| This study explores the relational psychoanalytic concepts of projective identification, dissociated self-states, relational conflict and recognition in the context of mirror neuron research. The construct of a relational synapse, the physical and experiential space in-between two people when they engage each other in relationship, is offered as a way of conceptualizing how the brain and the mind interact in the context of relationship to create the individual and relational experience that builds both brain and psychic structure. These themes are explored using a complex adaptive systems perspective that highlights the emergent, co-created nature of what happens in the relational synapse. This study seeks to understand how these emergent phenomena are then folded back into each individual on a synaptic and experiential level, becoming both cause and consequence of further communication in ways that can move interpersonal and intrapsychic experience towards complexity and flexibility or rigidity and chaos. |
