Psychoanalysis Representation and Neuroscience

Psychoanalysis and History, 2017

This article first aims to demonstrate the different ways the work of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson influenced Freud. It argues that these can be summarized in six points. It is further argued that the framework proposed by Jackson continued to be pursued by twentieth-century neuroscientists such as Papez, MacLean and Panksepp in terms of tripartite hierarchical evolutionary models. Finally, the account presented here aims to shed light on the analogies encountered by psychodynamically oriented neuroscientists, between contemporary accounts of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system on the one hand, and Freudian models of the mind on the other. These parallels, I will suggest, are not coincidental. They have a historical underpinning, as both accounts most likely originate from a common source: John Hughlings Jackson's tripartite evolutionary hierarchical view of the brain.

International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2010

The relations between psychoanalysis and neuroscience have undergone considerable changes during the last two decades. From the cool distance that was maintained on both sides, a new neuroscientific basis has emerged for a dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. A crucial question then arises about the identity of psychoanalysis in this dialogue. What will be the effects of the growing impact of neuroscientific discoveries on psychoanalysis? Freud regarded psychoanalysis and the natural sciences as having a similar epistemological foundation determined by their relation to unknown aspects of reality. The author proposes that this viewpoint creates equal ground for psychoanalysis and neuroscience in their evolving mutual relationships. In the clinical realm, however, psychoanalysis cannot work without clinical, developmental, and metapsychological premises, which render clinical ontological autonomy to psychoanalysis in its relationship with the other sciences. This fact also needs to be taken into account when brain imaging techniques are applied to outcome research of psychotherapy.

The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 2012

Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: The Bridge Between Mind and Brain, 2019

In 1895 in the Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud tried to integrate psychology and neurology in order to develop a neuroscientific psychology. Since 1880, Freud made no distinction between psychology and physiology. His papers from the end of the 1880s to 1890 were very clear on this scientific overlap: as with many of his contemporaries, Freud thought about psychology essentially as the physiology of the brain. Years later he had to surrender, realizing a technological delay, not capable of pursuing its ambitious aim, and until that moment psychoanalysis would have to use its more suitable clinical method. Also, he seemed skeptical about phrenology drift, typical of that time, in which any psychological function needed to be located in its neuroanatomical area. He could not see the progresses of neuroscience and its fruitful dialogue with psychoanalysis, which occurred also thanks to the improvements in the field of neuroimaging, which has made possible a remarkable advance in the knowledge of the mind-brain system and a better observation of the psychoanalytical theories. After years of investigations, deriving from research and clinical work of the last century, the discovery of neural networks, together with the free energy principle, we are observing under a new light psychodynamic neuroscience in its exploration of the mind-brain system. In this manuscript, we summarize the important developments of psychodynamic neuroscience, with particular regard to the free energy principle, the resting state networks, especially the Default Mode Network in its link with the Self, emphasizing our view of a bridge between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Finally, we suggest a discussion by approaching the concept of Alpha Function, proposed by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, continuing the association with neuroscience. The real difference lies rather in the fact that the kind and direction of the physical vectors in Aristotelian dynamics are completely determined in advance by the nature of the object concerned. In modern physics, on the contrary, the existence of a physical vector always depends upon the mutual relations of several physical facts, especially upon the relation of the object to its environment. Levin (1935), p. 35.

Journal of Physiology-Paris, 2011

Thought experiments have a long tradition in science. The thought experiment proposed in this article designs a brain that is compatible with a conceptual framework that integrates neuroscience and psychoanalysis. A connectionist model with emergent collective computational abilities is progressively and gradually modified to retrieve concepts such as the following: life instinct, the death instinct, the conscious, the preconscious, the unconscious, the free-association method, parapraxis, repetitive compulsion, repression, self, other, and "I". In this model, the process of memorisation is represented by a neural network with deep depressions, the bottoms of which correspond to learned configurations known as "attractors". This thought experiment could be helpful in suggesting new formulations of traditional psychoanalytic and neuroscientific constructs.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1997

In his 1895 "Project for a Scientific Psychology" Freud attempted to construct a model of the human mind in terms of its underlying neurobiological mechanisms. In this endeavor "to furnish a psychology which shall be a natural science," Freud introduced the concepts that to this day serve as the theoretical foundation and scaffolding of psychoanalysis. As a result, however, of his ensuing disavowal of the Project, these speculations about the fundamental mechanisms that regulate affect, motivation, attention, and consciousness were relegated to the shadowy realm of "metapsychology." Nonetheless, Freud subsequently predicted that at some future date "we shall have to find a contact point with biology." It is argued that recent advances in the interdisciplinary study of emotion show that the central role played by regulatory structures and functions represents such a contact point, and that the time is right for a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Current knowledge of the psychobiological mechanisms by which the right hemisphere processes social and emotional information at levels beneath conscious awareness, and by which the orbital prefrontal areas regulate affect, motivation, and bodily state, allows for a deeper understanding of the "psychic structure" described by psychoanalytic metapsychology. The dynamic properties and ontogenetic characteristics of this neurobiological system have important implications for both theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis.

2001

This review discusses the relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis and introduces a new scientific method called neuro-psychoanalysis, a combination of the two phenomena. A significant difference between the two is that psychoanalysis has not evolved scientifically since it has not developed objective methods for testing ideas that it had formulated earlier. In contrast, neuroscience includes a range of subsidiary disciplines, each having its own specific methods used to study different aspects of the nervous system. The review specifically discusses the neurodynamics of dreaming and provides evidence that dreams are motivated by certain phenomena. It reviews information on Broca's aphasia to demonstrate that not all brain-injured patients are alike. The review assists in explaining why patients with right-hemisphere lesions who have only access to the intact positive emotions of the left hemisphere often feel inappropriately positive about their condition, whereas depression is much more common in patients who have only access to the negative emotions generated by the intact right hemisphere. It concludes that both sciences can make a contribution to each other, and that the predictive gap between neural and psychoanalysis processes can best be narrowed through the development of a conciliatory framework. (Contains 30 references.) (JDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

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.

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2010

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2021

Grotstein’s concept of projective transidentification led the author to reconsider the reasons that have led to the plurality of psychoanalytic models. The solution proposed is the existence of a fundamental frontal-occipital oscillatory dynamic, responsible for the projective-introjective dynamic that is at the basis of psychoanalytic theory and, at the same time, of the development and maintenance of mother–infant attunement. Such an oscillatory dynamic, according to this perspective, operates as a “bridge” between two seminal theoretical models of development – the psychoanalytic and the infant research model. A set of neurological hypotheses regarding how maternal interaction may act to modify the infant’s projective-introjective dynamic and general brain development is proposed. The different possible modifications of this dynamic offer an explanation of the variety and complexity of psychoanalytic models and the opportunity for a unitary approach, both clinical and theoretical...