PSYCHIATRY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND THE NEW BIOLOGY OF MIND - PART 10 pot

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COMMENTARY
“GENES, BRAINS, AND
SELF-UNDERSTANDING”
John M. Oldham, M.D.
Kandel’s essay “Genes, Brains, and Self-Understanding: Biology’s Aspirations
for a New Humanism” is eloquent, integrative, and visionary. With charac-
teristic prescience, Kandel outlines the rapidly changing face and breathtak-
ing potential of the science and practice of medicine. Indeed, it takes only a
moment of reflection to envy the graduating medical students at Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons as they embarked upon their
careers, launched with this inspirational, scientifically derived prophecy.
The potential for the new knowledge of the human genome to move us
from a focus on populations at risk to the specific genetic vulnerabilities of
an individual is exciting and increasingly real, paving the way for renewed
and individualized emphasis on protective mechanisms and prevention.
However, how effective this new individualized information will be remains
unclear, and herein lies a fundamental challenge that, with all of our new
knowledge, we must not overlook. We already know from studies of clinical
populations, for example, that a healthy diet and regular exercise are protec-
tive factors for individuals at risk for coronary artery disease, or that careful
adherence to antihypertensives and minimization of stress are protective

against dangerous hypertensive episodes, or that major depressive disorder
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
is a serious medical condition that should be treated quickly (which is usu-
ally quite effective) when it occurs. And we know that countless numbers of
people who repeatedly receive this type of advice do not follow it. Human
behavior is, to understate it, complicated.
Kandel ranks at the very top of “the family of deep problems that con-
front the study of the mind,” the need to understand “the biology of con-
sciousness,” which is so clear and urgent that surely there is no controversy
here. But I would extend this challenge to emphasize the need to understand
the biology of the unconscious—to continue our efforts to understand what
motivates human behavior at all levels. We already know a great deal about
certain behaviors that are self-injurious, such as the molecular neurobiology
of addiction, but even so, addiction is a complex mix of biology and behav-
ior. We have every reason to expect that advances in our knowledge of ge-
netics will help us sort out those individuals at highest genetic risk for a
given type of addictive behavior—who may need our greatest attention—
from those who, with help, may have better odds to leave the addiction be-
hind. But what about patterns of self-injurious behavior that may go unrec-
ognized by the individual in question? For example, gambling to the brink
of bankruptcy while being the sole support of a loving family; being driven
by extreme, narcissistic personal ambition while leaving an unnoticed trail
of used and discarded co-workers behind; making repeated bad choices in
relationships without knowing why, leading to escalating frustration and be-
wilderment, or even, for those at risk, the emergence of severe depression.
Kandel’s three laws emphasize pleasures and obligations that are won-
derfully relevant to his listening audience of graduating students. There are,
however, many future visitors to the consulting room who have obligations
and burdens, yet little or no access to pleasure or relief—those illustrated

above who create and perpetuate their own unhappiness, and a large uni-
verse of others who may be at or near the poverty level, without education,
or ill equipped to keep their balance in tough parts of the world. It may well
be here, in the realm of negligible resources that the pleasures of a high-fat
meal trump the self-discipline of a healthy diet, especially if living longer
looks like prolonged misery.
So while science moves at warp speed and takes medicine to a new hu-
manism that is individualized, we must not forget to look for ways to help
each individual’s world become a better one. Otherwise, that stress-filled en-
vironment doubles right back to attack the health of the individual—the
very health that we’re trying hard to sustain and improve.
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CHAPTER 8
GENES, BRAINS, AND
SELF-UNDERSTANDING
Biology’s Aspirations for a New Humanism
Eric R. Kandel, M.D.
Revolution in Genomics
Members of the graduating class of the year 2001, relatives and friends of the
graduates, Dean Gerald Fischbach, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen: I am
extremely pleased to be asked to participate in the commencement today be-
cause it gives me the opportunity of celebrating the academic achievements
of this college and of this class. I owe this college an enormous personal and
scientific debt! I have found this medical school to be the very best place in
the world to do scientific research and I have benefited greatly from the in-
teractive and supportive environment engendered by the faculty and the stu-
dents of this school. In addition, throughout my 27 years on this faculty, I
have always enjoyed teaching medical students, including, of course, the
privilege of teaching the distinguished class we celebrate today. In fact, Prin-
ciples of Neuroscience, the textbook that your class has come to know and

love—which is now universally acknowledged to be the heaviest and most
expensive book of its kind—is based on the neural science course our fac-
This paper is a slightly modified version of the graduation address given on May 16,
2001, at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
ulty teaches here at this college, a course for which I was privileged to serve
as first course director.
So when I am asked to what do I aspire after receiving the Nobel Prize in
the year 2000, my answer is clear: to be selected, by the graduating class of
the year 2001, to give the convocation address at the College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Columbia University! What more meaningful and satisfying
recognition can one ever imagine?
For no celebration is more satisfying for this college or more inspiring to
the intellectual community throughout the world than an academic com-
mencement. For each commencement celebrates the entry into academic
ranks of another class of scholars. Since the task of a great university is not
to simply replicate its own image in scholarship but to create a new knowl-
edge, it is implicit in the charge to a faculty to develop scholars who are bet-
ter than we are, more knowledgeable, more thoughtful, more moral, finer
human beings.
Given that we think you are all of these things, what is there left to tell
you as you now progress from being our students to being our peers? What
are you likely to confront as you move into the next stage of your life? And,
in turn, what can we expect of you in that confrontation? Let me put these
questions, and your past 4 years in medical school, into a bit of historical
perspective.
The years you have spent in medical school—the remarkable 4 years that
spanned the transition from the twentieth century to the twenty-first cen-
tury—have produced both the elucidation of the human genome and an in-

