In the Mind Fields - 9780307911520

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.