*Brockman, R. Safety from the Paris Morgue to Oxytocin. Psychodynamic Psychiatry. 50(3).
The paper examines the concept of “safety” as Freud first developed it in his pre-analytic publications, its transformation in psychoanalysis, and the current neuroscientific understanding.
*Brockman, R. “How does a child survive?” Psychodynamic Psychiatry. 50(1).
The paper reviews the biologic and psychologic dependence of a developing child and her caregivers by addressing the question posed in the work of Maurice Sendak, “How does a child survive?”
*Brockman, R. “Transference and neurobiology.” Psychodynamic Psychiatry 50(1)
The paper argues that the transference phenomenon is the most important - and perhaps the only - aspect of psychoanalysis that has scientific validity.
2019
*Brockman, R. Daemons, Ghosts, Lovers. Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
The paper argues that those ‘half-tamed daemons that inhabit the human breast’ are not evil and feared as Freud described, but rather loved. Daemons don’t get to inhabit the human breast without having once been loved – and lost.
2018
*Brockman, R. Neurobiology and psychoanalysis – a disclosure. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. November 6, 2018
The paper explores Freud’s development before and after 1897 and argues that after that date Freudian psychoanalysis was a dualistic system founded on clinical hypotheses. Before that date, Freud’s work had attempted to unify psychology, neurology, and biology based on the data of clinical observation. This fundamental shift after 1897 is why Freudian psychoanalysis often fails to pose valid questions for neuroscience to consider.
2017
*Brockman, R. The neurobiology of a new idea. Journal of Mental Disorders vol3(1)1-4.
The paper looks at the ‘compulsion to repeat’ and especially the compulsion to repeat ‘unpleasure’ from the perspective of neurobiology. In one sense it is a fresh look at Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, arguing that the “repetition compulsion” has more to do with pathology in the dorsal striatum than it does with the “will to mastery.” Examples are given from the research laboratory as well as from clinical practice.
*Brockman, R. Evolution, shame, and psychotherapy. Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Vol 45(4):588- 597
The paper uses Euripides’ Medea as a ‘case study’ of shame – the argument is that shame is an emotion that is rapid in onset, thus difficult to anticipate, and hard to treat. The evolution and neurobiology of shame are explored, including how evolution ‘borrowed’ the pathways of pain to transmit shame thus explaining some of the explosive, painful qualities of shame. Because shame is predominantly sub-neocortical in its neurobiology, words often fail to articulate shame and are of little use to soothe it – thus requiring other less traditional approaches to healing.
2013
*Brockman, R: Only stories matter: the psychology and neurobiology of story. American Imago 70(3):445-460.
The paper looks at story – from an evolutionary, neurobiologic, and psychological perspective. I make the argument that the structure of story is not just a characteristic of the human brain. But rather that story, in a broader less symbolic sense of the word, is central to the mammalian brain. The sense of self is derived from story and thus the ability to ‘own’ one’s story is an important aspect of well-being and thus an important aspect of psychotherapy - how story is shaped and how story can fall apart.
2012
*Brockman, R: Trauma and identity: a psychological autopsy. American Imago 2012 69(2):265-75.
The paper looks at attachment theory and the threat to attachment – that is to say loss – as experienced by a seven year old boy. In addition to attachment and loss, the paper examines the relationship of trauma and loss – and implicitly the relationship of trauma and recovery.
2011
*Brockman, R: Aspects of Psychodynamic Neuropsychiatry 2: Psychic locality and biological ground. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis andDynamic Psychiatry 2011 39(2):285-311
The paper explores the formulation and treatment of a young woman with “borderline personality disorder” – that is to say of a young ‘untreatable’ patient who was referred with ‘borderline personality disorder’. The paper explores my reformulation of the diagnosis from borderline personality disorder to childhood trauma and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, the probable neurobiology driving the woman’s behavior, and the therapeutic interventions taken in order to reestablish her sense of safety, self, autonomy.
*Brockman, R: Five books – more or less. Bulletin of Psychoanalytic Medicine 2011;46:65-70
Five books that had a great impact on me – on my identity, on my choice of careers (as a doctor, writer, and playwright), on my story.
*Brockman, R: Aspects of Psychodynamic Neuropsychiatry 3: Magic spells, the placebo effect, and neurobiology. Journal of the American Academy ofPsychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 2011 39(3):563-572
A rather primitive patient whom I had been treating for many years, one day presented and demanded that I cast a spell on her. I initially refused. She returned the following week. Her symptoms had markedly deteriorated. She again demanded that I cast a spell. After some thought, I relented and ‘cast a spell’ (I used the only spell I knew – a modification of the Hippocratic oath). She left the office much improved. The improvement endured. The paper examines the neurobiology of the ‘placebo’ effect – and why the common understanding of ‘placebo’ undermines just how powerful and real the placebo effect really is.