creased understanding of the biology of the human brain. We have every
reason to expect that the revolution in genomics and in brain science will
radically change the way we practice medicine. And it will do so in two ways.
First, medicine will be transformed from a population-based to an individ-
ual-based medical science; it will become more focused on the individual
and his or her predisposition to health and disease. Second, we will, for the
first time, have a meaningful and nuanced biology of human mental pro-
cesses and human mental disorders. If we are fortunate, your generation will
help join these two intellectual streams—that of the human genome and that
of brain science—to realize biology’s aspiration for a new humanism, a hu-
manism based in part on insights into our biology. If we are successful in ad-
vancing this new humanistic agenda, the genomic revolution and the new
insights into the biological nature of mind will not only enhance medical
care but will also change fundamentally the way we view ourselves and one
another.
The influence of biology on the way informed people think about each
other and about the world in which they live is, of course, not new. In mod-
ern times, this influence first became evident in 1859 with Darwin’s insight
Genes, Brains, and Self-Understanding
377
into the evolution of species. Darwin first argued that human beings and
other animals evolved gradually from animal ancestors quite unlike them-
selves. He also emphasized the even more daring idea, that the driving force
for evolutionary change stems not from the heavens, not from a conscious
purpose, but from natural selection, a completely mechanistic, sorting pro-
cess based on hereditary variations.
This radical idea split the bond between religion and biology, a bond
based on the idea that an important function of biology was to explain divine
purpose—to account for the overall design of nature. Indeed, natural selec-
tion even caused difficulty for nonbelievers because it was vague as a scien-

tific idea.
To understand hereditary variations, scientists first needed to know: how
is information about biological structure passed from one generation to an-
other? This question was answered only in the first decades of the twentieth
century. We owe first to Gregor Mendel and then to Thomas Hunt Morgan
(of our own Columbia University) the remarkable discovery that hereditary
information necessary to specify the construction of the organism is passed
from one generation to the next by means of discrete biological structures
we now call genes. Forty years later, first Avery, McCarthy, and McCloud and
subsequently Watson and Crick gave us the seminal insight that the genes
of all living organisms are embodied in the physics and chemistry of a single
large molecule, DNA. Nature, in all its beauty and variety, results from vari-
ations in the sequence of bases in DNA.
In the 1960s and 1970s, our understanding of genes was further en-
hanced by the cracking of the genetic code, the three-letter alphabet
whereby the sequence of bases in DNA is translated into the amino acids of a
protein. This breakthrough was followed by DNA sequencing, which al-
lowed us to read directly the nucleotide sequences that form the instructions
of each gene. Creative application of these and other molecular insights
made possible genetic engineering and more recently the sequencing of the
human genome.
The current generation of physicians will be the first to reap the benefits
of the human genome and use its insights not only to provide better care to
patients—better diagnoses, better treatment—but, also, I would hope, more
individualized care, more individually tailored diagnoses, and more individ-
ualized treatment. Indeed, one would hope that this generation will move us
away from the impersonality of managed health care into a new, biologically
inspired personalized medicine.
What reason do we have to believe that this will come to pass? What will
we learn from the genome that might orient us more to see the patient as a

person rather than as a disease state? The genome of course provides us with
a periodic table of life. It contains the complete list and structure of all genes.
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
But it provides us not simply with an average-expectable genome. It provides
each of us with our own unique genome. In time, our genome will be a part of
our private medical record. As a result, we in academic medicine will collec-
tively have a catalog of all the human genetic variations that account for all
the heritable differences between individuals.
We now know that any two individuals share an amazing 99.9% DNA se-
quence similarity. This means that all the heritable differences among indi-
viduals of a species can be attributed to a mere 0.1% of the sequence. Most
differences between the genomes of any two individuals take the form of
very small changes, where one single base is substituted for another in the
sequence of nucleotides that form a gene. These changes are called single
base changes or single nucleotide polymorphisms.
We already know of about 3 million such polymorphisms, and more will
be identified with time. They are spread throughout the genome and at least
93% of all genes contain at least one such polymorphism. Thus, for the first
time, we will have for every gene all the polymorphic sequence variations
that exist. Many of these will prove unimportant, but some of them will be
fundamental to understanding disease.
These common, polymorphic variations differ fundamentally from the
rare mutations that lead invariably to inherited disease, and that have been
the focus of medical genetics up to now. The common polymorphisms that
we now will have full access to for the first time do not cause disease per se;
rather, they influence the expression of disease; they predict our predisposition
to, and our protection from, disease in all of its manifestations.
To give but one example, there are rare genetic mutations on chromo-
some 21 that invariably cause an early-onset form of Alzheimer’s disease in

the rare person who carries the mutation. By contrast, there is a fairly com-
mon polymorphism that does not produce Alzheimer’s disease directly. But
the 17% of the population that carry this single base change polymorphism
have a 10-times greater risk of developing a late onset form of Alzheimer’s
disease than those individuals who do not carry this polymorphism. Other
genetic polymorphisms similarly predispose people to various forms of dia-
betes, hypertension, cancer, and mental disorders. Indeed, every disease to
which we are prone—including our response to infection, to the conse-
quences of aging, and even our very longevity itself—will be shown to be in-
fluenced by polymorphisms in our genes. As a corollary, the polymorphisms
also will help reveal that complex diseases such as hypertension, depression,
and Alzheimer’s disease are likely not to be unitary but to be made up of a
number of different, intricately related subtypes, each requiring its own dis-
tinctive medical management.
What will knowledge of these predispositions and subtypes mean for the
practice of clinical medicine? This knowledge will serve to decrease the
Genes, Brains, and Self-Understanding
379
uncertainty in the management of disease. It is likely that clinical DNA
testing—the search for genetic polymorphisms in ourselves and in our pa-
tients—will reveal our individual risk for all major diseases and therefore al-
low us to intervene prophylactically in these diseases through diet, surgery,
exercise, or drugs, years before the disease becomes manifest. Indeed, ge-
netic polymorphisms will be found to underlie the way our patients respond
to these interventions, so that DNA testing will also allow us to predict indi-
vidual responses to drugs and to determine the degree to which individuals
are susceptible to particular side effects. This will allow the pharmaceutical
industry to develop new targets and new tools to sharpen the specificity of
the drugs they deliver to meet the needs of the individual patient.
This knowledge of the biological uniqueness of our patients will alter all as-

