Memory, Emotion and the Neuroscience of Enduring Change: Implications for Psychoanalysis

Professor Lane, a Visiting Fulbright Fellow, presented a 12-week elective course offered in the spring 2023. He offered a modern, neuroscience-based perspective on the mechanisms of enduring change in psychoanalysis. 

Freud was a neurologist who invented the field of psychoanalysis in 1895 and hoped to someday create a neuroscience-based model of the mind that could inform treatment. Although he soon realized that neuroscience knowledge at the time was inadequate for the task, he expressed the hope that someday this would be possible. This course is based on the premise that over a century later, neuroscience knowledge has advanced sufficiently that a neuroscience-based model of how enduring change occurs in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy can now be envisioned.

Course Materials