of embodied, procedural memory as well as at the explicit level of narrative experience and autobiographical memory.
Our goal as an ongoing working group is to look at how neuroscientific information correlates with psychoanalytic knowledge at both theoretical and clinical levels. We believe that current neuroscientific knowledge has created powerful new paradigms through which traditional psychoanalytic concepts and techniques may be reviewed and renewed. We hope to continue to support dialogue among a variety of disciplines, enabling the advancement of knowledge that such collaboration may produce.
Monthly meetings occur every 4th Tuesday
18 November 2008 Workshop Meeting
To continue our exploration of human genetic, epigenetic and cultural evolution
Dr David Mann will discuss Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid. (New York. Harper Collins; 2007).
This work is an example of cultural evolution. Wolf discusses the origins of reading and writing and examines how
the brain of this tradition is structurally and functionally more complex than the brain of the oral tradition. Caleb Crain’s article also examines this theme and is available at bostonneuropsa.org.
Crain, Caleb (2007). Twilight of the Books. The New Yorker, December 24
& 31; p. 134-139.
To
Attend A Meeting Please Email
You Are Invited to Join the Conversation. Please email:
jenaiwu@hms.harvard.edu
28 October 2008 Workshop Meeting:
Continuing our exploration of human genetic, epigenetic and cultural evolution,
Dr Arnold Modell discussed Mirror Neurons, Gestures, and the Origins of Metaphor
chapter ten in Imagination and the Meaningful Brain In addition, we read chapter two, Metaphor, Memory, and Unconscious Imagination.
Chapter 10 (PDF),
Chapter 2 (PDF)
23 September 2008 Workshop Meeting:
We began this fall’s exploration of human genetic, epigenetic and cultural
evolution. We had a group discussion of our summer reading:
Wade, Nicholas, (2006), Before the Dawn. New York: The Penguin Press.
27 May 2008 Workshop Meeting:
Planning meeting to discuss next year's curriculum.
Invitation with topics (PDF)
22 April 2008 Workshop Meeting:
We welcomed Dr. Arnold Modell to our April meeting and we were delighted
that he shared with us the draft of his latest ground breaking paper:
The Unconscious As A Knowledge Processing Center.
25 March 2008 Workshop Meeting:
What Makes a Treatment “Neuropsychoanalytic”? Brian Johnson presented a study of the first
60 hours of 5 days a week psychoanalysis of a woman with cocaine dependence.
26 February 2008 Workshop Meeting:
We continued the discussion of implicit processes stimulated by members of the Boston Change Process
Study Group. Our discussion ranged over conscious, non-conscious, and unconscious processes in both the
infant and adult.
29 January 2008 Workshop Meeting:
Members of the Boston Change Process Study Group discussed
their paper: "The Foundational Level of Psychodynamic Meaning: Implicit Process In
Relation to Conflict, Defense and the Dynamic Unconscious."
11 December 2007 Workshop Meeting:
Continuation of our discussion of implicit phenomena in preparation for
our meeting on January 29, 2008 with the members of the Boston Change Group
who will discuss their paper, “The Foundational Level of Psychodynamic
Meaning”. Reading: Daniel Stern, “Implicit Knowledge” from “The Present
Moment” Chapter 7, p. 112-121.
27 November 2007 Workshop Meeting
(continued from 25 September 2007):
Depression: an evolutionarily conserved mechanism to terminate separation-distress?
A review of aminergic, peptidergic and neural network perspectives
Doug Watt, Ph.D., Clinic for Cognitive
Disorders, Quincy Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine.
23 October 2007
Workshop Meeting:
In-house planning meeting.
27 March and 24
April 2007 Workshop Meeting: Discussion
of James Austin's Book: Zen-Brain Reflections by
Ken Kaplan, M.D.
27 February 2007
Workshop Meeting:
Yoga and the Mind.
Toni Greatrex, M.D.
23 January 2007
Workshop Meeting:
Using the mind to change the brain: neuroplastic changes associated with
mindfulness meditation.
Sara Lazar, Ph.D., Instructor in Psychiatry, MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging
Research Program, HMS.
12 December 2006 Workshop Meeting:
Sleep, Memory, and Brain Plasticity: Matt Walker,
Ph.D.
Readings for 12 December 2006 Meeting: Sleep to Remember:
Click to Download Sleep, Memory and Plasticity:
Click to Download
28 November
2006 Workshop Meeting:
General Discussion
24 October 2006 Workshop Meeting:
Frontal
Systems in Sleep and Dreaming:. Ed Pace-Schott, Ph.D. Center for Sleep
& Cognition, HMS, BIDMC
Readings for 24 October 2006 Meeting:
26 September 2006 Workshop Meeting:
Robert Stickgold, Ph.D. Director, Center for Sleep and Cognition. Readings for 26 September 2006 Meeting:
Dreaming and Episodic Memory: A Functional Dissociation?
Click to Download
Sleep-dependent Memory Consolidation
Click
to Download
Replaying the Game: Hypnagogic Images in Normals and Amnesics
Click to Download Wolk, Paula (2008)
KANDEL: In Search of Memory: New Science of Mind.
Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 77(3):941-952
Kendall, J. (2008). The Man Who Made Lists. Love, Death,
Madness, and the Creation of Roget’s Thesaurus.
Mann, D.W., (2008). The World Book, in Turkle, S, ed., Evocative Objects: Things We Think With.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (PDF) Mann, D.W., (2008). The Mirror Crack’d: Dissociation and Reflexivity in Self and Group Phenomena
(PDF) Mann, D.W., (2007). Practical Poetry
(PDF) copyright © 2008 by Boston Neuropsychoanalysis Working Group If you have any
questions or suggestions about this website, please e-mail Steven Pugh at
stevenpugh@dynamiccomputerservices.net
In addition to our monthly meetings, we have created an interactive discussion group.
We will post a synopsis of our monthly meetings on a regular basis and invite you to continue
and deepen the discussion. We will also invite clinicians, scholars, and experts on a range of
issues to participate as well.
To Join The Mail List And The On-Line Discussion Group:
PREVIOUS MEETINGS
Summary of meeting (PDF)
Meeting Paper (PDF)
Summary of meeting (PDF)
Meeting Paper (PDF)
Summary of meeting (PDF)
PDF version of paper.
Summary of meeting (PDF)
Summary of meeting (PDF)
Summary of meeting (PDF)
Summary of meeting (PDF)
NEW MEMBER PUBLICATIONS
and ONLINE CONTRIBUTIONS
(click for all contributors)
