De Freud aux neurosciences, Edmond Cross (original) (raw)

Sigmund Freud on Mind and Brain

Early on, Freud sought to develop a systematic account of embodied mind, including explanations of interactions between “representations” (ideas, memories) and affects. Today, he is increasingly recognized as a naturalist whose psychoanalysis combines self-analysis with a dynamic, functionalist neurology. His contributions to the comparative anatomy of the nervous system, begun in Ernst Brücke’s laboratory and influenced by Hermann von Helmholtz, were carried out in the hope that discoveries concerning neural synapses, energy, and its transmission might eventually clarify nervous system function in humans (Gamwell and Solms 2006, 15-17). Moreover, while the philosophy of mind (as act psychology) he discovered with Franz Brentano long remained with him (Brook 1998, 73-77; Pribram and Gill 1976, 17-18), had he obtained the university post he sought in Vienna, and had his 1895 physiology of brain function (posthumously entitled the Project for a Scientific Psychology) been published instead of that of his rival, Sigmund Exner, Freud might well have stayed in neurology and psychiatry. Freud’s work in the natural sciences began with anatomy and histology in Brücke’s laboratory; it passed thereafter into neurological investigations of the brain and central nervous system under Theodor Meynert. Freud produced over 200 articles in neuro-physiology (Solms in Van de Vijver and Geerardyn, 17). It should not be supposed that neurology did not confront philosophical questions, such as the all-important relationship between brain and mind; that is, what precisely is meant by psycho-physical parallelism? With this in mind, this chapter will first consider an encyclopedia entry Freud wrote entitled “Das Gehirn” (“The Brain”) and which appeared in 1888. After reviewing Freud’s innovations in brain physiology and the persistence of his debt to Brentano’s act psychology, I will turn to his monograph Zur Auffassung der Aphasien (On Aphasia). This work is unique because, against the dominant localizationism of brain science in the 19th century, Freud argued for a whole-brain theory in which language perception, comprehension, and production resulted from the dynamic organization of “fields” in the brain. This challenged the doctrine of “comprehension centers” in the brain, as well as Meynert’s idea that discrete brain “centers” (not fields) were connected by neural conductions pathways across empty, that is to say functionless, brain “space.” Freud believed that any aphasia diagnosis had to take into account not only lesions of varying kinds, but also socialization and the way the brain was configured in the process of language acquisition. This “psycho-social” dimension, which was neglected in Freud’s time, went hand in hand with his research on and treatment of hysterias, dating from 1882 (Keegan 2003). Together, the article and monograph show us that Freud innovated with his views on mind-brain parallelism and by speculatively expanding functionalism (Gamwell and Solms 2006, 15), concern with the dynamics of brain fields and sub-cortical interactions between the nervous system, the midbrain, and the brainstem. Freud also challenged the “cortico-centrism” of his time, with its theory of the “homunculus” in the cortex, equivalent to a “little man” guiding all our actions, both reflex and willed. Even before the reductionist project he undertook in his 1895 Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud was working toward a science of mind and brain that could be both materialist yet non-reductionist, functionalist and dynamicist, social and biological. Behind this science lay important philosophical questions concerning the activity of the cortex and the meaning of free will.

A Century After Freud's Project: Is a Rapprochement Between Psychoanalysis and Neurobiology At Hand?

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.

Freud and the Matter of the Brain: On the Rearrangements of Neuropsychoanalysis

Critical Inquiry 40:1 (83-108), 2013

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Psychoanalysis and the Brain – Why Did Freud Abandon Neuroscience?

Frontiers in Psychology, 2012

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was initially a neuroscientist but abandoned neuroscience completely after he made a last attempt to link both in his writing, "Project of a Scientific Psychology," in 1895. The reasons for his subsequent disregard of the brain remain unclear though. I here argue that one central reason may be that the approach to the brain during his time was simply not appealing to Freud. More specifically, Freud was interested in revealing the psychological predispositions of psychodynamic processes. However, he was not so much focused on the actual psychological functions themselves which though were the prime focus of the neuroscience at his time and also in current Cognitive Neuroscience. Instead, he probably would have been more interested in the brain's resting state and its constitution of a spatiotemporal structure. I here assume that the resting state activity constitutes a statistically based virtual structure extending and linking the different discrete points in time and space within the brain. That in turn may serve as template, schemata, or grid for all subsequent neural processing during stimulus-induced activity. As such the resting state' spatiotemporal structure may serve as the neural predisposition of what Freud described as "psychological structure." Hence, Freud and also current neuropsychoanalysis may want to focus more on neural predispositions, the necessary non-sufficient conditions, rather than the neural correlates, i.e., sufficient, conditions of psychodynamic processes.

Freud's Scientific Psychology and metapsychology (I): Its relevance in the 21 st . Century

Freud's 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' and 'metapsychology' are reviewed. Reference is made to neuroscience literature highlighting the contemporary relevance of his ideas. Freud's core concepts are presented: biological needs; hierarchy of regulating systems; primary and secondary process thinking, unconscious and conscious systems; relation of mental systems to neuro-anatomical locations; and, communication between the two systems, including repression and dreaming. His ideas are summarised in terms of homeostasis and a hierarchy of characteristically different regulatory 'mental' systems.

Exploring the mind with a microscope: Freud's beginnings in Neurobiology

Hellenic Journal of Psychology, 2009

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the acknowledged founder of psychoanalysis, started his research career as a promising neurobiologist. This article presents an overview of his early articles in neuroanatomy and a literature update regarding the awareness of Freud’s origins in neurobiology. In all, Freud invested a decade studying animal histology, cell biology and basic neuroscience before turning to human neuropsychiatric disorders. Through his histological studies, Freud provided coherent evidence supporting the neuron doctrine and suggesting that the protoplasm consists of a contractile fibrillary network, the present-day cytoskeleton. Freud also documented movements of nucleoli in neurons, a phenomenon presently referred to as nuclear rotation. In certain instances, Freud’s observations antedate later views by more than half a century and are important to our understanding of neuronal structure and intracellular motility.