The brain's shared circuits of interpersonal understanding: implications for psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Social Neuroscience maintains that human survival depends on interpersonal relations, and that shared circuits evolved to enhance our ability to interact with and understand other people. Shared circuits operate by re-creating the Other’s experience in the same brain regions used for Self experience. The interpersonal understanding made possible by shared circuits is, for the most part, outside conscious awareness and plays a role in the transference-counter transference interaction. The brain mechanisms of shared circuits are presented and clinical vignettes illustrate the use of the concept of shared circuits in the clinical setting.