Unexpected traumatic events, including life-threatening medical conditions, brain injuries, and pandemics, can be catalysts for patients and clinicians to consider existential issues, including meaning in life. The existential–humanistic and relational perspectives on therapeutic interventions emphasize creating meaning, taking responsibility for one’s own life and self-narratives, choosing and actualizing ways of being in the world that are consistent with values, and expanding the capacity for agency, commitment, and action. Myriad factors have made the COVID-19 pandemic upsetting and potentially traumatic for individuals, including the novel experience of self and other as possibly infectious and dangerous, a sense that anyone is vulnerable, and protracted uncertainty about the duration of the crisis and its consequences. The vignettes included in this article explore risk and reliance factors relevant to patients with preexisting medical conditions during COVID-19 and highlight the benefits of exploring values, priorities, and assumptions, asking open-ended questions about meaning in life and posttraumatic growth, learning for each emotion, and interpretation of dreams. The existential–humanistic and relational approaches offer unique insights into how practitioners might help their patients to reflect on the unanticipated changes and anxieties ignited by COVID-19, while reinforcing the potential to live with greater purpose and intention.

Contemporary studies in the cognitive neuroscience of attention and suggestion shed new light on psychoanalytic concepts of yore. Findings from neuroimaging studies, for example, seem to revive the notion of dynamic lesions-focal brain changes undetectable by anatomical scrutiny. With technologies such as brain imaging and reversible brain lesion, some findings from modern biological psychiatry seem to converge with nineteenth-century psychiatry, reminiscent of the old masters. In particular, suggestion has been shown to modulate specific neural activity in the human brain. Here we show that "behavioral lesions"-the influence that words exert on focal brain activity-may constitute the twenty-first-century appellation of "dynamic lesions." While recent research results involving suggestion seem to partially support Freudian notions, correlating psychoanalysis with its brain substrates remains difficult. We elucidate the incipient role of cognitive neuroscience, including the relative merits and inherent limitations of imaging the living human brain, in explaining psychoanalytic concepts.

Contemporary studies in the cognitive neuroscience of attention and suggestion shed new light on psychoanalytic concepts of yore. Recent findings from neuroimaging studies, for example, seem to revive the notion of dynamic lesions-those focal brain changes undetectable by anatomical scrutiny. Whereas nineteenth-century psychiatry attempted to apply the dynamic lesion model to disorders such as hysteria, contemporary biological psychiatry-with technologies such as brain imaging and reversible brain lesion-provides converging findings reminiscent of early accounts by the old masters. In particular, suggestion has been shown to modulate specific neural activity in the human brain. Here we show that 'behavioural lesions'-the influence words exert on focal brain activity-may constitute the twenty-first-century appellation of 'dynamic lesions'. While recent research results involving suggestion seem to partially support Freudian notions as well as modern-day psychoanalytic ideas, correlating psychoanalysis with its brain substrates remains difficult. We elucidate the incipient role of cognitive neuroscience, including the relative merits and inherent limitations of imaging of the living human brain, in explaining psychoanalytical concepts.