As a discipline, psychoanalysis began at the interface of mind and brain and has always been about those most basic questions of biology and psychology: loving, hating, what brings us together as lovers, parents, and friends and what pulls us apart in conflict and hatred.These are the enduring mysteries of life and especially of early development-how young children learn the language of the social world with its intertwined biological, genetic, and experiential roots and how infants translate thousands of intimate moments with their parents into a genuine, intuitive, emotional connection to other persons. Basic developmental neuroscience and psychology has also of late turned to these basic questions of affiliation: of how it is that as humans our most basic concerns are about finding, establishing, preserving, and mourning our relationships. These areas in broad strokes are the substance of mind and brain, and the last decade has brought much new science to the biology of attachment, love, and aggression. These are areas that practicing psychoanalysts have long been immersed in and have much to say about - and contemporary neuroscientists and developmentalists are recognizing the importance of understanding these basic issues at a deeper, and more subjective experiential level. The challenges before us are how to facilitate open discourse and collaborations among these perspectives and practitioners that often work at very different levels of discourse. This volume is not only a first step in that process but also, through the themes of the chapters and the pairing of discussants, a beginning illustration of how the cross-disciplinary discourse might work.
Industry Reviews
'This book marks a new and very exciting phase of the historic link between the Anna Freud Centre in London and the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, two places which offer treatment, training and research based on the same psychoanalytic model of development. The book contains papers by many of the foremost developmental scientists and clinicians in the US and Europe today, who came together to celebrate new research collaborations between the two centres, and to explore their clinical and theoretical implications.' - Anne-Marie Sandler, Child and Adult Psychoanalyst, Past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society and past Director of the Anna Freud Centre 'This truly remarkable and highly engaging volume celebrates new flourishing international collaborations among clinical scholars and basic scientists, representing psychoanalysis, child psychiatry, neuroscience, and developmental psychology. The fortunate reader is invited to participate in sparkling informed discourse across perspectives, as outstanding chapters are paired with integrating and challenging commentaries written by authors from related yet varied disciplines. A wonderful result of this major venture is the reader's sense of discovery as he or she joins practitioners and scientists in together imagining novel speculations about and approaches to enduring developmental questions-how attachments and intimate relationships are facilitated; parenting preoccupation; biological and psychosocial bases of subjectivity; the origins and nature of interpersonal conflict; sequelae of violent trauma.' - Stuart T. Hauser, MD, PhD, Senior Scientist, Judge Baker Children's Center, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
