ABSTRACT
Following on from Freud's conceptions of psychical treatment, this is how Edelman, in his book Wider Than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness, describes certain phenomena that contribute to remodelling the brain. The power of language that can be expressed when certain conditions are met "produce such mental states and conditions in the patient as will be the most propitious for his recovery"; these conditions modify states of consciousness and "[do] away with the autocratic power of the patient's mind which, as we have seen, interferes so capriciously with the influence of the mind over the body". The author had spoken about that patient in the course of a symposium on autism in order to illustrate the concept of autistic enclaves and autistic barriers as they are sometimes found in the treatment of adult patients. Mirror neurons "were discovered in the ventral premotor cortex, an area of the prefrontal cortex involved in the preparation of a movement".
