2008 Presidential Campaign on the Couch( Author Drew Westen Will Analyze C...),Health

Author Drew Westen Will Analyze Campaign Speeches and Ads During Presidential Symposium at 2008 Winter Meeting

NEW YORK, Jan. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Just prior to the primary elections in the 2008 United States presidential campaign, nationally recognized author and clinician Drew Westen, Ph.D., will describe the emotional way in which Americans cast their ballots at the Presidential Symposium of the American Psychoanalytic Association's 2008 Winter Meeting. Dr. Westen, an honorary member of APsaA and professor at Emory University, will analyze video clips from the campaign trail and address topics such as emotional partisanship and unconscious attitudes about gender and race in his presentation, "Clinical Work Writ Large: The 2008 Presidential Campaign." The Presidential Symposium will be held on Friday, January 18, 2008, from 12-1:30 p.m. at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Media are invited to attend.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080116/DC11636 )

"Voters tend to choose their favorite candidates by emotion and then rationalize those gut feelings. Our brain scanning research suggests that the more partisan you are, the less capable of reasoning you may actually be in politics," says Dr. Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

In a multimedia presentation that will clinically dissect video clips of current and former Presidential candidates from a psychoanalytic perspective, Dr. Westen will address the following topics:

-- The difference between how the Republican and Democratic parties approach the electorate,

-- The role of gut-level choices in how people select the candidate they prefer,

-- The very different effects of conscious and unconscious attitudes toward gender and race on voting, and

-- The role of conflicting feelings on
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