Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind

These eight essays by Eric Kandel, the Nobel-prize winning psychiatrist and neuroscientist, provide an eloquent, finely elucidated map of his journey from psychiatric resident to the most profound contemporary thinker about the relationships among psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, and how they can facilitate each other's dynamic growth. Kandel's exquisite sensitivity to the humanistic appeal and challenge of the psychotherapeutic encounter and the treatment of the mentally ill, and his unique and comprehensive knowledge about the development and function of our ever changing nervous system, which must be understood at multiple levels of organization, from the gene to the level of mind, is captured in pellucid prose. This is a must read for the clinician, the neuroscientist, as well as the intelligent reader who would understand brain and behavior. Herbert Y Meltzer, Bixler/May/Johnson Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Eric Kandel is living Sigmund Freud's life in reverse: Freud moved to Vienna as a child, grew intellectual roots in neuroscience, and became an illustrious psychoanalyst, whereas Kandel left Vienna as a child, grew intellectual roots in psychoanalysis, and became an illustrious neuroscientist. In these inspiring essays the mature Kandel expresses a hope that young Freud shared for the solution of some persistent mysteries of the human mind by combining studies of individual psychology with brain research. Samuel Barondes, Robertson Professor of Neurobiology and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco

These eight important and fascinating essays by Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist Eric Kandel provide a breakthrough perspective on how biology has influenced modern psychiatric thought. Complete with commentaries by experts in the field, this book reflects the author's evolving view of how biology has revolutionized psychiatry and psychology.

Brought together for the first time in a single volume, these eight important and fascinating essays by Nobel Prize-winning psychiatrist Eric Kandel provide a breakthrough perspective on how biology has influenced modern psychiatric thought. Complete with commentaries by experts in the field, Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind reflects the author's evolving view of how biology has revolutionized psychiatry and psychology and how potentially could alter modern psychoanalytic thought.

The author's unique perspective on both psychoanalysis and biological research has led to breakthroughs in our thinking about neurobiology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis—all driven by the central idea that a fuller understanding of the biological processes of learning and memory can illuminate our understanding of behavior and its disorders. These wonderful essays cover

• the mechanisms of psychotherapy and medications, showing that both work at the same level of neural circuits and synapses, and the implications of neurobiological research for psychotherapy;
• the ability to detect functional changes in the brain after psychotherapy, which enables us, for the first time, to objectively evaluate the effects of psychotherapy on individual patients;
• the need for animal models of mental disorders; for example, learned fear, to show how molecules and cellular mechanisms for learning and memory can be combined in various ways to produce a range of adaptive and maladaptive behaviors;
• the unification of behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and molecular biology into the new science of the mind, charted in two seminal reports on neurobiology and molecular biology given in 1983 and 2000;
• the critical role of synapses and synaptic strength in both short- and long-term learning;
• the biological and social implications of the mapping of the human genome for medicine in general and for psychiatry and mental health in particular;

The author concludes by calling for a revolution in psychiatry, one that can use the power of biology and cognitive psychology to treat the many mentally ill persons who do not benefit from...read more...