Coming into Mind: The Mind-Brain Relationship: A Jungian Clinical Perspective

242 Pages·2006·2.612 MB·English

by  Margaret Wilkinson

Coming Into Mind
Contemporary neuroscience has a valuable contribution to make to
understanding the mind-brain. Coming Into Mind aims to bridge
the gap between theory and clinical practice, demonstrating how
awareness of the insights gained from neuroscience is essential if the
psychological therapies are to maintain scientific integrity in the
twenty-first century.
Margaret Wilkinson introduces the clinician to those aspects of
neuroscience which are most relevant to their practice, guiding the
reader through topics such as memory, brain plasticity, neural con-
nection and the emotional brain. Detailed clinical case studies are
included throughout to demonstrate the value of employing the
insights of neuroscience. The book focuses on the affect-regulating,
relational aspects of therapy that forge new neural pathways
through emotional connection, forming the emotional scaffolding
that permits the development of mind. Subjects covered include:
• Why neuroscience?
• The early development of the mind-brain
• Un-doing dissociation
• The dreaming mind-brain
• The emergent self
This book succeeds in making cutting-edge research accessible,
helping mental health professionals grasp the direct relevance of
neuroscience to their practice. It will be of great interest to Jungian
analysts, psychoanalysts, psychodynamic psychotherapists and
counsellors.
Margaret Wilkinson is an analyst in private practice and an assist-
ant editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology.
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Coming Into Mind
The mind-brain relationship: a
Jungian clinical perspective
Margaret Wilkinson
First published 2006 by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Margaret Wilkinson
Typeset in Sabon by RefineCatch Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Paperback cover design by Lisa Dynan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
This publication has been produced with paper manufactured
to strict environmental standards and with pulp derived from
sustainable forests.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wilkinson, Margaret.
Coming into mind : the mind-brain relationship : A Jungian clinical
perspective / Margaret Wilkinson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1–58391–708–X (hbk : alk. paper)
ISBN 1–58391–709–8 (pbk : alk. paper)
1. Cognitive neuroscience. 2. Cognitive psychology.
3. Neuropsychology. I. Title.
QP360, W53 2006
612.8′2—dc22 2005023324
ISBN10: 1–58391–708–X (hbk)
ISBN10: 1–58391–709–8 (pbk)
ISBN13: 9–78–1–58391–708–X (hbk)
ISBN13: 9–78–1–58391–709–8 (pbk)
Contents
List of figures and plates vi
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements xiii
List of abbreviations xv
1 Why neuroscience? 1
2 Brain basics 13
3 The early development of the brain-mind 33
4 Memory systems 56
5 The fear system and psychological kindling in
the brain-mind 76
6 Un-doing dissociation 94
7 The adolescent brain 114
8 The dreaming mind-brain 131
9 The emergent self 154
Postscript 179
References 187
Index 203
List of figures and plates
2.1 A neuron 15
2.2 The human brain 17
2.3 Communications systems in the brain 23
3.1 The development of neural connections in the
developing brain 34
5.1 The release of the stress hormone cortisol 78
Plates 1–3 Holly’s paintings
Plates 4–9 Sophie’s paintings
Foreword
Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are now in a dynamic period of
growth and change. This acceleration of development in the field of
mental health is in large part due to the incorporation of very recent
advances in the sciences that border psychoanalysis, clinical psych-
ology, and psychiatry. In particular, a convergence of findings in
developmental and affective neuroscience is now enriching and
reorganizing fundamental models of early human emotional and
social development. The mutually enriching cross-fertilization of
knowledge across both the basic and applied sciences has allowed
for the creation of more complex psychoneurobiological models of
the initial stages of the development of the mind, especially the
unconscious mind. These updated developmental advances have in
turn generated a deeper understanding of change processes within
the unconscious mind that potentially occur over all later stages of
the lifespan, including models of change within the psycho-
therapeutic context.
In a number of recent contributions I am arguing that the inter-
disciplinary perspective that emerges from the simultaneous and
parallel advances in the biological and psychological sciences is act-
ing as a potent catalytic force for a Kuhnian paradigm shift in a
number of applied sciences, including psychoanalysis, the science of
unconscious processes (Schore 2005a, in press). This current
transformation is objectively expressed in a significant increase of
clinically relevant interdisciplinary information available to psycho-
therapists, and subjectively in the amplified energy level within the
field. The current dialogue between neurobiological research on the
brain and psychoanalytic studies of the mind is thus allowing for a
realization of Freud’s prediction of a rapprochement between
psychoanalysis and the natural sciences (Schore 1997). It is also
