Neuropsychoanalysis

Neuropsychoanalysis is an emerging field that brings psychoanalysis into dialogue with contemporary neuroscience. Freud, who began his career as a neurologist, hoped that the mind sciences of his day would eventually catch up with his clinical discoveries. Over the past two decades, led in large part by the work of Mark Solms and the field of predictive processing, that has begun to happen. Affective neuroscience has confirmed, deepened, and in some cases upended core psychoanalytic ideas about emotion, motivation, memory, and the unconscious.

What is neuropsychoanalysis?

Rather than a separate brand of therapy, neuropsychoanalysis is a way of grounding psychoanalytic work in our best current understanding of how the brain actually works. It takes seriously what neuroscience has learned about the basic emotional systems we share and about how feelings, not just thoughts, organize the mind. It understands many of our most stubborn behavioral patterns as predictions we learned early in life and never revised.

How it shapes treatment

In practice, this perspective refines rather than replaces psychoanalytic technique. It helps clarify why insight alone often isn’t enough, why feelings need to be experienced for old patterns to update, and why the relationship between patient and therapist is itself a primary vehicle of change. The work remains what it has always been: two people paying close attention to what one of them is thinking and feeling. Not for its own sake, but so that we can choose behaviors that work for us in the present, as opposed to falling back into the unexamined defaults of our past. The neuroscience doesn’t replace that work. It illuminates and extends it, telling us with growing precision what actually works.

Working together

I am currently enrolled in the first two-year certificate program in neuropsychoanalysis, and this perspective informs my practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. I see adults virtually and in person at my office at 360 Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. You can read more about my background and approach, or get in touch below to set up a consultation.