*Brockman, R: Aspects of Psychodynamic Neuropsychiatry 4: Love, ripe fruit, and other addictions. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis andDynamic Psychiatry 2011.
I had thought that “love sick” was a more or less benign state of affairs, especially during adolescence. While it might be that, it can also be a very powerful, neurobiologic illness that can have serious, sometimes fatal consequences. The paper explores the history, neurobiology and clinical manifestations of love sickness – and why it is best understood as an addiction.
2010
*Brockman, R: Freud, Frankenstein and the art of loss. Psychoanalytic Review 2010;97(5):819-833
In the second edition of her then already famous Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley felt compelled to answer her readers’ queries as to how "a young girl, came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea." I read the author’s introduction with increased interest when I discovered that it contained many lies. I was driven to write this paper so as to answer - why had Mary Shelley lied? And the answer I concluded was that she had lied to protect her traumatic “discovery” of her mother (who had died 11 days after giving birth to Mary), and further that she had lied to protect herself from fully recognizing just how much she, Mary Shelley had identified with the short and passionate life her mother had lived, loved, and lost.
*Brockman, R: Aspects of Psychodynamic Neuropsychiatry 1: Episodic memory, transference and the oddball paradigm. Journal of the American Academy ofPsychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 2010; 38(4):693-710
The paper explores the neurobiology of ‘focus’ – how the mammalian brain can hone in on one idea, one sensation, one goal – and remain more or less fixated on that one thing - until something happens to ‘break’ the focus. I applied this neurobiological frame to transference – and how it might be necessary to break the ‘focus’ of transference in order to enable a change in perception.
2008
*Brockman, R: The slippery slope – touch in dynamic psychiatry. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 2008; 36(3):127-136
The paper is a reexamination of touch – how touch became a psychiatric, and especially a psychoanalytic, taboo. And like all rules, there are times when the rule not to touch can, and should, be broken. This paper explores one such time.
2007
*Brockman, R: Freud, Darwin, and the holding environment. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 2007; 35(1)127-136
Psychoanalytic theory began with Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis. The paper argues that such a beginning was unfortunate. Freud was well aware of Darwin’s work. Several of Darwin’s books – including Origin of Species and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, were in Freud’s library annotated by Freud. The paper argues that psychoanalysis should have had, and still can find its bedrock first in Darwin, and then secondarily in Freud.
2006
*Brockman, R: Theft. Ars Medica 2006; 3:16-24
The paper explores the motivations of a boy who steals. He steals because he senses impending loss, so the ‘theft’ is in part unconscious premonition, in part unconscious repair.
2005
*Brockman, R: The melting pot. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2005; 2(3):292-296
The immigrant experience has a great deal to do with the attempt to ‘re-find’ who one is, to re-find (and or re-make) one’s self after the bonds to the group left behind have been broken. The vulnerability of the journey itself – after bonds to “homeland” have been broken, before bonds to the “new land” have formed – is a vulnerable time when group identity is mostly a memory with no certain promise of rebirth or return.
2003
*Brockman, R: Freud, Hitler, and National Socialism. Psychoanalytic Review 2003; 90(5):709-722
When Freud wrote his book on group psychology he devoted a chapter to Gustave Le Bon’s 1895 book, The Crowd. He then proceeded to explain why Le Bon’s data on crowds failed to explain group behavior while his own psychoanalytic theory succeeded. There is good evidence that Hitler also read Le Bon’s work, and then used what he had learned in crafting his speeches. I argue that part of the reason that Freud was so confident that what was happening in Berlin would never happen in Vienna, had to do with the misplaced confidence Freud had in his own theories. Freud only agreed to abandon Vienna for London after the Gestapo had seized his daughter, Anna, for questioning. His sisters were not so fortunate and died in Nazi death camps.
*Brockman, R: The view from Babel. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2003; 5(4):212-220
Stories are meant to communicate. Words are meant to communicate. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes silence is the best way to make oneself heard. Psychotherapy is often about the words. But it can also be about the silence.
*Brockman, R: Hypothesis and data. Bulletin of Psychoanalytic Medicine 2003; 38(3):17-21
The incorporation of neurobiologic data into psychoanalysis should not be seen as a threat to psychoanalysis. Rather neurobiology should be welcomed into psychoanalysis as a science that can bring data to strengthen, or dispel, theory.
The paper makes the argument that object relations theory fails to explain the etiology of borderline personality disorder in part because it uses one theory to explain another. The paper then turns to the neurobiology of attachment as a way to bring biologic data to the theories used to define and describe “borderline personality disorder.”