pects of medicine. Currently, newborn babies are only screened for treatable
genetic diseases, such as phenylketonuria. Perhaps in the not too distant fu-
ture, children at high risk for coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s, or multi-
ple sclerosis will be identified and treated to prevent changes occurring later
in life. For middle-aged and older people, you will be able to determine the
risk profiles for numerous late-onset diseases; ideally, people at risk will
know of their risk before the appearance of symptoms, so that their disease
might, at least, be partially prevented through medical intervention.
The Biological Basis of Uniqueness
This new emphasis on the biological basis of uniqueness, encouraged by the
human genome, brings me to my second point. Our uniqueness is reflected,
in its highest form, in the uniqueness of our mind, a uniqueness that
emerges from the uniqueness of our brain. Now that we understand natural
selection and the molecular basis of heredity, it has become clear that the last
great mystery that confronts biology is the nature of the human mind. This
is the ultimate challenge, not just for biology but for all of science. It is for
this reason that many of us believe that the biology of the mind will be for
the twenty-first century what the biology of the gene was for the twentieth
century.
The biology of mind represents the final step in the philosophical pro-
gression that began in 1859 with Darwin’s insights into evolution of bodily
form. Here, with the biology of mind, we are confronted with the even more
radical and profound realization that the mental processes of humans also
have evolved from animal ancestors and that the mind is not ethereal but can
be explained in terms of nerve cells and their interconnections.
One reason that people have difficulty altering their view of the mind is
that the science of the brain, like all experimental science, is at once mech-
anistic in thought and reductionist in method. We have become comfortable
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind

with the knowledge that the heart is not the seat of emotions but a muscular
organ that pumps blood through the circulation. Yet some of us still find it
difficult to accept that what we call mind is a set of functions carried out by
the brain, a computational organ made marvelously powerful not by its mys-
tery but by its complexity, by the enormous number, variety, and interactions
of its building blocks, its nerve cells. We find it difficult to accept that every
mental process, from our most public action to our most private thought, is
a reflection of biological processes in the brain.
With modern imaging and cell-biological studies of brain, we are now
beginning to understand aspects of both our public actions and our private
thoughts: we are beginning to understand how we perceive, act, feel, learn,
and remember. And the insights we so far have obtained are truly remark-
able! For example, these studies show that the brain does not simply
perceive the external world by replicating it, like a three-dimensional pho-
tograph. Rather, the brain reconstructs reality only after first analyzing it
into component parts. In scanning a visual scene, for example, the brain an-
alyzes the form of objects separately from their movement, and both sepa-
rately from the color of the objects, all before reconstituting the full image
again, according to the brain’s own rules. Thus, the belief that our percep-
tions are precise and direct is an illusion. We re-create in our brain the ex-
ternal world in which we live.
We now appreciate that simply to see—merely to look out into the world
to recognize a face or to enjoy a landscape—entails an amazing computa-
tional achievement on the part of the brain that no current computer can
even begin to approach. All of our perceptions and actions—seeing, hearing,
smelling, touching, or reaching for a glass of water—are analytic triumphs.
In addition to creating our perceptions and actions, our brain provides
us with a sense of awareness, it creates for us a historical record, a conscious-
ness not only of ourselves but of the world around us. Within the family of
deep problems that confront the study of mind, the biology of consciousness

must surely rank at the very top.
The brain can achieve consciousness of self, and can perform remarkable
computational feats because its many components, its nerve cells, are wired
together in very precise ways. Equally remarkable, we now know that the
connections between cells are not fixed but can be altered by experience, by
learning. The ability of experience to change connections in our brain means
that the brain of each person in this audience is slightly different from the
brain of every other person in this audience because of distinctive differ-
ences in our life history. Even identical twins, with identical genomes, will
have slightly different brains because they will invariably have been exposed
to somewhat different life histories.
Genes, Brains, and Self-Understanding
381
The Individuality of Mental Life
It is very likely that during your careers, brain imaging will succeed in resolv-
ing these unique differences of our brain. We will then have, for the first time,
a biological foundation for the individuality of our mental life. If that is so, we
will have a powerful new way of diagnosing behavioral disorders and evaluat-
ing the outcome of treatment including the outcome of psychotherapy.
Seen in this light, the biology of mind represents not only a scientific and
clinical goal of great promise but one of the ultimate aspirations of human-
istic scholarship. It is part of the continuous attempt of each generation of
scholars to understand human thought and human action in new terms.
Personalized Medicine
Your generation—the first postgenomic generation—will have adequate in-
formation from both the human genome and from brain sciences to explore,
more meaningfully than ever before, the genetic contribution to mental pro-
cesses. Indeed, we already know that not only psychiatric disorders but al-
most all long-standing patterns of behavior—from wearing bow ties to being
socially gregarious—show moderate to high degrees of heritability. The hu-

