Freud and the Matter of the Brain: On the Rearrangements of Neuropsychoanalysis (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: The Bridge Between Mind and Brain
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 advanc...
This work, after doing justice to some Freudian errors, aims to demonstrate the continuity of Freud's scientific work ranging from neuropathology to psychoanalysis. What links the diverse Freudian scientific activities is the concept of variability, something Freud shares with Darwin, perhaps as a reproposition of the Cartesian notion of res extensa. Such variability should be understood in a concrete sense as a variability of in the first place biological, and later linguistic, features.