*Brockman, R: A season of Holocaust Theater. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2002; 4(1):119-126
In discussing how one lives in a group without being its prisoner, Freud wrote, “The myth is the step by which the individual emerges from group psychology. The poet sets himself free…in his imagination.” Freud saw that the group could be a prison from which creativity could be an escape. The paper discusses freedom in the context of four plays dealing with the Holocaust, the group, and creative escape.
*Brockman, R: Recent film and theater of the Holocaust. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2002; 4(1):117-118
The paper is about finding meaning – and the argument that one must find meaning no matter what. Even in the basest and darkest times, creativity must endure. Even if it means turning away, one must see. There is creativity to be found in the Holocaust just as there is creativity to be found in Hell.
*Brockman, R: Troubled Sleep. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Study 2002; 4(3):371-376
The paper explores how hard it can sometimes be to understand another’s ideas. But it is critical to try to understand, even to empathize if necessary with one whose ideas and/or actions one disagrees - or even hates. One may thereby lose sleep. But sometimes the loss of sleep is the price one must pay for understanding.
An individual can maintain his/her fight, flight response for just so long. If it is maintained beyond that point, the individual begins to suffer. Can the same be said of a society? Is there a societal danger to being “on high alert” for too long? Staying in that state for too long can lead a society from healthy, alert patriotism to “patriotic” paranoia.
2001
*Brockman, R: Oedipus at Cortland. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2001; 3(2):161-166
“The old man’s death has affected me deeply….” Freud wrote to Fliess 11/2/1896 – shortly after the death of his, Freud’s, father. This paper explores the relationship of a father and his son as the father lies dying. It deals with the power of loss and the power of a bond – and why Freud’s comment about his father’s death stirs so deep and so true.
*Brockman, R: Toward a neurobiology of the unconscious. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 2001; 29(4):603-617
The paper argues that change can be initiated and effected in multiple interacting systems of the central nervous system. Declarative memory is only one of those systems. For psychotherapy to be fully effective, it must recognize those multiple systems. The paper gives examples of how one might deal with different levels of biological memory, leading to different pathways to change.
2000
*Brockman, R: Possession and medicine in South Central India. Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 2000; 2(3):299-312
The belief in possession is widespread throughout India as is the practice of exorcism. In my research and travel in India, I was surprised to discover that possession is more than just an explanatory system based on superstition and folklore. It is also part of an important social structure that allows the integration of the sick into the community of the well, and facilitates a first tentative step from the local community to the medical health care system.
*Brockman, R: Transference, affect, and neurobiology. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 2000; 28(2):275-288
The paper proposes that there are ways to make rough predictions about what part of the brain one might be “addressing” in the transference based on the responses to one’s interventions. With this tentative understanding, one can decide how and at what level to best focus one’s interventions.
*Brockman, R: Instincts and their physiologies – a clinician’s perspective. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis 2000; 28(3):501-512
The paper explores the nature of curiosity and what it means to examine the ‘unknown.’ Because of the power of transference, psychotherapy recreates aspects of the past. State dependent memory generates a corresponding affect and neurobiology. In order for new learning to occur, psychotherapy must make affect and the corresponding neurobiology safe enough for real curiosity and new learning to occur.
1990
*Brockman, R: Medication and transference in the psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy of the borderline patient. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 1990; 13(2)287-295
The paper explores transference and its impact on the therapeutic alliance and its effect on medication management.
CASE REPORT
1980
Yudofsky S, Ahern G, Brockman, R: Agitation, disorientation, and hallucinations in patients on cimetidine. General Hospital Psychiatry 1980; 2(3):233-236
This was a first case report of psychotic reactions to cimetidine.
BOOKS
2023
*Brockman, R: Life after Death: surviving suicide. When I was 7 years, 2 months and 2 days old my mother hung herself in the basement of our home in Brooklyn. This is the story – told as the narrative and the neurobiological study of a journey that is mine as a result of her suicide. It will be published in August 2023 by Arcade Publishing a subsidiary of Skyhorse/Simon & Schuster.
1998
*Brockman, R: A Map of the Mind: toward a science of psychotherapy. Psychosocial Press/International Universities Press, Madison Connecticut, 1998.
I wrote this book over several years. It was one of the first if not the first book that presented a comprehensive neurobiologic framework for the practice and understanding of psychotherapy. It was reviewed widely.
