Paul Valent

Paul Valent

MBBS, DPM, FRANZCP
Consultant liaison psychiatrist, psychotherapist, traumatologist,
Co-founder and past president Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies,
Writer.

The Right Brain As a Substrate for Reforging Psychoanalytic and Trauma Therapies

We all have some idea about the right and left brains having different functions. The left brain deals with verbal logical matters, the right with emotional ones. But if we look in more detail at the different hemispheric functions, we realise as the eminent neurologist Rhawn Joseph said, we live simultaneously in two separate complex mental worlds. The right and left brains exist, literally side by side using unique strategies for perceiving, processing, and expressing information. Further, these separate mental worlds may know little about each other.

This paper looks at dissociated right and left hemispheric functioning through a clinical example of a patient who had been sexually abused as a child.

Similarities between psychoanalytic therapy and reintegration of  hemispheric splits provides hope for a neurological explanation of both trauma and psychoanalytic therapies.
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Publication Author: Paul Valent Publication Date: March 2001 Categories:

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