How to Find My, " Nine Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis/Psychotherapy", Here on My Blog

​If you are interested in reading my posts entitled "Nine Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis/Psychotherapy", scroll down to their beginning with my PREFACE, dated June 27, 2026.                         

The lectures are  in chronological order. I hope you are successful at locating all of them,  and I look forward to your comments and questions regarding these lectures.  

C. Alan Melton, D. Min., LPC          

Blog Link: calanmeltonw.blogspot.com

Clinical Fellow, International Neuropsychoanalytic Society

Clinical Member, The American Psychoanalytic Association

Lecture Nine; Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 5 )

Again, your unpleasant feeling ( in your case,  grief/depression),  results from a  faulty, unconscious, repressed, childhood prediction (ego compromise/solution) that failed to adequately resolve your  childhood conflicts or trauma. At times you may have been able to make the depressive feeling go away, by using various defense mechanisms. It is usually when these defenses fail to eliminate the depressive  feeling that you come to therapy.                                              

Your neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis also includes assessing the three levels of defenses that are utilized in the three levels of emotional disorders:  Neurotic defenses, narcissistic/borderline defenses,  and psychotic defenses. The higher level neurotic defenses are more likely to succeed in defending against the unpleasant feeling than are the  narcissistic/borderline ones. And the narcissistic/borderline defenses are more successful at defending against the bad feeling than are the psychotic ones.

When any of the above defenses fail, you experience the "return of the repressed" in the form of the unpleasant  feeling returning to consciousness.  Again, it was  this depressive feeling that likely  brought you to treatment. 

Since this unpleasant feeling is the result of an unmet basic emotional need/drive (id), which results  from the faulty childhood prediction (ego) mentioned above, it is the discovery  of this faulty prediction that is the key difference  in neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis and the descriptive diagnosis found in the DSM.                                   

Neuropsychoanalysis believes that the faulty prediction is the underlying problem. It is the cause of your  mental illness/emotional disorder. Once your faulty prediction is  properly discovered, you can proceed in treatment to eventually change it to a workable prediction. This neuropsychoanalytic treatment will help you to eventually  create a healthy and workable prediction .  Finally, gradually implementing this new prediction will result in your having a more  joyful life, that is no longer hampered by the feeling of depression.

  

Lecture Nine; Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 4 )

 As your therapist, when I begin to wonder further with you about your neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis, I will seek to look BENEATH your unpleasant  feeling/symptom to what is CAUSING it. Neuropsychoanalysis believes your unpleasant feeling is caused by the failure to meet a  basic emotional need. In your case of major depression it may  be your attachment need ( PANIC/GRIEF  when not met) that is not being met. And the  failure to meet this need is the result of your faulty, childhood,  repressed unconscious prediction.  To assess this faulty prediction we begin to look at  your transference patterns--both with me as your therapist and your significant others. These transference patterns in the present lead  to inferences  about your early childhood experiences, and how those experiences have resulted  in the faulty prediction that is not working to  sufficiently meet your PANIC/GRIEF need.....(Or any other of the seven basic emotional needs. You will recall from previous posts these seven needs/drives are: FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF, CARE, RAGE, LUST, PLAY and SEEKING).     

                                         

1David Moore

Lecture Nine; Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis (Part 3 )

Given your DSM symptom based diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, I may decide that you need both therapy and an assessment by a psychiatrist for possible medication. Your psychiatrist will talk with you about what antidepressant medication might be best in helping to reduce  your painful symptoms, and will prescribe that medication for you.                             

So let's say your Psychiatrist prescribes you the anti depressant drug Lexapro while also affirming  your doing neuropsychoanalytic psychotherapy with me.  As I said earlier, when you come to see me for your first few sessions,  I will also learn about what unpleasant feeling you are suffering from. In your case your depressive feelings (DSM Major Depression)  will likely predominate.  But,  neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis GOES BEYOND the descriptive diagnosis of the DSM, to assess the underlying cause of your unpleasant feeling/symptom. This is the KEY DIFFERENCE in the two types of diagnosis!

1Natalie Melton

Lecture Nine; Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 2 )

The DSM (Diagnostic and  Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the official manual of mental health disorders used by mental health professionals to diagnose their patients. This manual, like the manual for physical illnesses, helps your therapist decide on a diagnosis based on your symptoms....... If you come to me for neuropsychoanalytic psychotherapy, I will begin with asking you, "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." I will  know that these are the symptoms of depression,  and we will diagnose you with some type of depressive disorder. I will then choose the specific depressive disorder found in the DSM  that best matches your symptoms. In your  case I would diagnose you as having Major Depressive Disorder. ( More to come. )

2Bill Huffman and David Moore

Lecture Nine; Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 1 )

 So far I have written eight lectures about neuropsychoanalytic theory and treatment. In this new ninth lecture I wish to expand on the earlier lecture on neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis.  The field of neuropsychoanalysis  is presently researching how we diagnose, and how our diagnostic model is different than other models.                 

The neuropsychoanalyst  and creator of neuropsychoanalysis Mark Solms,  believes 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 has gone wrong in their lives that needs to change in order for them to   be healthy.  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 until the end of this series of posts where I will write  about HOW DIFFERENT the two are as well!

8Loyd Allen, Christie Melton Kearney and 6 others

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Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis/Psychotherapy " Conclusion"

​Now I come to the end of the first  Eight Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanslysis/Psychotherapy.  In these lectures I first looked at theory under the heading of, " How the Patient's Mind Functions".  I explored there the additional drive/basic emotional needs that neuropsychoanalysis adds to psychoanalysis.  I also wrote about  how these needs conflict with each other, and the repressed childhood predictions that failed to meet these needs.  I further examined the role the various types of memory play in the  types of therapy chosen.  

Next I discussed developmental theory under the title, How the Patient's Mind Develops".  I wrote about how psychopathology, mainly in the form of unpleasant feelings, results  from unworkable  childhood predictions.

And finally,  under the title of  "How to Treat  the Patient's Mind", I explained how to do neuropsychoanalysis/psychotherapy,  and the various techniques employed  in doing so.  I did this by looking at the  three phases of treatment--the begining, middle, and ending phases. These phases  took you from assessment,  to transference and extratransference interpretations, to working through the old prediction and  consolidating the new one, to the termination of treatment. 

I further offered an imaginary case example in Mr. C. The technique section then ended with instructions on," How to Present a Case Presentation".

I hope these eight lectures have provided you with a sufficient introduction to the theory and technique of neuropsychoanalysis/psychotherapy. You have now learned enough of this treatment approach to get you started! I could not, in these brief lectures, provide you with all that is needed to be come competent in neuropsychoanalysis/psychotherapy. My hope is that  I did provide you with enough theory and technique to whet your appetite for more. This was certainly what  I experienced when first listening to Mark Solms Lockdown Lectures on, " A Practical Introduction to Psychoanalysis". I quickly realized he was talking about things  I had never heard of in my psychoanalytic  therapy education. And what he was saying rang so true  for me. From there forward, I felt compelled to learn  more.               

And indeed I have learned  more!!

I learned more about neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis. This new learning makes up the next and ninth lecture.