man genome will thus not only aid in revolutionizing psychiatry and neu-
rology, but it also will allow us a better understanding of normal behavior—
of how you and I function.
For example, the analysis of genetic polymorphisms may at last uncover
how genetic factors interact with the environment to encourage our various
intellectual capabilities, our mathematical and musical talents and perhaps
even our differing capabilities for creativity, for empathy, and for self-
understanding. Whatever the details, we can expect that the genome will re-
veal new links between genetics and environment that our society will even-
tually have to confront.
As these and other questions are addressed, biology and medicine will
help transform our society as they transform our understanding of the indi-
viduals in society. You will therefore be creating a world in which it is imper-
ative for each individual to have sufficient understanding of this new
knowledge so that we, as a society, can apply it wisely.
But like all knowledge, biological knowledge is a double-edged sword. It
can be used for ill as well as for good, for private profit as well as for public
benefit. In the hands of the misinformed or the malevolent, natural selection
was distorted into social Darwinism, genetics was corrupted into eugenics.
Brain sciences have also been, and can again be, misused for social control
and manipulation.
This brings me to one final point. We are entering a world that is being
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
changed because of advances in science and in technology and by the social
ramifications of these advances. It will be our obligation to reach out to under-
stand these advances, to evaluate them, to encourage some and restrict oth-
ers. By extension, beyond our own education, we will need to assume the
leadership roles for which you have been trained to ensure the scientific literacy
of the general public, especially the scientific literacy of the patients that you

will be treating.
Kandel’s Laws
Let me then conclude my comments about medicine’s aspirations for a new
humanism by enunciating three principles that I now, in my seniority, in-
voke with some frequency. These principles, which I believe reflect some of
my best thinking, are of such importance that I have come to refer to them,
in the modesty and privacy of my own study, as Kandel’s three laws.
Kandel’s first law states that belonging to a university community is one
of the deepest intellectual pleasures of one’s life. Universities are the institu-
tions that make society great. People from all over the world come to the
United States to study in our universities because the rest of the world sees
the American university as our most extraordinary national product. I will
go further and say that I fully believe there is nothing more important for our
society, and indeed for the world at large, than the two great missions of the
university: to produce new ideas and to train young people to assume re-
sponsible roles in their society.
Belonging to a university assures you that you will be a scholar in perpe-
tuity—one of the great sensual pleasures of life. Kandel’s first law, you will
appreciate, is not original. I want to remind you that the first medical school
convocation in the American colonies was held at the College of Physicians
and Surgeons, when this college conferred the first M.D. degree in the Amer-
icas, an honorary M.D., for his services to this college, to Samuel Bard, our
first professor of medicine. In his commencement address on May 16,
1769—232 years ago to the very day—Samuel Bard said:
Do not therefore imagine, that from this Time your Studies are to cease; so
far from it; you are to be considered as but just entering upon them; and un-
less your whole Lives, are one continued Series of Applications and Improve-
ment, you will fall short of your Duty…In a Profession then, like that you
have embraced, where the Object is of so great Importance as the Life of a
Man; you are accountable even for the Errors of Ignorance, unless you have

embraced every Opportunity of obtaining Knowledge.
Kandel’s second law is that within the university, teaching is a particu-
larly rewarding activity. There is no better way to assure yourself that you
Genes, Brains, and Self-Understanding
383
understand an issue than to try to explain it to others. Teaching will guaran-
tee that you understand the major scientific issues of your time. It will also
give you a perspective on how your thinking and your work fit in with the
rest of medicine.
Kandel’s third law is that patient care is beyond question our most im-
portant responsibility. That is why we are here. Never let patient care take a
secondary role to any other activity in your professional life. Patient welfare
is the ultimate goal of biological science and it is the engine that drives the
whole scientific enterprise. Here, I again want to recall for you Samuel Bard’s
comments of 1769:
In your Behavior to the Sick, remember always that your Patient is the Object
of the tenderest Affection to some one, or perhaps to many about him; it is
therefore your Duty, not only to endeavour to preserve his Life; but to avoid
wounding the Sensibility of a tender Parent, a distressed Wife, or an affec-
tionate Child. Let your Carriage be humane and attentive, be interested in his
Welfare, and shew your Apprehension of his Danger.
As I hope these three laws make clear, you should leave here confident
that the best days of medical care and the best days of your lives are ahead of
you. As a result of the training you have received at the College of Physicians
and Surgeons of Columbia University, we are confident that you will be able
to influence, through your knowledge and your actions, the emergence of a
new humanism, a humanism made more rational by a deeper respect for the
genome and a greater understanding of the human mind. You are entering
an exciting time in your lives and in the history of medicine, a time that will
afford you the opportunity to benefit your patients, your university, and your

society in novel, important, and humanizing ways. So enjoy the future, and
do it justice.
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AFTERWORD
Psychotherapy and the
Single Synapse Revisited
Where is psychiatry heading? What areas of psychiatry will benefit most
from biology in the years ahead?
Perhaps the most important and most anticipated advances will come
from the delineation of the genes that render people vulnerable to various
mental illnesses and the characterization of those genes in experimental an-
imals—in worms, flies, and mice. A second priority is the development of a
new neuropathology of mental illness, one based on knowledge of how spe-
cific molecules in specific regions of the brain make people vulnerable to
specific types of mental illness. A third priority is higher-resolution brain im-
aging technologies that will enable us to see anatomical changes in the
brains of mental patients before and after treatment.
Advances along these lines will put us in a position to pinpoint the ex-
periences that act on genetic and anatomical predispositions to disease. Un-
derstanding mental illness in genetic, anatomical, and experiential terms is
likely to open up new therapeutic approaches. In addition to better drugs,
we may expect better psychotherapies and better ways of selecting therapies
that are effective for specific types of patients. This last theme has interested
me for some time. In fact, the first essay in this volume, “Psychotherapy and
the Single Synapse,” makes the point that the effects of psychotherapy must
ultimately be explained empirically on the level of individual neurons and
their synapses, just as the effects of drugs are.
In view of our progress in the biological understanding of mental disor-
ders, we can now ask, Is the attempt to evaluate psychotherapy in biological

