We Evolved from the Stuff of Squirrels

Do you realize we evolved from the " stuff of squirrels?"  We modern human animals are mammals. We are vertebrates. We are primates. Do you know the story of how we got here? How we evolved? It is pretty interesting. It all goes back to the day a huge meteor struck the earth creating the greatest dust storm to ever exist. That was 66 million years ago.

It was the age of the dinosaurs. Mammals also existed at that time but they were tiny shrew like creatures, not unlike our modern squirrels. The dust storm caused by the meteor ( which struck the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico ( where I visited a few years back ), killed off the dinosaurs! Matter of fact it killed off most all the animals that could not hide in the ground and escape the dust. And that is why the little shrew like mammals were able to survive. They were small enough to hide underground. Do you know who evolved after these tiny shrew like mammals? The Monkeys. Do you know who evolved after the monkeys? The Great Apes. Do you know who the great apes are? Chimpanzies, bonomos, orangutans, gorillas and humans. ( We share 98% DNA with the chimps.)

I visited the Wits University Fossil Valult in Johannesburg South Africa in 2015. There I saw the famous fossil named the Taung Child. It was found in 1925 by Raymond Dart. It is the skull of a young ape like, bipedal, australopithecus africanus--a 3 million year old prehuman. We modern humans are in their evolutionary line. The next group evolving from these creatures was homo habilis, around 2.5 million years ago. They were known as the Tool Makers. Then about 300,000 years ago ( all in Africa by the way ), anatomical modern humans evolved. And by 150,000 years ago we came on the evolutionary scene--homo sapiens/modern humans. Forty thousand years ago we homo sapiens ( called Cromagnons in Europe) began to paint on cave walls, and 12,000 years ago we created Civilization.

So here we are today in 2023, modern humans/mammals who evolved from those tiny shrew like mammals who survived the dust storm of the Yucatan Meteor. We are made of the same stuff as they are. It is truly amazing! Those creatures in our back yard who love to eat our birdfood are our distant ancestors. We are indeed made of the stuff of squirrels!

But get this! If that giant meteor had ventured slightly off course and had struck the earth in the open ocean, the catastrophic impact to planet earth would have not been as great. The dinosaurs may have then survived. And if they had survived the small mammals who escaped from them in holes in the ground, would have not evolved into larger mammals. Do you know what that would have meant? Those small mammals would have not evolved into monkeys, nor the great apes-- which we are one of. Therefore, modern humans would have not come into being. We would not be here! So you see it was by chance that we evolved from those little shrew like creatures who survived the meteor blast and the resultant extinction of the dinosaurs. And by that unbelievable chance occurrence we evolved from the " stuff of squirrels!"

Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 5 )

Internal  conflicts and/or external traumas experienced during your childhood developmental stages may have led to painful symptoms of anxiety, depression, rage, etc. Neuropsychoanalysis teaches that these unpleasant feelings result from faulty, repressed, childhood predictions (ego compromises/solutions) that did not adequately resolve your  childhood conflict/trauma. Ego defenses are then required to ward off these unpleasant feelings.  There are three levels of defenses that are utilized in the three levels of disorders:  Neurotic defenses,narcissistic/borderline defenses,  and psychotic defenses. The higher level neurotic defenses are more likely to succeed in defending against the unpleasant feelings than are the  narcissistic/borderline ones. And the narcissistic/borderline defenses are more successful at defending against bad feelings than are the psychotic ones. ...........When any of these three levels of defenses fail, you experience the "return of the repressed" in the form of the troubled  feelings returning to consciousness. These troublesome feelings are the symptoms that first brought you to treatment...... These symptoms are grouped together in the various diagnoses of anxiety disorders, depressive disorders etc., of the DSM......Neuropsychoanalytic  diagnosis, however,  sees these unpleasant feelings/symptoms as the result of unmet basic emotional needs/drives (id), which result from the faulty repressed predictions ( ego) mentioned above. It is the assessment  of these faulty predictions  that is key in neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis. The reason is that these  faulty predictions  are why you  cannot successfully  meet  your basic emotional needs/drives. And the  inability to meet your  basic emotional needs/drives  is what is causing your suffering/psychopathology/mental illness. Changing the faulty, unworkable predictions (ego) to healthy, workable ones is the  goal of neuropsychoanalytic  psychotherapy. The result of these changes will be that you will indeed be able to now adequately meet ( ego)  your seven basic emotional  needs/drives (id).  Thus your suffering/pathology/mental illness ends and you become emotionally healthy. 

Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 4 )

 As your therapist, when I begin to wonder about your neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis,  I look first for your transference patterns--both to me as your therapist and your significant others. These transference patterns in the present lead  to inferences ( reconstructions)  about your early childhood experiences and how those experiences have resulted  in your  not sufficiently meeting your  seven basic emotional needs/drives ( id).   ( You will recall from previous posts these seven needs are: FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF, CARE, RAGE, LUST, PLAY and SEEKING)..........  As a result of not getting your basic needs/drives met, and depending  on your  age, developmental level, severity of childhood difficulties, and current life stressors, the faulty childhood predictions (ego compromises/solutions) may result in one of the following three levels of disorders: Neurotic  Disorders, Narcissistic/Borderline Disorders, and Psychotic Disorders. Neurotic level patients are rather high functioning persons.  Narcissistic/Borderline level patients, however, are more  ill, and Psychotic patients are severely disturbed. ........These three levels  of psychopathology may  be determined  by conflicts and/or traumas in all your early developmental stages,  as well as  conflict/trauma in your current life. 

