The Relevance of Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection and Nonlinear Dynamic Systems for Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Gerald Edelman's theory of neuronal group selection (1987, 1989, 1992) describes how we appraise, organize, and reorganize our subjective experience of the world. Edelman's theory and the intrinsic principles of selection and self-organization are explicated. A clinical case illustrates the psychoanalytic implications of both Edelman's theory and a dynamic systems approach to development and change (Thelen and Smith, 1994) in which deeply ingrained traumatic experience is transformed through positive, new experiences that impact and become integrated within primary consciousness. The relevance of recognition, adaptive matching, mapping, and remapping of trajectories of experience, primary emotions, and brain asymmetry to developmental change is discussed.