The neural circuits activated in a person carrying out actions, expressing emotions, and experiencing sensations are activated also, automatically via a mirror neuron system, in the observer of those actions, emotions, and sensations. It is proposed that this finding of shared activation suggests a functional mechanism of "embodied simulation" that consists of the automatic, unconscious, and noninferential simulation in the observer of actions, emotions, and sensations carried out and experienced by the observed. It is proposed also that the shared neural activation pattern and the accompanying embodied simulation constitute a fundamental biological basis for understanding another's mind. The implications of this perspective for psychoanalysis are discussed, particularly regarding unconscious communication, projective identification, attunement, empathy, autism, therapeutic action, and transference-countertransference interactions.
This study examines the ways in which therapists function as attachment figures for patients. Patients in long-term psychoanalytic therapy answered questionnaires about their feelings about their therapists and their closest personal relationships. Components of attachment prominent in the therapeutic relationships were looking up to the therapist and feeling the therapist was responsive to emotional needs. Stronger attachment to therapists was associated with greater frequency and duration of therapy, a stronger working alliance, and greater security of the patients' attachment style, as well as with the gender of the patient and therapist. Using attachment theory to understand psychoanalytic relationships emphasizes the unique importance of a therapist to a patient and can offer new perspectives on both therapeutic and attachment processes.There seems to be an increasing consensus that therapeutic change is based not only on cognitive factors such as awareness and insight, but also on the nature of the relationship between patient and therapist. And at least since Freud's (1912Freud's ( /1963aFreud's ( , 1905Freud's ( /1963bFreud's ( , 1915Freud's ( / 1963c writings on the concept of transference, there has been wide recognition that patients in psychotherapy often experience strong feelings toward their therapists. One useful way of understanding the therapeutic relationship when it works well is that the therapist, at least in certain respects, serves as an attachment figure, as a "secure base" from which the patient can explore his or her inner world (Bowlby, 1988). Although understanding the therapeutic relationship in this way makes a good deal of intuitive sense, there has been little empirical research on the therapist as an attachment figure.
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