ABSTRACT
Brain laterality research on hemispheric asymmetry is now experiencing a resurgence in neuroscience. This rapidly expanding field is describing the functional and structural differences between the left and right brains and thereby between a conscious “left mind” and an unconscious “right mind.” My own model of hemispheric asymmetry, first articulated in 1994, continues to articulate how the right brain is centrally involved in not only the intrapsychic unconscious processing and self-regulation of emotions and social information but also in the interpersonal communication and interactive regulation of emotion by a right brain relational unconscious, via right brain-to-right brain nonverbal communications of face, voice, and gesture. In this work, I describe the implications of recent discoveries of the right brain for both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis. I suggest that the expanding connections between psychoanalysis and neuroscience can generate innovative future directions for the field.