REVIEWS
2004
*Brockman, R: The Neurobiology of psychotherapy. American Journal of Psychiatry 2004; 161(2):379-380
1988
*Brockman, R: Masochism, current psychoanalytic perspectives. Bulletin of Psychoanalytic Medicine
1986
*Brockman, R: Ulysses: minor voices, inner lives. Bulletin of Psychoanalytic Medicine
1985
*Brockman, R: Narcissistic personality disorder in childhood. Bulletin of Psychoanalytic Medicine
INVITED LECTURER, VISITING PROFESSOR, GRAND ROUNDS PRESENTATION
2023
*American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting. San Francisco, California, Plenary Speaker, The Neurobiology of Tribalism, Group Formation, Racism, May 2023.
*Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, The Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience, March 2023.
2022
*Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York, The neurobiology of resilience, April 2022.
2021
*OPIFER – Organization of Italian psychoanalysts, Florence, Italy, The concept of ‘safety’ in psychotherapy, October 2021.
*Presidential Lecture, American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, The biology of ‘safety’ and psychotherapy, May 2021.
2020
*World Association for Dynamic Psychiatry, Berlin, Germany, Shame, murder and suicide as ‘self’-defense, March 2020.
*University of Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Aggression: clinical, neurobiologic and evolutionary perspectives, March 2020.
*American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry, Annual Meeting, Attachment: a clinical and neurobiologic integration. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 2020.
*American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, “Lake Effect” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the ‘horrors’ of love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 2020.
*Neuropsychoanalysis, Annual Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Shame: a clinical and biological integration, July 2020.
2019
*American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, San Francisco, California, Neurobiology and psychoanalysis, May 2019.
*OPIFER – Organization of Italian psychoanalysts, Florence, Italy, The clinical presentation of shame, September 2019.
*University of Addis Ababa School of Medicine, Addis Ababa, Visiting Professor, October, 2019.
I was visiting professor at the Medical School, with the purpose of teaching in their residency program in psychiatry but also of learning first hand from this program that initiated a collaborative program with the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto School of Medicine in 2002. Two faculty members and one senior resident were in residence in Addis Ababa for one month, every three months. The program was overseen by a resident faculty member from the University of Toronto as well as by senior faculty from the University of Addis Ababa, School of Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry.
2018
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, New York, Freud and the neurobiology of trauma: Freud’s neurological theories and our contemporary understanding of intrapsychic trauma.
2017
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, San Diego, California, The organization and disorganization of the self, An exploration of the relation between affect and sense of self.
*International Psychoanalytic Association, Annual Meeting, Buenos Aires, Argentina, The Neurobiology of Intimate Attachment.
2016
*OPIFER – Organization of Italian psychoanalysts, Florence, Italy – “Evolution Shame and Psychotherapy,” A presentation dealing with the neurobiology and unpredictable power of shame.
2015
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry Annual Meeting, Toronto Canada, “Othello – a case report.”
Beyond jealousy, I argue that Othello’s breakdown had also to do with his loss of place in the group, his loss of his sense of belonging once he “lost” his wife Desdamona. The presentation addresses the neurobiology, as well as the psychology, of impulsive violence.
2014
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, Annual Meeting, The neurobiology of a new idea – an examination of the repetition compulsion from the perspective of neurobiology.
*American Association of Directors of Residency Training, Orlando, Florida, Psychotherapy outside the box – the use of the cell phone, emails and the issue of availability outside normal office hours.
2013
*American Psychiatric Association, Annual Meeting, The groundwork for unconventional therapy with the “untreatable” patient.
*The Neuropsychoanalysis Association, Cape Town, South Africa, Only Story Matters – the centrality of story in identity and therefore its importance in psychotherapy.
2012
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, Annual Meeting, A psychological autopsy – an examination of trauma and loss from the perspective of a 7 year old boy.
*Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, Only Story Matters.
2011
*OPIFER – Organization of Italian Psychoanalysts, A psychological autopsy.
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry, Annual Meeting. The Oddball paradigm and doing the unexpected – challenging the transference based on a theory from neurobiology.
2008
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Annual Meeting. Touch and psychotherapy – its history, its use, abuse, taboo and its place.
2006
*Mt. Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada, Grand Rounds, Theft, Presentation of a story of a boy who stole because he sensed loss.
2003
*New York State Psychiatric Institute, Grand Rounds, Freud, Hitler and National Socialism – the sociological, political and psychoanalytic understanding of group dynamics - prior to the Anschluss.
2002
*American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Annual Meeting, The presentation addresses “borderline personality disorder” and makes the argument that the phenomenological definition is too broad and should be put aside pending more precise –perhaps neurobiological - frameworks for this collection of many disorders.
2000
*Mt. Sinai Medical Center at the University of Toronto, Canada, Grand Rounds, Transference, affect and neurobiology – new approaches to psychodynamic formulation.
*American Psychiatric Association, Annual Meeting, A Map of the Mind – a view towards a neurobiology of psychotherapy.
