Why you should listen
Yoram Yovell, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst. More importantly, he is the proud father of five adorable, lovable, impossible children. From as far back as he can remember, he was intrigued by the mystery of how our ephemeral inner worlds — our feelings, thoughts, memories and dreams, are connected to our physical brains. Bluntly speaking, the human brain is a piece of tissue. It is made of the same stuff as our lungs, kidneys and muscles. But it is the undisputed seat of our consciousness, our personalities and our neuroses. What goes on in our brains has a direct, inescapable effect on what goes on in our minds. We drink some alcohol, it reaches the brain, and at once we are less shy, more relaxed and more impulsive. We literally feel different. How could that be?Hoping to get a better grip on this age-old riddle, Yovell studied medicine and neurobiology and became a psychiatrist. It was then, in the face of the immense suffering of his depressed and suicidal patients, that his interest in the mind-brain problem became more focused: How can we use our emerging understanding of the brain to relieve mental suffering? Mental pain, which is all too familiar to all of us, became the focus of his research. Together with like-minded colleagues in the emerging field of neuropsychoanalysis, Yovell is trying to build bridges between two seemingly remote, yet intimately connected realms: the inner world and subjective experiences that constitute who we are and what we feel, and the workings of the human brain in health and in illness. The goal remains the same: to decrease human suffering and to promote human happiness.