terms still a profitable endeavor? In the last three decades, we have devel-
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Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
oped drugs that are effective in the treatment of a variety of psychiatric dis-
orders: obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic
stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorders, and the positive symptoms of
schizophrenia. Yet our experience has also made it clear that drugs alone are
often not sufficient treatment. Some patients do better when psychotherapy
is combined with drugs, while other patients do reasonably well with psy-
chotherapy alone.
In her book An Unquiet Mind, Kay Jamison describes the benefits of both
modes of treatment. Lithium prevented her disastrous highs, kept her out of
the hospital, saved her life by preventing her from committing suicide, and
made psychotherapy possible. “But, ineffably,” she writes, “psychotherapy
heals. It makes some sense of the confusion, reins in the terrifying thoughts
and feelings, returns some control and hope and possibility of learning from
it all. Pills cannot, do not, ease one back into reality” (Jamison 1996, p. 89).
Psychotherapy has not only contributed to the treatment of mental ill-
ness it has provided us with a tool for examining the workings of the mind
by peeling back superficial layers of action and revealing the deeper motives.
Until quite recently, there were few independent, compelling ways to test
psychodynamic ideas or to evaluate the relative efficacy of one therapeutic
approach over another. However, neuroimaging may give us just that—a
method of revealing both mental dynamics and the workings of the living
brain. Had imaging been available in 1894, when Freud wrote “On a Scien-
tific Psychology,” he might well have directed psychoanalysis along very dif-
ferent lines, keeping it in close relationship with biology, as he outlined in
that essay. In this sense, combining brain imaging with psychotherapy rep-
resents top-down investigation of the mind, which continues the scientific
program that Freud originally conceived for psychoanalysis.

Indeed, one might say that clinical imaging is of even greater importance
to psychiatry than it is to neurology. One obstacle to understanding mental
illness has been the limitations posed by animal models. Most mental ill-
nesses affect functions that appear to be uniquely human—that is, language,
abstract thought, and complex social interactions. As a result, we cannot as
yet model a number of critical features of mental illness; these can only be
studied successfully in people. Psychotherapy presumably works by creating
an environment in which people learn to change. If those changes are main-
tained over time, it is reasonable to conclude that psychotherapy leads to
structural changes in the brain, just as other forms of learning do. Indeed,
we can already image people’s brains before and after therapy and thus see
the consequences of psychotherapeutic intervention in certain disorders.
Preliminary imaging studies have found that obsessive-compulsive dis-
order is associated with an increase in metabolism in the caudate nucleus.
Schwartz and his colleagues at the University of California in Los Angeles
Afterword
387
have described how the increased metabolism can be reversed by a form of
psychotherapy called exposure therapy as well as by selective serotonin up-
take inhibitors (Schwartz et al. 1996). Moreover, imaging studies of depres-
sion commonly show a decrease in basal activity in the dorsolateral region
of the prefrontal cortex and an increase in activity in the ventrolateral region.
Psychotherapy and drugs reverse aspects of these two abnormalities, but
here the different modes of treatment affect distinctly anatomical loci in the
brain ones (for a review, see Etkin et al. 2005).
Thus, we may now be able to describe with some rigor the metabolic
changes in the brain that result from drug therapy and those that result from
psychotherapy. Indeed, since a variety of psychotherapies are now in use, it
may be possible to distinguish among them on the basis of the changes they
produce in the brain. It may be that all effective psychotherapies work

through a common set of anatomical mechanisms. Alternatively, they may
achieve their goals through distinctly different processes. Effective psycho-
therapies may even have adverse side effects, as drugs do. Describing psy-
chotherapies in terms of empirical evidence could help maximize the safety
and effectiveness of these important treatments, much as has been done for
drugs. Empirical studies would also help predict the outcome of particular
types of therapeutic interventions and would direct patients to the therapies
most appropriate for them.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that a biological approach to psy-
chiatry will enable us to reach a deeper understanding of human behavior.
For instance, a number of experimental approaches can be used today to dis-
tinguish conscious from unconscious mental processes. These approaches
are not limited to the implicit unconscious; they can also explore the dy-
namic and the preconscious unconscious. One way of doing this is to com-
pare the brain activation patterns generated by unconscious and conscious
perceptual states (as with the perception of fear) and to identify the regions
of the brain that are recruited by each state.
Finally, biology can sharpen psychiatry’s dual contribution to modern
medicine: its ability to develop effective drug treatments based on neuro-
science and its ability to listen to and learn from patients. We need to com-
bine these two treatment modalities in ways that are at once objective and
effective. If we are successful in this undertaking, we will join radical reduc-
tionism, which drives biology, with the humanistic goal of understanding
the human mind, which drives psychiatry.
Thus, a half century after I left psychoanalysis because it was uncon-
cerned with biology, science has progressed to the point where we now have
a rudimentary biology of the mind. The goal for the next decade is twofold:
first, we need to determine how specific combinations of genes give rise to
altered brain anatomy that results in mental illness by increasing vulnerabil-
389

