Abstract
Neuroscience was the basic science behind Freud's psychoanalytic theory and technique. He worked as a neurologist for 20 years before being aware that a new approach to understand complex diseases, namely the hysterias, was needed. Solms coined the term neuropsychoanalysis to affirm that neuroscience still belongs in psychoanalysis. The neuropsychoanalytic field has continued Freud's original ideas as stated in 1895. Developments in psychoanalysis that have been created or revised by the neuropsychoanalysis movement include pain/relatedness/opioids, drive, structural model, dreams, cathexis, and dynamic unconscious. Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan's (2011) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or “phantoms.” Results of adopting the “dual aspect monism” approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments. By imbricating psychoanalytic thinking with neuroscience, psychoanalysts are also positioned to make contributions to neuroscience research. Freud's original Project for a Scientific Psychology/Psychology for Neurologists can be carried forward in a way that moves psychoanalysis into the twenty-first century as a core contemporary science (Kandel, 1999). Neuroscience as the basic science of psychoanalysis both improves the field, and enhances its scientific and cultural status.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Psychoanalysis and Neuropsychoanalysis, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
Neuroscience has contributed to the development of new psychoanalytic theory, such as Bazan’s (2011) description of anxiety driven by unconscious intentions or “phantoms.” Results of adopting the “dual aspect monism” approach of idiographic psychoanalytic clinical observation combined with nomothetic investigation of related human phenomena include clarification and revision of theory, restoration of the scientific base of psychoanalysis, and improvement of clinical treatments
While the field has become crowded with important research, we will summarize some of the achievements arranged thematically, and suggest that enough evidence has accreted to acknowledge that the relationship of neuroscience to psychoanalysis has become similar to the relationship of basic sciences to medicine
Summary
Psychoanalytic theories reject the concept of drive (Eagle, 2011, p. 252). Neuropsychoanalysis has embraced Panksepp’s formulation of seven basic instinctual systems and has used his proposal to discuss the concepts of instinct, drive, and affect. Solms proposed that Freud’s id, the origin of drive, is represented in the brain by consciousness that cannot be without affective experience—the primary feelings being related to Panksepp’s instinctual systems with secondary and tertiary elaboration into more complex emotional experiences such as love, hate, disgust, appreciation, gratitude, etc. By using the clear difference between neural systems that are involved in wanting and liking (Robinson and Berridge, 1993, 2000; Panksepp, 1998), the psychoanalyst can use of neuroscience to extend our definition of “neurotic.” Patients with a series of complaints about how their lives are not working out may be trapped by conflicts between these neural systems They may be urgently pursuing goals with their SEEKING system that do not line up well with pleasure. Addiction is one of the illnesses that require understanding both subjective experience and drug-induced brain changes
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