1David Moore

Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 3 )

Given your DSM symptom based diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, your Psychiatrist will likely  decide which antidepressant medication would be best for reducing your painful symptoms and will prescribe that medication for you. They will hopefully also refer you to me for neuropsychoanalytic psychotherapy. ( Your psychiatrist is also a mental health professional and may offer you psychotherapy and/or medication.) So let's say your Psychiatrist prescribes you the anti depressant drug Lexapro and refers you to me for psychotherapy. When you come to see me for your first session I will also learn about what unpleasant feelings you are suffering from, and I too will conclude that you are suffering from Major Depressive Disorder. But neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis goes beyond the descriptive diagnosis of the DSM. 

1Natalie Melton

Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 2 )

The DSM ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses) is the official manual of mental health disorders used by all mental health professionals to diagnose their patients. Your psychiatrist also uses this manual to diagnose your mental disorder. This manual, like the manual for physical illnesses, is based in an assessment of your symptoms. If you come to me or your psychiatrist  we are going to ask you about your symptoms. " What hurts? In what way does it hurt? How long have you been hurting?  What unpleasant feeling are you suffering from? "Let's say you answer the questions this way: " I am having trouble sleeping. I have lost weight. I have been crying a lot. I feel sad. I do not want to do anything. I have lost pleasure in everything. I have no joy. I feel worthless and I sometimes feel that the world would be a better place without me. I have seriously thought of suicide." Your psychiatrist  and I will both know that these are the symptoms of depression and we will diagnose you with a depressive disorder. We will then choose the depressive disorder found in in the DSM  that best describes your symptoms. In this case we would diagnose you with Major Depressive Disorder. ( More to come. )

2Bill Huffman and David Moore

Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 1 )

 I have written earlier( see my Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis here on my Blog)  about neuropsychoanalytic theory and treatment.   To follow up on those Lectures  I wish now to write about neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis. The neuropsychoanalyst  and creator of neuropsychoanalysis , Mark Solms, says, we cannot know how to help someone get better if we do not know what has gone wrong in their lives in the first place. This is the process of diagnosis..........Neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis is similar in some ways to DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)  diagnosis. We listen, observe, interview, get to know the patient in depth, rule out various diagnoses, and finally arrive at what is going wrong in their lives that needs to change in order for them to live a healthier life. Much of the beginning phase of therapy is about coming up with the correct diagnosis......In these next few posts I am going to write about how neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis starts out similarly to DSM diagnosis. But stick around for parts  two through five where I will talk about how different the two are as well!

8Loyd Allen, Christie Melton Kearney and 6 others

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My Experience as a Supervisor of Neuropsychoanalytic Psychotherapist Students (Part II )

The format for supervision I  wrote of previously is  the approach that I take  with all my students--one week of teaching and one week of supervision over the duration of their supervision experience. So instead of writing about how the supervision of all students is different and how I adjust the supervision process to each one's particular needs, etc., I am going to write about what their supervision processes have in common.

Let me start with the books I use to help me further learn how to supervise. The first one is Clinical Perspectives on the Supervision of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (1984), edited by Leopold Caligor, Philip Bromberg, and James Meltzer. The second book is Learning Process in Psychoanalytic Supervision: Complexities and Challenges (1987) by Paul DeWald. The third text was written in 1995 by Daniel Jacobs, Paul David, and Donald Jay Meyer. It is  titled, The Supervisory Encounter. The fourth supervision book is  Glen Gabbard's Long Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy( the last chapter on Supervision.) The final text I studied is  entitled, The Supervisory Relationship, written in 2001 by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea and Joan E. Sarnat............ In addition to these books I have read various articles and papers on  supervision that came my way through journals, etc. One of those is  by Otto Kernberg, published in 2010, Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Supervisor's Task.  For neuropsychoanalytic supervision in particular, I use my Training Manual, An Introduction to Neuropsychoanalytic Psychotherapy, which includes a section  on how to present case material. 

All of theses sources are  helpful, but even more helpful is hearing cases presented at neuropsychoanalytic conferences, and further hearing how the analysts/therapists would supervise the person presenting the material. These are not formal ongoing supervision sessions, but I find them very helpful in seeing how the analysts/therapists doing the supervising  listen, formulate, and comment on the case material......... As enriching as all of these readings and experiences have been in doing supervision, they do not specifically address how to teach neuropsychoanalytic theory, practice, and technique to students. For this task I also attend conferences and read articles on psychoanalytic teaching. Over time I have developed a notebook with my charts, notes, diagrams, etc., that helped me teach my students about theory and practice. 

Of course the main way a student learns how to do neuropsychoanalytic psychotherapy is by "actually doing it." Neuropsychoanalytic therapy  training is tripartite. It consists of didactic courses, supervision, and your own personal or training psychotherapy. Although I have  not required  personal psychotherapy for my students, I have strongly encouraged  it. But in the end it is the fourth element of training that teaches the students the most, and that is their experience with their patients in the room, week after week, in neuropsychoanalytic treatment. I will say more about that next time.