Routledge Ego Damage and Repair: Toward a Psychodynamic Neurology

Product Description As a psychiatric trainee at Harvard in the early 1960s, Dr Allan Hobson was taught commitment to psychoanalytic theory that was already suspect and is now almost entirely obsolete. Via a series of clinical case reports, the author first apologizes for the arrogant ignorance that he adopted from his teachers and then replaces Freudian doctrine with a scientific alternative called Psychodynamic Neurology. The new approach is solidly grounded in sleep and dream science and restores hypnosis to its rightful place in the therapeutic armamentarium. A central precept of Ego Damage and Repair is that the self and its subjective experience (including symptoms) are natural accompaniments of spontaneous and prenatal brain activation that persists throughout life as REM sleep dreaming. Far from being the nonsense theory that psychoanalytic opponents mock, Psychodynamic Neurology views the unconscious as a hyper-meaningful set of predictions about the world that constitutes a virtual reality model which is continuously updated by personal experience. To showcase the changes in psychotherapeutic practice that are recommended, the self treatment of Dr Glen Just is described in detail. Review "I have closely followed Dr Hobson's career, working as a psychiatrist and training in both psychoanalysis and REM and dream research, and have been fascinated by his remarkable work and insights. In this enthralling new book he explains his key findings, including his recent pioneering theory of 'proto-consciousness'. The book also applies his experience as a therapist and records his scientific research in order to understand and to repair ego damage and mental disorders. This is a thought-provoking book that helps us to think "outside the box" when we engage with our patients."--Charles Chong-Hwa Hong, psychiatrist, REM/dream researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland "J. Allan Hobson has written a lucid, thoughtful and compelling book about the mind. He reflects on his distinguished career as both a sleep researcher and clinical psychiatrist and how he has deftly integrated the two. He sees the human condition as the management of different states -- sleeping and waking, physical and mental, aminergic and cholinergic, individual and contextual. We weave together a sense of unity but pay a price for believing that unity is entirely real. He sees the challenge as managing the relationships among disparate states, using techniques such as hypnotic suggestion, so that state transitions are the asset they really are rather than a liability. We have been asleep at the switch. Hobson wakes us up."--David Spiegel, MD, Willson Professor & Associate Chair, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine About the Author J Allan Hobson