Imagination and the Meaningful Brain

Intellectual commerce at the mind-brain interface has been blossoming for a decade. Arnold Modell's important contribution to consciousness studies forges together modern and classical views of mental organization with the results of neuroscience. In it the three inseparable aspects of mental states—phenomenological, functional, and physiological—are blended together seamlessly. His positions invite us to consider a patchwork of intriguing evidence emerging from modern neuroscience in a psychologically coherent manner, and they force us to think hard about how emotional values, meaning, and imagination arise from neural dynamics.

Jaak Panksepp, Distinguished Research Professor, Emeritus, Bowling Green State University

Modell argues convincingly that subjective experience provides an invaluable window onto the workings of the human brain. He also demonstrates the unexpected usefulness of psychoanalytical theories and methods in tackling some knotted problems of contemporary neuroscience.

Mark Solms, University College, London

The explanatory divide that separates psychiatry and neurology, to the extreme detriment of both, can only be bridged by theory, and the Freudian bridge is in disarray. Modell has created new theory, rooted in his lucid and accessible summaries and syntheses of recent works in psychoanalysis, neuropsychology, linguistics, and brain dynamics. His work will be equally valuable for clinicians, scientists, and lay readers.

Walter J. Freeman, Division of Neurobiology, University of California, Berkeley

A profound rumination on the perennial problem of how to understand other minds.

Jung-In Kwon

Journal of Consciousness Studies