The post-natal mind
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What is neuro‑psychoanalysis and why does it matter for understanding the mind?
This is an ABC podcast.
The brain is different from any other organ in the body. Unlike the heart, it possesses the unique properties of consciousness and subjectivity. This idea forms the basis of the field of neuropsychoanalysis.
Everyone who's a member of the neuropsychanalytic community, their aim is to bring together the disparate research that's being done about the mind and the brain, because as Mark Soames has put it, there can't be two human minds, one for neuroscience and one for psychoanalysis. There is only one mind. It's sort of like debating the chemistry and the art of a Van Gogh painting, that there'd be no painting without the chemical components of painting. Paint in canvas, but to suggest that the components provide an explanation of the painting that would be valuable for the artist is to deny the value of art.
Hi, it's All in the Mind on RN. I'm Lynn Malcolm. Writer Nicola Redhouse was overwhelmed with unrelenting postnatal anxiety following the birth of both of her children. Her navigation through this debilitating condition led her to explore the physical and psychological roots of her extreme anxiety and to investigate the union between neuroscience and psychoanalysis, where the brain ends and the mind begins. Her book Unlike the Heart is a personal memoir of her experience, which began after her first baby was born.
And that experience was one of what I have called overwhelming anxiety, or I've used the word panic even. From the moment that he was born. The only way I can describe it is that level of panic that you would feel bodily, you know, in that moment when you realize you've dropped something precious to you and broken it or you're about to fall, that real bodily kind of adrenaline panic. It was just absolutely overwhelming. I couldn't eat. I wasn't never gonna be able to sleep.
How did Nicola Redhouse experience post‑natal anxiety after her first birth?
But I it wasn't attached to a particular thought. In fact I was still feeling overwhelming love for him and attachment to him. It just felt as though I couldn't put my mind to anything other than trying to calm this panic that was stopping me just living in a way that would meet my needs, if that makes sense.
And you were crying all the time. And how did it affect your daily life in terms of what you were able to do and how it was with your relationship with your husband?
Well, I mean, daily life when you've just had a baby is completely focused on the baby and meeting the baby's needs and I and I was fortunately doing that without any problems. I was adoring of my child and completely focused on him and his needs, but in the moments when I wasn't engaged with attending to whatever he needed, the panic came back. I wasn't really able to do anything that I had done in my life. before. I mean I was beyond sleep deprived, because everyone's sleep deprived when they initially have a baby. But in the time where my baby was sleeping and I could have gotten some rest, I couldn't get restful sleep. I was just, you know, having nightmares and waking up in a panic. So that wasn't a an enjoyable way to be living because it was all I thought about and did.
How can the baby get some sleep so that I can get some sleep?
Nicola Redhouse grew up in a family which was immersed in psychoanalytical thinking, and her father is a psychotherapist, drawing on Freud's ideas about the unconscious mind. Despite this, she couldn't make sense of the emotions she was feeling after her baby was born.
I mean, I knew I was experiencing anxiety. I could tell my husband and my family I'm really feeling very anxious, but the words postnatal anxiety didn't come to mind. I didn't think this is something outside of the norm. And this was what part of the panic was. My thought pattern was, this is what having a baby is, this is what having a baby is, this is life now, and I'm gonna feel like this forever. I had a difficulty recognizing that I'd moved into a state that wasn't normal anymore.
And you had had, as you said, you've experienced anxiety and mental discomfort earlier in your life and I think you'd also developed an eating disorder as a teenager.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is neuro‑psychoanalysis and why does it matter for understanding the mind?
0:02–2:15
2
How did Nicola Redhouse experience post‑natal anxiety after her first birth?
2:15–7:33
3
Why did her psycho‑analytic family background not explain her panic?
7:33–13:20
4
What role did psychiatric medication play in her recovery?
13:20–17:15
5
How did Nicola discover the field of neuro‑psychoanalysis?
17:15–23:18
6
Which brain regions change during early motherhood and what do they do?
23:18–27:29
7
Should treatment for perinatal mental health combine neuroscience and psychotherapy?
27:29–28:36
8
Where can listeners find help and resources for post‑natal anxiety?
28:36–29:04