INDEX
Page numbers printed in boldface type refer to tables or figures.
Abel, Ted, 360, 361
Academic psychiatry, 33–38, 53
Acetylcholine (ACh), 163, 167, 177,
216, 217, 228, 229
binding sites for, 169
quantal release from presynaptic
terminal, 224
Acetylcholine receptor (AChR),
168–172, 180, 217
assembly of, 170–171
in invertebrates, 172
molecular biology of, 168–169
muscarinic, 171–172
on muscle fibers, 259
myasthenia gravis and
autoantibodies to, 170
nicotinic, 163, 170, 171, 174,
219
opening and closing of, 168
structure of, 169–170, 216
subunits of, 168–169
monoclonal antibodies to, 170
Acetylcholinesterase (AChE), 168, 177,
228
ACh. See Acetylcholine
AChE (acetylcholinesterase), 168, 177,
228
AChR. See Acetylcholine receptor

ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone),
83, 178, 179
Action potentials, 134–136, 137, 149,
167, 175, 189, 205, 210, 211–215,
224
Activation factor (AF), 351,
352
Addictive behavior, 374
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), 219
Adenylate cyclase, 136, 150, 189,
195
Adhesion molecules, neural, 183–184,
251–254
Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH),
83, 178, 179
Adrian, Edgar, 211, 212, 265
AF (activation factor), 351, 352
Agnihotri, N., 363
Agnosias, 271
Agoraphobia, 109, 111
Agranoff, Bernard, 359
Agrin, 259
Aguayo, Albert, 261
Alberini, Cristina, 352
Albright, Thomas, 203–317
Aldrich, Richard, 213
Allen, L. S., 90
Allman, John, 271
ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis),
238

Alzheimer’s disease, 2, 30, 47, 315
apolipoprotein E-4 in, 239–240
attention in, 302
genetic polymorphisms and risk of,
378
γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors,
216, 217, 219
Amnesia. See Memory loss
390
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
Amygdala
atrophy of, in Alzheimer’s disease,
239
in fear conditioning, 78, 79
β-Amyloid precursor protein (APP), in
Alzheimer’s disease, 239
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
238
Anderson, C. R., 168
Anderson, Richard, 296
Antibodies, monoclonal, 164,
166
to acetylcholine receptor subunits,
170
to block neurite outgrowth, 185
detection of molecular
heterogeneity with, 192–193
Antibody diversity, 188–189
Anticipatory anxiety. See Signal
(anticipatory) anxiety

Antidepressants, tricyclic, 107
for panic attacks, 120
Antidisciplines, 7–8
Antipsychotics, 2, 107
Anxiety
acquired, 119–120
actual (automatic), 119
adaptive, 110
animal models of, 109–110,
114–116, 121–124
Aplysia californica, 128–148
from birth trauma, 112
castration, 111
chronic, 109–110, 115, 119, 120,
121
altered gene expression in,
139–146, 142, 144
in Aplysia, 128, 129
as long-term sensitization,
123
molecular explanation for,
134–138, 137
molecular model of, 146–147
morphological correlates of,
138–139, 139, 140
shared molecular components
with anticipatory anxiety,
147–148, 149
vs. signal anxiety, 123–124
clinical syndromes of, 119–121

dyspnea and, 111
Freud’s concept of, 109, 111,
119–121, 130–131, 132
insecure attachment and, 80
learned, 114, 120, 122, 122–123
molecular genetic model for
maintenance of, 146–147
neurotic, 79
panic attacks, 109, 111, 112, 120
pathological, 110, 111
pharmacological treatment of, 120
separation, 81–82, 111 (See also
Separation response)
in rodents, 82, 83, 84
signal (anticipatory), 78–79,
109–110, 115, 118, 120–124
animal models of, 109–110,
114–116, 121–124, 128
in Aplysia, 128, 129
behaviorists’ vs. Freud’s views of,
131, 132
in biological adaptation, 123
vs. chronic anxiety, 123–124
learned, 120, 122, 122–123
molecular model for, 148–150
pharmacological treatment of,
120
shared molecular components
with chronic anxiety,
147–148, 149

as stimulus response, 120–121
stimulus substitution and, 130
stranger, 111
subjective nature of, 128
underlying mechanisms of,
throughout phylogeny, 124–
126
Anxiety disorders, 109–112, 114–116
behavioral treatments of, 3
clinical nosology of, 109
Index
391
heritability of, 111
neuroimaging in, 48
pharmacotherapy for, 61, 386
ApC/EBP (CAAT box enhancer binding
protein), 352
Aplysia californica, 1, 17–18, 18, 49,
110, 114–116, 124, 128–148
acetylcholine receptors in, 172
advantages of studies in, 343–345
anticipatory and chronic anxiety in,
128–148
conditioning of anticipatory
anxiety, 131–132, 133
experimental protocols for
conditioning and
sensitization, 128–130, 129,
130
molecular explanation for

chronic anxiety, 135–138,
137
molecular model for anticipatory
anxiety, 148–150
molecular model for
maintenance of anxiety,
146–147
morphological correlates of
chronic anxiety, 138–139,
139, 140
pattern of effects created by,
130–131
presynaptic facilitation and, 134,
135
responses of conditioned and
sensitized animals after
training, 129–130, 131
sensitization and, 133–134, 134,
344, 345–346
shared molecular components
of, 147–148, 149
gill-withdrawal reflex in
neural circuitry of, 346–347,
348
sensitization of, 129, 129–130,
133–134, 134, 140, 344,
345–346
molecular mechanisms of,
350, 351
learning and memory in, 195–196,

