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Neuroscience has become a popular source of metaphors and images for political and social theorists. Among the most popular is the 'missing moment,' used to characterize the delay between an unconscious experience and the subject's reaction. The goal, several authors suggest, is to come closer to the original non-conscious experience, wherein resides real freedom. If one follows this argument very far, however, it begins to look a lot like a popular theory of trauma. More troublingly, it leaves no room for either a psychoanalytic or narrative account that stresses the role of human relationships and human community in confronting trauma. In opposition to this account, this article sets the work of Stern, Segal, and Winnicott. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of psychoanalysts have become excited about mirror neurons, as they are called by neuroscientists. Mirror neurons have the remarkable property of responding identically to an action I intend as well as an action you intend. The argument of some psychoanalysts is that mirror neurons open a new pathway to understanding the intentions of other. They make possible a new type of empathy, more direct and less mediated by the typical defenses. One result of such a perspective on psychoanalysis is the virtual death of the countertransference. If one has direct empathic contact with another mind, then countertransferential experience is only a barrier, not a guide. The essay not only looks at the evidence for mirror neurons, which is ambiguous, but also at what need they might be filling in our contemporary culture. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]