Varieties of Clinical Intuition: Explicit, Implicit, and Nonlocal Neurodynamics

ABSTRACT

Intuitive response has been a cornerstone of patient–therapist interactions in all schools of therapy. In addition, persistent instances of “uncanny” intuitive knowing, such as “thought transference,” telepathic/precognitive dreams, distant awareness, and synchronicity have been identified since the very beginnings of psychoanalysis. These phenomena have remained on the fringes of scientific exploration, partly because of the lack of a conceptual model that would bring them into the mainstream of clinical work. The authors propose a Nonlocal Neurodynamics model that complements classical local-interactive forms of sensory (verbal and nonverbal) communication with nonlocal-participatory informational channels arising from the fundamental quantum/classical nature of the body/brain/mind system. We suggest the need for a metaphor shift in psychoanalysis in order to incorporate the latest developments in complexity science and quantum neurobiology, which allow for a meta-reductive informational perspective that bridges the Cartesian mind-brain divide and enables a unified picture of psychophysical reality. We use clinical examples illustrating a full spectrum of local and nonlocal clinical intuition to help clinicians utilize these concepts in their daily work.

This article is referred to by:

Feverish Nonknowledge, or Intuition at the Boiling Point

Portals through Liminal Space: Commentary on Shapiro and Marks-Tarlow’s “Varieties of Clinical Intuition”

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. J. Rowan Scott, clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Alberta, for his contribution and invaluable support in preparing this manuscript

Notes

¹ Entanglement describes nonlocal correlations in quantum systems, where one part of the system is instantaneously affected by the measurement of another part, irrespective of the physical distance between them. Multiple experimental verifications have now demonstrated that our universe is fundamentally nonlocal, and entanglement can occur not just at subatomic but also molecular scales; however, it cannot be used to exchange information at superluminal speeds (Gisin, 2009).

² Physical and physiological processes in the classical (Newtonian) world are subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, which are local and deterministic. By contrast, quantum processes at subatomic scales are fundamentally nonlocal and indeterministic. As we descend to subatomic scales, particles cease to follow local-interactive dynamics (miniature billiard balls moving in space over time) and increasingly display wave-like properties that define the nonlocal-participatory domain. While in the classical macro-world such quantum processes are largely ignored, it is becoming increasingly clear that a wide range of biological systems, including synaptic transmission, utilize quantum dynamics (Maldonado & Gómez-Cruz, 2014). The matter/mind distinction is only relevant in the classical macro-world, while quantum informational processes may underlie both neural network dynamics and experiential phenomenology of subjective experience (Figure 1).

³ Here we use a distinction between unconscious affect, which is shared at the level of mirror neuron networks (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006). Affect is cognitively processed to the level of verbal feeling (named affect, as in “I’m feeling sad”) and propositional emotion (“I’m sad about being alone”). It is emotional awareness, or bringing preverbal affects into reflective awareness, that is postulated to be the cornerstone of therapeutic change.

⁴ We prefer to use the term “alternate” rather than “altered” states of consciousness to avoid the negative connotations of the “altered” term. In a similar vein, our baseline rational-analytic mode of consciousness represents only a small part of the spectrum of potential conscious states rather than a “normal” condition (Flor-Henry et al., 2017).

⁵ Quantum delayed choice experiments go to the core of spatiotemporal nonlocality in quantum mechanics. Depending on the experimental setup, an individually emitted photon can behave as a particle (taking a specific path through the measuring apparatus  [an interferometer]) or as a wave (showing a pattern of interference with itself). If the setup is changed after the photon has already entered interferometer and taken one of the paths, it appears to retroactively “sense” the forthcoming change and behave accordingly. John Wheeler extended the interferometer logic to cosmological phenomena, where depending on whether an observer uses a beam splitter in the telescope, a photon can be shown to “switch” from having traveled for millions of years as one or the other, demonstrating either that the experimenter’s choice today can affect light behavior millions of years into the past (retrocausality) or that the same photon simultaneously co-exists in both states over cosmological distances and times, calling into question the reality of space-time itself.

⁶ Quantum effects in biological systems depend on the capacity to maintain quantum coherence and achieve controlled, rather than random decoherence (the loss of information into the environment if a quantum system is not sufficiently isolated from it). Considered to be impossible even a decade ago, the rapidly developing field of quantum biology makes it increasingly apparent that living systems operate in the semi-classical domain, bridging quantum micro- and classical macro-dynamics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yakov Shapiro

Yakov Shapiro, M.D., is a clinical professor of psychiatry, psychotherapy supervisor, and director of the integrated psychotherapy/psychopharmacology service (IPPS) at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Terry Marks-Tarlow

Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California, who teaches and trains through the Insight Center, Los Angeles, and Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California.