My colleagues and I work with a lot of people who were physically, sexually and or severely emotionally abused or neglected beginning in infancy or early childhood. For years before the tools were developed and the research began to provide the empirical evidence, we would comment to one another in peer supervision and consultation, our sense that the brains of many of these clients simply did not work the same way. We observed cognitive differences that we intuited went beyond the then esoteric theoretical constructs of psyche. We hypothesized the trauma had led to both physiological and functional differences in the brains of many of these individuals that affected cognitive perception, sensory perception, emotion regulation, and therefore, perception of reality. We perceived in the nightmares, flashbacks, repetition compulsions, attachment difficulties, trauma bonds, that brain function and physiology were involved, as well as the 'mind.'

As tools have been developed to monitor brain function and activity, as well as other body organs and biological systems and how these systems respond/react to stress, our intuitions are increasingly confirmed, though the details are still poorly understood. Research on stored memories, emotional memories, theamagdyla begins to allow integration of psychodynamic models and biology. These are the seeds of a more comprehensive and integrated understanding of the matrix of nature/nurture and the human being.