201–202, 230, 231, 232,
337–339, 343–347, 344
long-term potentiation in
hippocampus, 360
molecular biology of memory
storage, 347–353, 351
CREB-1 mediated
transcription, 352–353
inhibitory constraints, 353
phases of memory storage, 346
synapse specificity of long-term
facilitation, 353–356, 354
number of nerve cells in, 345
peptides in, 179
potassium channels in, 173
Apolipoprotein E-4, in Alzheimer’s
disease, 239–240
Apoptosis, 248
APP (β-amyloid precursor protein), in
Alzheimer’s disease, 239
Arachidonic acid metabolites, 223
Armstrong, Clay, 213, 221
Aromatic
L-amino acid decarboxylase,
176
ATP (adenosine triphosphate), 219
Attachment, 61, 67
anaclitic, 111
Bowlby’s theory of, 81–82
secure vs. insecure, 80

separation response and, 81–83
Attention, 29, 297, 298–304, 316
in Alzheimer’s disease, 302
brain networks concerned with,
301–304, 303
in explicit memory storage, 363
focal vs. ambient, 301, 314
in neglect syndrome, 302, 303
origins of modern study of,
298–299
selective, 298–299
visual areas biased by shift of,
299–301, 300
392
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
Attention deficit disorder, 313–314
Autism, 10, 30, 81
“Average expectable environment,” 8,
80
Axelrod, Julius, 108, 228
Axons, 206–207
growth and guidance of, 182–183,
249–251
chemoaffinity hypothesis of, 249
molecular era of, 251–255, 252
resonance hypothesis of, 249
regeneration of, 261
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 91
Bachrach, H. M., 98
Bacteriorhodopsin, 170–171, 194, 234

Baddeley, Alan, 86–87
Bailey, Craig, 138, 147, 352, 353
Barad, Mark, 360
Barbacid, Mariano, 247
Bard, Samuel, 382, 383
Barde, Yves, 247
Barlow, Horace, 274, 286, 288
Barondes, Sam, 359
Bartsch, Dusan, 352, 353
Bate, Michael, 250
Becker dystrophy, 237
Behavior, 27
addictive, 374
biology and, 118–119
definition of, 126
effect of brain lesions on, 40
gene effects on, 39, 44–46
modification of gene expression by,
39, 46–48
objective study of, 265–266
self-injurious, 374
sexual, 89
twin studies of, 44
visual guidance of, 295–297
voluntary control of, 309
Behavior therapy, 3
for obsessive-compulsive disorder,
52
Behaviorism, 55, 118, 126
Bennett, Michael, 218

Benzer, Seymour, 163
Benzodiazepines, 107
for anxiety, 120
Betz, Heinrich, 218
Biological basis of uniqueness,
379–380
Biological pluralism, 28
Bipolar disorder, 30, 96–97
inherited susceptibility to, 48
pharmacotherapy for, 38, 386
Bisexuality, 87
Bisiach, E., 306
Bleuler, Eugen, 34
Bliss, Tim, 232, 360, 363
β-Blockers, for anticipatory anxiety,
120
Boring, E. G., 66
Boston Process of Change Study
Group, 72, 93
Bourtchouladze, Rusiko, 360
Bowlby, John, 81, 111
Brain. See also specific brain structures
in Alzheimer’s disease, 239
assembly of neuronal circuits of,
180–186, 240–263
Broca’s regions of, 54–55, 204
Brodmann’s cytoarchitectonic map
of, 264
cell labeling techniques in study of,
264

cortical-striatal-thalamic system in
obsessive-compulsive disorder,
52
defining cell types in, 190–192
dorsal anterior cingulate cortex of
in cognition, 312
in executive control,
311–312
dynamic models of neural activity
in, 28–29
gene expression in, 28, 187
language region of, 55, 204
macromolecular complexity in,
186–193
Index
393
maintenance of learned alterations
in gene expression by
structural alterations in, 49–51,
51
memory regions of, 56, 70, 71, 83,
231
mental processes reflecting
functions of, 39, 40–43, 380
mRNA processing in, 187, 188
of musicians, 91–92, 92
networks concerned with attention,
301–304, 303
psychiatric disorders and
anatomical abnormalities of,

21–23, 47
psychotherapy-induced structural
changes in, 3, 60, 91–93, 387
sexual dimorphisms in, 89–90
somatosensory cortex of, 49–51, 51
ventral anterior cingulate cortex of,
in emotion, 312–313
Brain imaging, 28, 29, 39, 48, 61, 200,
205, 298, 299
in anxiety disorders, 48
in attention deficit disorder, 313
in depression, 48, 387
importance to psychiatry, 380, 381,
386
to monitor progress of
psychotherapy, 52
in obsessive-compulsive disorder,
48, 386–387
in schizophrenia, 48
of unconscious mental processes,
73
Bremner, J. D., 84
Brenner, C., 74
Brenner, Sidney, 163
Broadbent, Donald, 298–299, 301
Broca, Paul, 54–55, 204
Brodmann, Korbinian, 264
Brunelli, Marcello, 350
Buie, Dan, 36
Burns, B. Deslisle, 230

Byrne, John, 346, 350
C. (Caenorhabditis) elegans
axonal growth in, 251, 254
cadherins in, 253
cell death in, 248
cell lineage of, 181–182
neurogenesis in, 244
CAAT box enhancer binding protein
(ApC/EBP), 352
Cadherins, 253, 254, 257
Calcineurin, effects on memory
storage, 358, 363
Calcitonin, 188
Calcium channels, 158–159, 172–174
in anticipatory anxiety, 149–150
cAMP effects on, 350, 351
in chronic anxiety, 135
in habituation and sensitization, 18,
19, 21
ion selectivity of, 172
membrane topology of, 216, 219
in quantal neurotransmitter release
from presynaptic terminals,
224, 228
voltage-gated, 167, 175
cloning of, 218
Callaway, Edward, 291
Camardo, Joseph, 136, 350
cAMP (cyclic AMP), 19, 134, 136, 137,
144, 146–147, 149, 173, 223, 231,

