The Right Brain Implicit Self Lies at the Core of Psychoanalysis
To Be Published in Psychoanalytic Dialogues
For the last two decades my work has focused on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective implicit self. These neuropsychoanalytic studies of the evolution of psychic structure attempt to more deeply understand the essential psychological processes and biological mechanisms that underlie the psychobiological substrate of the human unconscious described by Freud. Over this same time period the study of implicit unconscious phenomena has finally become a legitimate area of not only psychoanalytic but also scientific inquiry. In 2002 the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux wrote in the journal Science, “That explicit and implicit aspects of the self exist is not a particularly novel idea. It is closely related to Freud’s partition of the mind into conscious, preconscious (accessible but not currently accessed), and unconscious (inaccessible) levels” (p. 28).
Over the course of my writings I have provided a substantial amount of interdisciplinary evidence which supports the proposition that the early developing right brain generates the implicit self, the human unconscious (Schore, 1994, 1997, 2003a, 2005, 2007). Current neuroscience authors are concluding, “The right hemisphere has been linked to implicit information processing, as opposed to the more explicit and more conscious processing tied to the left hemisphere” (Happaney. Zelazo, & Stuss, 2004, p. 7). And psychophysiological researchers are reporting, “We found that the left hemisphere more than the right can mediate conscious elaboration…This result is in line with previous research, that underlined a left-conscious/right-unconscious dichotomy” (Balconi & Lucchiari, 2008, p. 45).
In this presentation I want to demonstrate that current clinical and experimental studies of the unconscious, implicit domain can do more than support a clinical psychoanalytic model of treatment, but rather this interdisciplinary information can elucidate the mechanisms that lie at the core of psychoanalysis. The body of my work strongly suggests the following organizing principles. The concept of a single unitary “self” is as misleading as the idea of a single unitary “brain.” Despite the designation of the verbal left hemisphere as “dominant” due to it’s capacities for explicitly processing language functions, it is the right hemisphere and it’s implicit homeostatic-survival and communication functions that is truly dominant in human existence (Schore, 2003a). Over the life span the early-forming unconscious implicit self continues to develop, and it operates in qualitatively different ways from the later-forming conscious explicit self. Recall Freud’s (1920) assertion that the unconscious is “a special realm, with its own desires and modes of expression and peculiar mental mechanisms not elsewhere operative.” In essence, my work is an exploration of this “special realm.”
With the emergence of modern neuropsychoanalysis and its direct connections with contemporary neuroscience, the right brain’s dominance for an “emotional” and “corporeal” sense of self (Devinsky, 2000; Schore, 1994) is now common ground to both disciplines. This integration clearly demonstrates that evolutionarily adaptive implicit bodily-based socioemotional functions represent the output of the unique developmental, anatomical, and psychobiological properties of the right brain. Indeed the implicit functions and structures of the right brain represent the inner world described by psychoanalysis since its inception. From its origin in The Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud’s explorations of the deeper levels of the human mind have exposed the illusion of a single state of surface consciousness, and revealed the essential contributions of a biological substratum of unconscious states that indelibly impact all levels of human existence. The temporal differences of right implicit and left explicit processing is described by Buklina (2005, p. 479):
[T]he more ‘diffuse’ organization of the right hemisphere has the effect that it responds to any stimulus, even speech stimuli, more quickly and, thus earlier. The left hemisphere is activated after this and performs the slower semantic analysis…the arrival of an individual signal initially in the right hemisphere and then in the left is more ‘physiological.’ (see Figure 1)
Figure 1. Implicit processing of right brain and subsequent connections
into left brain explicit system
A more profound and comprehensive understanding of the organizing principles of this rapid acting and therefore nonconscious right brain “physiological” implicit core system can provide not only essential and relevant clinical and experimental data, but also a theoretical lens which can illuminate and penetrate the fundamental problems addressed by psychoanalytic science. Just as studies of the left brain, dominant for language and verbal processing, can never elucidate the unique nonverbal functions of the right, studies of the output of the explicit functions of the conscious mind in verbal transcripts or narratives can never reveal the implicit psychobiological dynamics of the unconscious mind (Schore, 1994, 2003a).
This neuropsychoanalytic perspective echoes Freud’s fundamental assertion that the central questions of the human condition, which psychoanalysis directly addresses, can never be found in knowledge of how the conscious mind of the explicit self system works, but rather in a deeper understanding of the implicit psychobiological mechanisms of the unconscious mind. Other fields of study are now appreciating the importance of this unconscious realm in all levels of human existence. Thus not only psychoanalysis but a large number of disciplines in both the sciences and the arts are now experiencing a paradigm shift from explicit conscious cognition to implicit unconscious affect. In a recent editorial of the journal Motivation and Emotion, Richard Ryan asserts, “After three decades of the dominance of cognitive approaches, motivational and emotional processes have roared back into the limelight” (2007, p. 1). A large number of interdisciplinary studies are now converging upon the centrality of these implicit right brain motivational and emotional processes that are essential to adaptive functioning.