The Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis in the Age of Neuroscience?

Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2023

A strange dialectical reversal characterises the oppositions which psychoanalysis posits against philosophy and neuroscience: what psychoanalysis intervenes with as a unique and missing quality of these subjects, reveals itself upon enquiry as already having been a feature of said subjects. This paper firstly discusses the failed intervention of psychoanalysis within the perceived totalities and absolutes of German Idealism. Psychoanalysis, founded on an ontological division and internal inconsistency with a retroactive logic, finds this internal contradiction already reflected within the supposed totalities of Schelling and Hegel. Schelling’s ‘blind act’, a decision with no prior foundation that grounds an abstract identity-in-itself, appears as the counterpart to what Badiou calls the strictly ‘analytic act’. Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which the inconclusive interpenetration of being and nothing presupposes its own conclusion in the transitions to essence, and in which an internal incompleteness and contradiction is retroactively constitutive of the concept, similarly nullifies the intervention of psychoanalysis. Finally, precisely such a reversal is presented in neuroscience, where the constitutive contradiction of contingently functional neuronal formations in the adaptive ‘multiple demand’ model of executive functioning repeats the contingent and self-contradicting psychoanalytic subject as being its own deference within linguistic, discursive formations.

The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 2012

Routledge eBooks, 2016

Mark Solms's hypothesis holds that two main body representations are housed in the brain: the sensorimotor body and the autonomic body. These two body representations would be associated with two different types of consciousness: cognitive consciousness and affective consciousness, respectively. According to Solms, cognitive consciousness is secondary and depends on the primary, brainstem-located, affective consciousness. The consequence of this is that Freud's id would be conscious, while the ego would be unconscious. In my commentary, while praising Solms for his emphasis on the inseparable relation between affect and consciousness, I challenge his rigidly dichotomous account of consciousness. In so doing, I vindicate the role played by the cortex and, in particular, the cortical motor system in generating the varieties of phenomenal self-awareness we entertain.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2017

Arnold Goldberg's book, The Brain, the Mind and the Self: A Psychoanalytic Road Map is innovative, philosophically grounded, and quite thought-provoking. His entry into the philosophical domain of defining and contrasting the terms mind, brain, and self is fascinating, enlightening and well worth the read. By differentiating these terms, Goldberg sees an opportunity for psychoanalysis to free itself from the constraints of psychiatry and neuroscience in order to grow and develop along its own unique path. Goldberg is refreshingly subversive and insightful when differentiating the brain from the mind from the self. From my perspective, this was the most vital and valuable focus of this thoughtful book. Unlike certain scientists such as Francis Crick (the co-discoverer of DNA) and certain notable philosophers such as Daniel Dennett, Goldberg does not view the mind as synonymous with the brain. In this day and age where neuroscience is revered and practically worshipped, this is a perspective well worth exploring and examining. Goldberg sees the discipline of psychoanalysis as critical in differentiating brain from mind from self. For Goldberg, the brain refers to neuronal connections and functioning. In contrast to the brain, the mind refers to more than brain physiology; the mind brings into being the world of meaning. ''Thus the mind, wholly dependent upon and generated by the brain, is the arena wherein we see what the world means to us. Meaning becomes a larger concept than the brain'' (p. 14). The concept of the self refers to the ''seat of agency'' (p. 14). The mind and the self cannot simply be reduced to brain functioning. The mind depends upon the brain and emerges from brain functioning, but the mind extends far beyond the brain. In fact, the mind extends into the world whereas the brain remains inwardly separate from the world. Rather than view the mind as made up of internalized perceptions and representations of the outer world, Goldberg opts for a model of enactivism, whereby the mind extends into and interacts with the world. This is grounded in the philosophy of Heidegger, who saw human nature as inherently ''being in the world.'' Goldberg enlists Rupert Sheldrake's field theory of mind as well as Kohut's concept of the self object to illustrate how the mind extends into the world. The thinking of the philosopher, Paul Ricoeur with regard to language is also examined. Ricoeur considered the brain and the mind to be two completely separate ''universes of discourse'' (p. 144), using totally different languages, which results in the impossibility of either being reduced to the other. Given his philosophical inclinations and references to Heidegger, Goldberg might have also explored the concepts of one of Heidegger's teachers, the

Recent advances in the cognitive, affective and social neurosciences have enabled these fields to study aspects of the mind that are central to psychoanalysis. These developments raise a number of possibilities for psychoanalysis. Can it engage the neurosciences in a productive and mutually enriching dialogue without compromising its own integrity and unique perspective? While many analysts welcome interdisciplinary exchanges with the neuro-sciences, termed neuropsychoanalysis, some have voiced concerns about their potentially deleterious effects on psychoanalytic theory and practice. In this paper we outline the development and aims of neuropsychoanalysis, and consider its reception in psychoanalysis and in the neurosciences. We then discuss some of the concerns raised within psychoanalysis, with particular emphasis on the epistemological foundations of neuropsychoanalysis. While this paper does not attempt to fully address the clinical applications of neuropsychoanal-ysis, we offer and discuss a brief case illustration in order to demonstrate that neuroscientific research findings can be used to enrich our models of the mind in ways that, in turn, may influence how analysts work with their patients. We will conclude that neuropsychoanalysis is grounded in the history of psychoanalysis , that it is part of the psychoanalytic worldview, and that it is necessary , albeit not sufficient, for the future viability of psychoanalysis.

IntechOpen eBooks, 2022

Psychoanalysis rose at the end of the nineteenth century as a possibility of reintegrating the mind and body. This came up as proposing a theory that empirically demonstrates that emotions create symptoms in the body. Psychoanalysis introduces a subject moved by desires, governed by the unconscious. Since then, in a dialectic perspective, search and offer to society a counterpoint view of current thought, offering new insights and reflection, bringing enlightenment of what is obscure in individuals' internal life. The contemporary psychoanalytic crisis comes from conflict avoidance, not worrying in the integrative view, falling into a trap of "politically correct," that is, accepting what is advocated, without questioning, not putting on the agenda the obscure side effects in human beings, the Unconscious. Therefore, in a psychoanalytic theoretical perspective, this chapter has the aim to reflect about the psychic suffering inside a body identity, without getting into sociological and anthropological meanings about the shaping of social identity. This study seeks to present the psychic suffering of the unidentified body, which not always will find resolution in an aesthetic procedure that might be belonging to a fantasy and identity recognition.

It is not often that the names Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, are heard in conjunction in scholarly debate. Perhaps surprisingly, however, there is a significant convergence between these two thinkers when it comes to their respective notions of the Panopticon and the Super-ego. In what follows we will demonstrate this convergence.

2005

Most educated people would agree that the experience and the body of knowledge that Freud created have had a significant impact in the Western world. Nearly fifty years ago Jacques Lacan wrote: […] Anyone capable of glimpsing the changes we have lived through in our own lives can see that Freudianism, however misunderstood it has been and however nebulous its consequences have been, constitutes an intangible but radical revolution. There is no need to go seeking witnesses to the fact: everything that concerns not just the human sciences, but the destiny of man, politics, metaphysics, literature, the arts, advertising, propaganda-and thus, no doubt, economics-has been affected by it.