349, 350, 351, 356, 357
cAMP response element-binding
protein-1 (CREB-1), 231–232,
351, 352–353, 357, 358, 360, 364
cAMP response element-binding
protein-2 (CREB-2), 231–232,
351, 353, 358
Campbell, Kevin, 237
Capecchi, Mario, 359
Carew, Thomas, 128, 345, 347
Carlsson, Arvid, 108
Casadio, Andrea, 353
Caspases, 248
Castellucci, V. F., 136, 346, 347, 350
Castration anxiety, 111
Cataracts, congenital, 11
394
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind
Catecholamines, 82
synthesis of, 176
Catterall, William, 218
Caudate nucleus, in obsessive-
compulsive disorder, 52
Causality, psychological, 78–79
Cedar, Howard, 349
Cell death, 245, 248
Cell lineage, 181–182
Cell theory, 206
Cerebral blood flow, 298, 302
priming and, 310, 311

cGMP (cyclic GMP), 223
Chandler, Knox, 213
Changeux, Jean-Pierre, 163, 217
Channelopathies, 239
Chemotransduction, 195
Chen, M., 138, 147, 352
Child abuse or neglect, 79
Child development
A. Freud’s studies of, 80
“average expectable environment”
and, 8, 80
critical period for, 80, 81
deprivation and, 1, 8–12
early experience and predisposition
to psychopathology, 79–86
emotional regulation and, 313
mother–infant interaction and,
80
psychoanalytic studies of, 64, 65
psychosexual, 87–88
social, 313
Chloride channels, 167, 172
Choline acetyltransferase, 177
Cingulate cortex
anterior, 314–315
dorsal, in cognition and
executive control,
311–312
ventral, in emotion, 312–313
in attention deficit disorder, 313–

314
in fear response, 79
in schizophrenia, 314
Classical conditioning, 74–75,
122–123, 125–126, 195–196.
See also Learning
in Aplysia, 129–130, 129–130
appetitive, 78, 123
aversive, 110, 122, 123
conditioned and unconditioned
stimuli in, 121–122
contiguity and contingency in,
125–126
delay conditioning, 76, 77
psychic determinism of, 75–78
strength of, 75
trace conditioning, 76–77, 77, 87
Clozapine, 2
Clyman, Robert, 72
Codons, 141
Cognition, 27
dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in,
312
emotion and, 313–314
Cognitive neuroscience, 55, 200
of memory, 55–56
psychoanalysis and, 64–65
Cognitive psychology, 38, 55, 117–118,
127, 204, 205
psychoanalysis and, 64–65

Cognitive science, 29, 30, 38
Cohen, Stanley, 247
Cole, Kenneth, 212, 213
Collingridge, Graham, 232
Conditioning
appetitive, 78, 123
associative, 74, 75, 110, 125–126
aversive, 110, 122, 123
in Aplysia, 129, 129–130
classical, 74–75, 122–123, 125–126,
195–196
defensive, 78
delay, 76, 77
fear, 78–79, 115–116
operant, 35
trace, 76–77, 77, 87
Conflicts, unconscious, 71
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, 89
Index
395
Consciousness, 29, 69, 297–315, 316,
387
awareness of sensory world and,
297
imagery, 297, 304–308
orienting of attention to sensory
stimuli, 297, 298–304
(See also Sensory attention)
future study of, 314–315
reductionist and holistic approaches

to, 297–298
subject aspect of, 316–317
vision and, 290
volition and, 297, 309–314
Cooke, Jonathan, 242
Cooper, Arnold M., 59–62, 95, 97–98
Coronary artery disease, 373
Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF),
179
in depression, 84–86
early life experience and expression
of gene for, 83
CREB-1 (cAMP response element-
binding protein-1), 231–232, 351,
352–353, 357, 358, 360, 364
CREB-2 (cAMP response element-
binding protein-2), 231–232, 351,
353, 358
CRF (corticotropin-releasing factor), 179
in depression, 84–86
early life experience and expression
of gene for, 83
Crick, Francis, 162, 163, 284, 290,
304, 377
Cultural evolution, 43
Curtis, Howard, 212
Cushing’s syndrome, 84
Cyclic AMP (cAMP), 19, 134, 136,
137, 144, 146–147, 149, 173, 223,
231, 349, 350, 351, 356, 357

Cyclic GMP (cGMP), 223
Cytoarchitectonics, 264
Dahl, Hartvig, 66
Dale, Henry, 212
Darwin, Charles, 44, 115, 120, 125,
196, 376–377, 379
Darwinism, social, 41, 381
Dash, Pramod, 352
Day, M., 36
DBH (dopamine β-hydroxylase),
176
De Camilli, Pietro, 226
Deafferentation, 293–294
Defensive conditioning, 78
Defensive mechanisms, 71
Deiters, Otto, 206, 207
del Castillo, Jose, 224
Delay conditioning, 76, 77
Delbrück, Max, 162
Dementia, 21, 47. See also Alzheimer’s
disease
Dendrites, 206–207, 356
Dennis, W., 10
Depolarization, 167
Depression, 34, 110, 315, 373–374
anaclitic, 9
early experiences and, 79, 84–86
as functional disorder, 21, 47
genetics of, 38, 141
hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis

in, 84
inherited vulnerability to, 79, 141
neuroimaging in, 48, 387
pharmacotherapy for, 38, 61, 386
Deprivation in infancy, 1, 8–12
Harlow’s monkey studies of, 10,
80–81
social responsiveness and, 9
Spitz’s studies of, 9–10, 80
visual, 1, 11–12, 13, 14, 16, 282
Descartes, René, 199, 201
Desimone, Robert, 299–301
Detwiler, Samuel, 245
Dexamethasone suppression, in
depression, 84
Diacylglycerol, 223
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders,
200
Dickinson, A., 124, 125