Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Adolescent Development

Book excerpt: Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Adolescent Development: Non-Linear Perspectives on the Regulation of the Self explores how psychoanalysis can combine its theoretical perspectives with more recent discoveries about neurological and non-linear developmental processes that unfold during the period of puberty to young adulthood, to help inform understanding of contemporary adolescent behaviours and mental health issues. With the powerful impact of neuroscience research findings, opportunities emerge to create a new paradigm to attempt to organize specific psychoanalytic theories. Neurobiological regulation offers such an opportunity. By combining elements of domains of compatible knowledge into a flexible explanatory synergy, the potential for an intellectually satisfying theoretical framework can be created. In this work, Harold Bendicsen formulates a multi-disciplinary theoretical approach involving current research and drawing on neuroscience to consider the behaviour regulation processes of the mind/brain and the capacities and potential it brings to understanding the development of adolescents and young adults. Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Adolescent Development advances Bendicsen’s study of adolescence and the transition to young adulthood, begun in The Transformational Self. It will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, as well as psychologists, clinical social workers, psychiatrists and counsellors.