Abstract
Our approach is based on a tri-partite method of integrating psychodynamic hypotheses, cognitive subliminal processes, and psychophysiological alpha power measures. We present ten social phobic subjects with three individually selected groups of words representing unconscious conflict, conscious symptom experience, and Osgood Semantic negative valence words used as a control word group. The unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words, presented subliminally and supraliminally, act as primes preceding the conscious symptom and control words presented as supraliminal targets. With alpha power as a marker of inhibitory brain activity, we show that unconscious conflict primes, only when presented subliminally, have a unique inhibitory effect on conscious symptom targets. This effect is absent when the unconscious conflict primes are presented supraliminally, or when the target is the control words. Unconscious conflict prime effects were found to correlate with a measure of repressiveness in a similar previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). Conscious symptom primes have no inhibitory effect when presented subliminally. Inhibitory effects with conscious symptom primes are present, but only when the primes are supraliminal, and they did not correlate with repressiveness in a previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). We conclude that while the inhibition following supraliminal conscious symptom primes is due to conscious threat bias, the inhibition following subliminal unconscious conflict primes provides a neurological blueprint for dynamic repression: it is only activated subliminally by an individual's unconscious conflict and has an inhibitory effect specific only to the conscious symptom. These novel findings constitute neuroscientific evidence for the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and repression, while extending neuroscience theory and methods into the realm of personal, psychological meaning.
Highlights
As psychoanalysis seems to diminish in the eyes of many, neuroscience appears to be taking a long second look at psychoanalysis
CONSCIOUS SYMPTOM PRIMES (CS): SUBLIMINAL AND SUPRALIMINAL RESULTS Subliminal Conscious Symptom (CS) primes, unlike subliminal Unconscious Conflict (UC) primes, did not predict CS symptom alpha [t(7) = −0.21, p = 0.84, β = −0.09, partial r = −0.08]. (The lack of a relationship in this control condition is shown in the scatter plot in Figure 2.) The subliminal CS primes did not predict control Osgood Negative Valence (ON) target alpha www.frontiersin.org
There was only one condition in which the unconscious conflict primes were associated with enhanced alpha power: when the subliminal unconscious conflict primes were followed by supraliminal conscious symptom targets
Summary
As psychoanalysis seems to diminish in the eyes of many, neuroscience appears to be taking a long second look at psychoanalysis. Leading theoreticians have begun grappling with Freud’s theory, even thinking of it as the most comprehensive available to psychiatry (Kandel, 1998, 1999), and offering the best account of recent neuroscience findings (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2010). A growing number of psychoanalysts are going back to Freud’s neuroscience roots, finding in his posthumous Project (1950) insightful anticipation of modern neuroscience concepts (Pribram and Gill, 1976). The neuroscience investigation of the neural correlates of unconscious processes is often limited to automatic biases, ignoring the importance of unconscious conflict, the role of personal meaning, and unique unconscious processes like repression. We present the unconscious that is subject to individual meaning (contained in the unconscious conflict unique to each individual), is comprised of complex unconscious emotional processing including repression, and plays a causative role in the manifestation of symptoms as in social phobias. We show that these processes are instantiated in identifiable brain events
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