Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.

~ Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge Ancestors Death Ghosts Grief Healing The Past Loss Memories Psychoanalysis Relationships

Nothing speeds brain atrophy more than being immobilized in the same environment: the monotony undermines our dopamine and attentional systems crucial to our brain plasticity.

~ Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge Boredom Proactivity Psychology

Analysis helps patients put their unconscious procedural memories and actions into words and into context, so they can better understand them. In the process they plastically retranscribe these procedural memories, so that they become conscious explicit memories, sometimes for the first time, and patients no longer need to relive or reenact them, especially if they were traumatic.

~ Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge Analysis Brain Plasticity Healing The Past Memories

We have senses we don't know we have-until we lose them; balance is one that normally works so well, so seamlessly, that is not listed among the five that Aristotle described and was overlooked for centuries afterward.

~ Norman Doidge

Norman Doidge Awareness