Fredric Schiffer

Fredric Schiffer is an American psychiatrist and medical researcher who has developed a psychological technique and therapeutic approach which he terms "dual-brain psychology." From his experience in counseling individuals, Schiffer found that some individuals would behave like they have "two sides" to their personality-- "one calm and accepting, and another more emotional and impulsive.". When other researchers had shown that different emotional responses could be elicited by showing a movie to one-half of the brain (to one cerebral hemisphere) Schiffer then found by having a patient cover the eyes in a way to be able to look only from the extreme left side of the head, or only from the extreme right side of the head, that some patients would be more calm when looking out one side, and more agitated or upset when looking out the opposite side. It is known that such an arrangement of covering the eyes directs the visual input to one hemisphere, either to the right hemisphere or to the left hemisphere, depending on how the eyes are covered. Schiffer "maintains that one hemisphere can be more immature than the other and that this imbalance leads to different mental disorders." Schiffer writes that "the aim of dual-brain therapy is to mend the archaic, destructive ideas and emotions of the mind on the troubled side, to teach it that it is safer and more valuable than it learned during some traumatic experiences."