Mind-brain and consciousness in psychoanalysis

Understanding how the brain produces conscious mentation is vital to the prospective integration of psychoanalytic and neuroscientific study of the mind-brain relation. This essay explores some of the current opinions, based on recent neuroscientific research, regarding origins of consciousness in the brain. Areas explored include levels of consciousness, waking versus dream consciousness, and issues of consciousness and self-organization in split-brain studies. Some tentative suggestions are made regarding clinical implications of this perspective.