Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relations

The neural circuits activated in a person carrying out actions, expressing emotions, and experiencing sensations are activated also, automatically via a mirror neuron system, in the observer of those actions, emotions, and sensations. It is proposed that this finding of shared activation suggests a functional mechanism of “embodied simulation ” that consists of the automatic, unconscious, and noninferential simulation in the observer of actions, emotions, and sensations carried out and experienced by the observed. It is proposed also that the shared neural activation pattern and the accompanying embodied simulation constitute a fundamental biological basis for understanding another’s mind. The implications of this perspective for psychoanalysis are discussed, particularly regarding unconscious communication, projective identification, attunement, empathy, autism, therapeutic action, and transference-countertransference interactions. From the Project on, Freud (1895) had an abiding interest in understanding the biological foundations of the psychological processes and phenomena with which psychoanalysis is concerned. Given the limited state of knowledge and technologies at the time, the Project could not be carried very far. Advances in knowledge and technology in recent years, however, have led to a resumption of the aims of th

Archetypes, symbols and the apprehension of meaning

C.G. Jung proposed that archetypal symbols carry implicit meanings. We therefore hypothesised that symbol cueing facilitates memory and subsequent recall of meaning words associated with symbols. In the present study, participants either freely generated, or selected from a list, one meaning word for each of 30 symbols presented on screen. As expected, results showed little evidence of conscious knowledge of meaning words. Upon presentation of two sets of symbols and meaning words (15 pairs matched; 15 pairs mismatched), words from the matched-pairs set were correctly recalled significantly more often than words from the mismatched-pairs set. Our findings were considered from a cognitive and clinical perspective.Sally Bradshaw and Lance Stor