From the Couch to the Lab Trends in Psychodynamic Neuroscience

by Fotopoulou, Aikaterini; Pfaff, Donald; Conway, Martin A.

• ISBN13: 9780199600526
• ISBN10: 019960052X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Can the psychodynamics of the mind be correlated with neurodynamic processes in the brain? The book revisits this important question - one that scientists and psychoanalysts have been asking for more than a century. Freud envisioned that the separation between the two approaches was just a temporary limitation that future scientific progress would overcome. Yet, only recently have scientific developments shown that he was right. Technological and methodological innovations in neuroscience allow unprecedented insight into the neurobiological basis of topics such as empathy, embodiment and emotional conflict. As these domains have traditionally been the preserve of psychoanalysis and other fields within the humanities, rapprochement between disciplines seems more important than ever. Recent advances in neurodynamics and computational neuroscience also reveal richer and more dynamic brain-mind relations than those previously sketched by cognitive sciences. Are we therefore ready to correlate some neuroscientific concepts with psychoanalytic ones? Can the two disciplines share a common conceptual framework despite their different epistemological perspectives? The book brings together internationally renowned contributors from the fields of Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience and Neuro-psychoanalysis to address these questions. The volume is organised in five clear sections, Motivation; Emotion; Conscious and Unconscious Processes; Cognitive Control; and Development of the Self. With a range of chapters written by leading figures in their fields, it gives the reader a strong flavour of how much has already been achieved between the disciplines and how much more lies ahead. This important new book reveals the intrinsic challenges and tensions of this interdisciplinary endeavour and emphasises the need for a shared language and new emerging fields such as Psychodynamic Neuroscience.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction
Background, ethos, and content	p. 3
The history and progress of neuropsychoanalysis	p. 12
Towards a psychodynamic neuroscience	p. 25
Drives and motivation
Freudian drive theory today	p. 49
Generalized brain arousal mechanisms and other biological, environmental, and psychological mechanisms that contribute to libido	p. 64
Theoretical challenges in the conceptualization of motivation in neuroscience: Implications for the bridging of neuroscience and psychoanalysis	p. 85
Drive and structure: Reconsidering drive theory within a formalized conception of mental processes	p. 109
Emotion
Freudian affect theory today	p. 133
A meditation on the affective neuroscientific view of human and animalian MindBrains	p. 145
Emotions in the psychoanalytic theory	p. 176
Emotion and delusion: Seeking common ground between neuroscience and the psychotherapies	p. 186
Conscious and unconscious processes
The Freudian unconscious today	p. 209
Free-energy and Freud: An update	p. 219
Psychoanalysis, representation, and neuroscience: The Freudian unconscious and the Bayesian brain	p. 230
What is the unconscious? A novel taxonomy of psychoanalytic, psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical concepts	p. 266
The lexicographer's nightmare	p. 282
Unconscious fantasy and schema: A comparison of concepts	p. 293
Mechanisms of cognitive control
On unconscious inhibition: Instantiating repression in the brain	p. 307
From dynamic to behavioural lesions: The relative merits and caveats of elucidating psychoanalysis with brain imaging	p. 338
From Freud to neuroimaging: Hypnosis as a common thread	p. 356
Great escapes: Psychological forms of amnesia	p. 373
Memory and the self	p. 386
The development of the self: embodied and social cognition
The multidimensional construct of mentalization and its relevance to understanding borderline personality disorder	p. 405
Sense of 'sameness' as foundation of infants' embodied subjectivity and intersubjectivity	p. 427
Identification: The concept and the phenomenon	p. 439
The sense of agency in health and disease: The contribution of cognitive neuroscience in understanding self-consciousness	p. 455
Author Index	p. 467
Subject Index	p. 477
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