Review of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Special Issue 39:8 (2019), “The influence of neuroscience on psychoanalysts: a contemporary perspective”

ABSTRACT The special issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Volume 39, No. 8 (2019), entitled “The Influence of Neuroscience on Psychoanalysts: A Contemporary Perspective,” edited by Fredric N. Busch, M.D., presents a contemporary view of developments that began more than 100 years ago with Sigmund Freud’s monograph On Aphasia (1891). The fact that the title of the issue refers to “psychoanalysts,” rather than the abstract discipline of psychoanalysis, alerts the reader to the volume’s collection of personal views of a complex topic. In this review, I will also be personal, considering how the volume engages me as a psychoanalyst, while commenting on the representativeness of the selections, and some of the issues raised by the authors. Fredric Busch has undertaken a massive task, handling it with elegance and grace. I’ll come back to the scientific questions he raises in his Prologue to the issue, and merely mention here that I feel challenged by the complexity and volume of the material. I imagine it is similarly challenging for every reader who seeks to grasp the influence of neuroscience on psychoanalysts.