viii Foreword
leading to renewed creativity in re-viewing classic clinical phenom-
ena in light of this fresh psychoneurobiological perspective.
In this timely cutting-edge book Margaret Wilkinson offers an
important voice to this interdisciplinary dialogue, effectively
demonstrating that recent advances in the sciences that border psy-
choanalysis need to be incorporated into day-to-day, indeed
moment-to-moment therapeutic work. As an exemplary contribution
to neuropsychoanalytic scholarship, the author presents the complex-
ity of current neuroscience and developmental data in a clear and
understandable fashion, comprehensible and recognizable to clini-
cians of all schools. A number of current texts are now attempting to
bridge the divide between the biological models of the brain and
psychological models of the mind. But what particular aspects of
human psychology are most relevant to the therapeutic context?
Wilkinson’s talent, which draws from her extensive clinical experi-
ence, is to specifically focus upon intersubjective affective-cognitive
mechanisms that operate at the nonconscious core of the psycho-
analytic encounter. She then turns to neuroscience to identify the
brain systems that structurally mediate these implicit processes.
Written from the pragmatic viewpoint of a working clinician, the
early chapters outline clear expositions of current findings in not
only neuroscience, but also in development, affect, memory,
trauma, and dissociation, areas now of current intense interest to all
schools of psychotherapy. At later points of the book she ventures
deeply into a topic hardly touched upon in current neuropsycho-
analytic writings – adolescence. And in perhaps the most creative
chapter (8), she offers an important contribution to psychoanalytic
dream work. Throughout all of these applications of neuro-
psychoanalysis to clinical psychoanalysis, Wilkinson focuses upon
recent studies of the early developing right hemisphere, which at all
points of the lifespan is dominant for affect processing, implicit
memory, the storage of traumatic experiences, and primitive
defenses, such as dissociation.
The reader will be enriched by the considerable amount of recent
interdisciplinary information provided in these chapters. However,
Wilkinson’s major contribution is to translate this data into prac-
tical clinical material, familiar to psychotherapists, and then to
demonstrate the usefulness of very recent advances in develop-
mental, neuropsychoanalytic, and trauma information to more
effective work. Knowledge of recent neuroscience may thus inform
clinicians about the underlying psychoneurobiological mechanisms
Foreword ix
that lie at the core of what has previously been referred to as
‘internal psychic structure’, and how intersubjective processes
within the therapeutic alliance transactions facilitate change in
these unconscious structures. She boldly asserts that knowledge of
current neuroscience can enable clinicians to ‘come to a clearer
understanding of why they do what they do, especially in relation to
the unconscious, empathic, dynamic aspects of work in the trans-
ference and countertransference’.
Wilkinson’s psychoanalytic perspective of the clinical encounter
is significantly influenced by her deep understanding of Carl Jung’s
analytical psychology. Continuing her earlier seminal publications
on the numerous contact points of Jung’s writings and the data of
contemporary science, this book represents the first detailed
exposition of how many of Jung’s original psychoanalytic hypoth-
eses, created within the framework of the early twentieth-century
science of the unconscious mind, are now validated by neuro-
scientific findings of twenty-first century neuropsychoanalysis. On
that matter, I offer the following thoughts.
In the final chapter of my first book (Schore 1994) I suggested
that Jung (1943) described the ‘collective unconscious’ as an ‘image
of the world’ that is the source of self-sufficiency, as it contains ‘all
those elements that are necessary for the self-regulation of the
psyche as a whole.’ The concept of both the self and regulation are,
of course, central to Jung’s contributions to psychoanalysis. At
every stage of the development of his theories Jung returned to the
centrality of the concept of the self. This ‘innermost nucleus of the
psyche’ is fundamentally composed of affect experiences, and it acts
as a regulating centre that brings about the maturing of the person-
ality. Although he never offered a formal developmental theory of
the origin of the self, he was convinced that ‘The symbols of the self
arise in the depths of the body’ (1940). And again, in Two Essays on
Analytical Psychology (1943) he proposed: ‘The self is a quantity
that is supraordinate to the conscious ego. It embraces not only the
conscious but also the unconscious psyche, and is therefore, so to
speak, a personality which we also are’. Indeed, over the course of
his writings Jung attempted to shift the focus of psychoanalysis
from the ego to the self.
In my own ongoing studies of the origin, function, dysfunction,
and repair of the self (Schore 1994, 2003a, 2003b) I have offered a
large body of experimental and clinical studies which demonstrate
that the implicit self system, formed in the attachment bond of