Click here to read “Healing a Shattered World: The Bridge Between Neuroscience and Art,” a review by Virginia Barry & Justine Kupferman of Eric R. Kandel’s The Age of Insight: The Quest to Undertand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain.

Here is a treat for us at multiple levels. Eric Kandel, Nobel-prize winning neuroscientist, a scholar of memory, has written a new book on insights into art and our minds. This refugee from Vienna returns to the Secessionist artists to reflect on how they portray inner life on the canvas.

For me, this is a personal reminiscence. Bruno Bettelheim was invited to speak at the Pratt Institute well after he retired. His Ph.D. in Vienna was on aesthetics. He spoke about his favorite artists, Schiele, Kokoschka and Klimt. He was moved to be invited to Pratt and to talk of his first love, these artists.

We are fortunate to have a mother-daughter team review this book. Dr. Virginia Barry, a Chicago psychoanalyst (who trained at Michael Reese when I also trained there under Roy Grinker Sr.) joins her daughter, Justine Kupferman, a graduate student in neuroscience at Columbia.

No more delays. Dive into a fascinating review of a remarkable book.

Nathan Szajnberg, MD, Managing Editor.