Freud and the Matter of the Brain: On the Rearrangements of Neuropsychoanalysis (original) (raw)

Springer eBooks, 2018

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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.

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.

FORGETTING FREUD (1)

The response was published here: http://tinyurl.com/6a8a7tk (criticalpsychoanalysis.com). None of this work could have happened without the support and informed discussion of my psychoanalytic colleagues in Ireland and Britain to whom I am most grateful. Rob Weatherill, Dublin, Spring 2010. tioning? Surely, comes the reply, communication is crucial for the smooth operation and the self-ordering of systems. Surely, it is more important than ever to speak. However, the speaking that is required amounts to the transmitting of information, approximating to digital communication, through operational channels and protocols, analogous to cell and tissue signalling systems. Speaking with precision; nothing else will do. Forgetting Freud? molecules cool down. The digital revolution is creating this cooling effect-isolating, automating, marginalising, bit by bit the human qua human. Eventually, perhaps, the whole thing will proceed without us, when awesome processing power, akin perhaps to nuclear energy, finally overpowers. 4 The claim by some opponents of contemporary psychoanalysis that it is unethical, that it turns the moral universe on its head, might be conceded to some degree in what follows. However, it is no weltanschauung; it is not prescriptive, not a religion or an ideology. Freud says at the end of the New Introductory Lectures, "Psychoanalysis is, in my opinion, incapable of creating a weltanschauung of its own", and he goes on to warn, "[a]ny of our fellow-men who is dissatisfied with this state of things, who calls for more than this for his momentary consolation, may look for it where he can find it... we cannot help him". 5 Bion referred to psychoanalysis as a probe, no world-view, no consolation, no safety within a religion, none of the "momism" of popular therapy. Beyond religion, beyond psychoanalysis, the ethical tears through all stabilising notions revealing the depth of our problem-the extent of contemporary freedom and indifference. Freud was increasingly realistic; not peace and harmony-we should prepare for war! 6 In relation to the death drive, an ethical call if ever there was one, Freud states at the end of Chapter VI of Civilisation and its Discontents: "In all that follows I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man... that constitutes the greatest impediment to civilisation". As civilisation is precariously held together by the other great instinctual pole, Eros, Freud concludes that it is, "this battle of the giants that our nurse-maids try to appease with their lullaby about Heaven". 7 Here Freud names the ethical coordinates. What is argued in the 10 essays that follow is the renewed engagement 8 of psychoanalysis with the world, beyond post-structural relativism, the crisis of meaning, and the retreat into the academy. The analyst explores and loosens the threads of meaning, deconstructs and punctuates the polysemy, knots, chaos and indeterminacy of language, and must also be the one who is alerted to real absence. Forgetting Freud? up for you-but also a new infantile whinge with its retreat into the loving embrace of the mother which is simultaneously a retreat from the world. This retreat, or more properly ressentiment, has long been a feature of the wider culture in the West. Andrew Smith 10 was the man who disappeared, who belongs to no one and knows no one. His body was discovered in his flat in North London by a neighbour, someone he had never talked to, who smelled the decomposition of the body and phoned the police. This was two months after Smith had died. There were no details of Andrew Smith's next of kin and nothing to identify him with anyone, family or friends. He was buried with no one to grieve him. Journalist Ariel Leve followed up his lost story. She discovered he had been fostered by a working class elderly couple who already had two children of their own. His foster mother died of cancer in 1978 when Andrew was only 13. He lived with the father, but gradually and unaccountably withdrew from family and friends who in turn lost contact with him. He was last seen by his sister in December 2004. In that same year, there were seven million people living alone in Britain, four times the number recorded in 1961. By 2021, it is estimated that 37% of all households will be single occupiers. The figures for aloneness are rising 20-30% faster in the 22-44 age group. Adam Phillips illustrates the retreat of the academic into self-satisfaction. "Sane now" is the title of the last chapter of his recent book. 11 Here, the author's "religiosity" comes to the fore which exemplifies this absence of ethics in the guise of the ethical. "Deep sanity", he describes as keeping opposites in play, listening endlessly and never judging. Here, contra Freud, the analytic position is generalised to a whole way of life of evenly suspended attention. According to Adams, the deeply sane do not need a number of things. They don't need to be understood; they don't need recognition; they don't need relationships subject to contract (because they don't expect relationships to last); they see their talents as gifts (not apparently something hard-worked for); they know that wanting is frustrating and getting can be even worse; so they are ironic in their pleasure-seeking, and real pleasure-seeking is known by the deeply sane to be risky, but that doesn't the Word and the Real. Chapter Three follows Levinas, who regarded psychoanalysis as unethical, and thereby implicitly challenges psychoanalytic practice and its relation to suffering. Chapter Four returns to the all-important yet psychoanalytically foreclosed subject of seduction. All the complex ideological battles within psychoanalysis, as well as its more recent professionalisation, can be seen as systematic attempts to stop the play of seduction. Chapter Five continues that theme with a complex discussion about the nature of sexual enjoyment and the effects of sexual abuse. The main illustration is Nabokov's Lolita. Chapter Six considers our "faith" in the value of the analytic process. The analyst has to have

Theory and evidence in the Freudian field: from observation to structure

Glynos, J. & Stavrakakis, Y. (Eds.) (2002) Lacan and Science. London: Karnac, 2002

T here can be little doubt that today, at the dawn of the new millennium, modern scientific discourse occupies a privileged position within the horizon of our everyday experience. It is a position it has occupied since at least the middle of the 19th century; and it would not be exaggerating too much to claim that science-both natural and social-exercises a de facto monopoly over truth in contemporary institutional and popular practices. Just think of the batteries of expert advisors installed in governments and corporations. Witness how modern advertizing relies not only on offering us ever-new products that take advantage of the latest scientific advances but also on the scientific establishment's seal of approval, its guarantee. Science books, ranging from evolutionary biology, to genetics, to physics and mathematics, enjoy unprecedented popularity. Even those of a devout religious persuasion do not hesitate to invoke science in bolstering the credibility of claims proffered in sacred texts. The fact that we now live in a so-called risk society-wherein science no longer merely seeks to protect us from risks but becomes the very source of risks 2 -does not threaten its hegemonic grip. Nor do the "acronymically" designated crises implicating scientific expert knowledge directly (BSE, GMO, etc.)-13 14 LACAN & SCIENCE crises which cannot but stoke the fires of environmentalism ("ludditic", deep, holistic, mystical, etc.). Even if science appears to have suffered a bit in the popular imaginary, it remains the case that the very detection and regulation of risks created by new science-driven technologies relies on science itself. Institutional and popular faith in science effectively remains intact; and when it suffers set-backs, such faith is merely displaced on to the future, just as it was in the early days of the 17th century scientific revolution. 3 We are told that, soon, science will provide us with the necessary knowledge, procedures, and products, that will finally put an end to civilization's discontents, satisfy our desires, and usher in an era of Hollywood happiness. Or maybe not so soon. In the meantime we are advised to take out insurance, whether private or public. In other words, natural scientists refer us to their younger siblings, the actuaries, while they concentrate on pushing back the boundaries of knowledge-a knowledge whose exponential, multidirectional, and virtually uncontrollable expansion is fast becoming a typical feature of today's capitalist liberal democratic societies.