Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis , Lecture One; Part Two " My Journey to Understand the Mind" l

Pastoral Counseling

I began my journey of trying to understand the Mind in a Christian home and Church. During my childhood and teenage years I knew nothing about psychology. One highschool course in the Humanities did mention the Social Sciences but I was unaware of what they were. I knew only about sin, judgement and guilt--and faith, hope and salvation. These were the experiences I brought to life and the categories I used to interpret life. I did not know there were other categories such as the unconscious, anxiety or dream interpretation.

In college, however, something enlightening happened to me. I was opened up to a new world! After stumbling through hard science courses during my first two years, I finally ended up in sociology, anthropology, and psychology. I added a few religion, music, and other liberal arts courses and ended up with a BS degree in sociology with an emphasis in family studies. And though I was exposed to these new ways of understanding the Mind, I did not allow them to alter my Christian worldview. I simply stretched my world view to accommodate them.

It was not until I graduated from seminary that I read these words from the pastoral counselor Howard Clinebell. He wrote that " depth pastoral counseling is a long term helping process aimed at effecting depth changes in the counselee's personality by uncovering and dealing with hidden feelings..." Later on in this same text he wrote that " It is fortunate for the Church, for suffering persons, and for the advancement of the therapeutic art that some clergyman (sic) are obtaining training which allows them to do psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy..." By now I was liberal Christian minister ( with growing Unitarian views and a theological stance of Panentheism as espoused by Paul Tillich and the Process Theologians), trying to do such therapy with my parishioners. I had read a number of books on pastoral psychoanalytic therapy and was trying to apply them to my practice of pastoral counseling.

But I soon discovered I was not adequately prepared for this type of therapy work, so I continued reading. In my next job as a parish minister I fortunately discovered the writings of Sigmund Freud. Freud once wrote to his pastor friend and colleague Oskar Pfister that " in itself, psychoanalysis is neither religious or non-religious, but an impartial tool which both priest and layman (sic) can use in service of the sufferer. I am very much struck by the fact that it never occurred to me how extraordinarily helpful the psychoanalytic method might be in pastoral work."

After learning of Freud's letter to Pfister, and training to be a pastoral psychoanalytic psychotherapist and an LPC, I did a research project as part of my training. In that project I wrote about how I sometimes identified with Pfister who remained religious in spite of his own psychoanalytic therapy and training, while at other times I identified with Freud who was not religious. In that project I wrote the following: " I often feel that psychological experiences are part of a larger spiritual reality...On other days.... I feel more...that life has no Ultimate meaning other than the meaning we bring to it, and that religion is a wish filled way of coping with the harsh realities of natural life."

Experiencing such ambivalence toward religion, I found myself studying less pastoral psychoanalytic therapy and embracing more the science of psychoanalysis itself. ( I made this shift in orientation while continuing to work in a pastoral counseling group practice. A significant population in my psychoanalytic therapy practice there were pastors and/or their family members. I further supervised LPC Interns and Residents there in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.) I started this new road on my journey by learning more of Freud. I began with his later works on the Structural Theory that we continue to follow in psychoanalysis/psychotherapy today.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

At this point in my career I was a member of both the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society and the American Psychoanalytic Association as a psychotherapist associate. I was further now supervising student therapists in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Through these years my personal psychoanalytic treatment, supervision, and continuing education were obtained through my colleagues in the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society . My analysts and my supervisors were members of the Society. I was also involved in the American Psychoanalytic Association, serving on the psychotherapist associates committee and attending the annual meeting for continuing education.

By this time I was feeling I had a fairly good grasp of Freud's Structural Theory, and could move on to other contemporary analysts who called themselves" Modern Freudians." The first book I read was Anna Freud's classic text, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Next came Heinz Hartmann's, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. I followed this work with Charles Brenner's An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. Brenner's other books became classics as well, and I read them also. There were many other " Modern Freudian" analysts that I read but space does not permit to list them all. I further explored the major works in Object Relations, Self Psychology, and Relational Analysis, seeking to integrate these ways of thinking and working into my Modern Freudian orientation. As a transition to the next section of this article, I will say that it was when I first began to read Freud that I rediscovered evolutionary biology and neuroscience.

Neuropsychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Frank Sulloway, in his well known book, Freud: Biologist of the Mind, says Freud was the first evolutionary psychoanalyst. I agree. Freud was the creator of psychoanalysis, and the first analyst to ground his psychology in Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution into his psychoanalytic theory. As a Darwinist myself, I was drawn to Freud's views. Today, I resonate with those contemporary analysts who are trying to integrate modern Neo-Darwinism into psychoanalysis, including the analyst Christopher Badcock in his book PsychoDarwinism, Slavin and Kriegman in their book, The Adaptive Design of the Human Psyche, the neuroscientist Erik Kandel, and the creator of neuropsychoanalysis, Mark Solms. I too am trying today to ground my Modern Freudian psychoanalytic views in contemporary biology. If we do not take this biological aspect of ourselves into account we will not have a full understanding of ourselves as a species of mammals--as homo sapiens-- who like all mammals are driven to meet our basic emotional needs. This is why I continue to advocate for all analytically oriented practitioners to ground their psychoanalytic understanding in biology

As a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who does integrate biology into my theory and technique of treatment, I believe that the grounding of psychoanalysis/psychotherapy in its parent discipline of biology is the wave of the future. I further believe that what Mark Solms, and the neuropsychoanalysis discipline he created, is where psychoanalysis must head if it is to fully become the natural science that Freud intended it to be. This is certainly the direction I am taking in my own theory and technique.

I would like to conclude this Lecture with a quote from the psychoanalyst Morris Eagle that sums of clearly what I have sought to say: "We believe that the clinical and theoretical insights of psychoanalysis must join with the now available and converging lines of evidence from cognitive psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary epistemology, ethology, infant research and psychotherapy research. We are well aware of the danger in combining various disciplines...However, following the path of Sigmund Freud, we agree that psychoanalysis, as a part of psychology, should be enabled to take its place as a natural science like any other..." ( Eagle 2018). I could not agree more!