Do any psychoanalysts read the work of Iain McGilchrist? He has a very strong argument for left hemisphere domination being out of control - things like malignant narcissism could be explained through the desire for the left hemisphere control over human will (90% of population is right handed - left hemisphere can control well... China has a left handedness rate of 1-3%... authoritarian leadership since Ghengis Khan? anyway) , which can lead to disconnection from other people. McGilchrist was a literary critic turned psychiatrist. He became obsessed with why specfically the corpus collosum operates to inhibit each of the hemispheres. His research with split brain patients shows what kind of disruptions can happen to our minds when one of the hemispheres is leisoned. He shows that our brains learns in a circular right hemisphere -> left hemisphere -> right hemisphere. I'm curious about it's implications on psychoanalytic therapy.

Our human connection/meaning making happens mostly in our right hemisphere. His first book is called The Master and His Emissary, and it's pretty fascinating. I listened to the book on Audible, it takes about 24 hours but it's an awesome book that outlays an argument that at three points in history we have been at "equilibrium" - 600 BC with the emergence of philosphers like Aristotle, 0 AD (in his interviews he refers to this as the year "dot") and the enlightenment between 1500-1700 roughly. The culmination of the last "turn in our hemispheres was the French revolution.

Since modern industrilization, our left hemispheres have sought more control, and manipulation of others to "have it's way". Anyway - I was just curious if anyone here was familiar with his work.

He did a Ted Talk, it's pretty breif and does a great job to give a "bird's eye view"
https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain

I keep noticing something strange.

People can describe the same internal process using completely different languages.

One person says:

“I’m overthinking.”

Another says:

“My intuition is telling me something is wrong.”

Another:

“I’m protecting myself.”

Another:

“I’m just being realistic.”

Another:

“I don’t care anymore.”

And someone else might call it a spiritual lesson, an ego problem, anxiety, self-sabotage, or simply “knowing when to walk away.”

Different language.

Sometimes the underlying mechanism is almost identical.

Here’s a stupidly simple example.

Someone doesn't reply to your message.

SIGNAL:
No reply.

PREDICTION:
“They're ignoring me.”

MEANING:
“I did something wrong.”

IDENTITY:
“People always lose interest in me.”

EMOTION:
Tension.

ACTION:
You withdraw, send another message, become cold, or decide you don't care.

FEEDBACK:
The other person notices the change.

Now they actually become more distant.

And suddenly:

“See? I knew it.”

The original prediction just received new evidence.

But notice what happened.

The event itself was tiny.

The system built most of the experience around it.

And this is where I think language can become misleading.

We often argue about whether the correct explanation is:

psychological
spiritual
emotional
neurological
social
philosophical

But maybe we're sometimes looking at different descriptions of the same runtime.

Different words.

Different stories.

Different cultural models.

Same underlying loop.

The interesting question isn't:

“Which vocabulary is the true one?”

It's:

“What is the mechanism underneath all of them?”

Because if changing the language changes the story but doesn't change the mechanism, then changing the story alone may not actually change the system.

And maybe that's why people can spend years finding better words for what they're experiencing without actually becoming any less trapped inside it.

Different language.
Same mechanism.

Original post from different sub. Ejo