Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- 1 Phenomenology and psychoanalysis
- 2 The life-world as the ground for sciences
- 3 A critical examination of neuropsychoanalysis
- 4 The conceptualization of the psychical in psychoanalysis
- 5 The libido as the core of the unconscious
- 6 The grounding of libido in the life-world experience
- 7 Beyond the pleasure principle: the affirmation of existence
- 8 The question of truth claims in psychoanalysis
- Concluding remarks
- References
- Index
3 - A critical examination of neuropsychoanalysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of figures
- 1 Phenomenology and psychoanalysis
- 2 The life-world as the ground for sciences
- 3 A critical examination of neuropsychoanalysis
- 4 The conceptualization of the psychical in psychoanalysis
- 5 The libido as the core of the unconscious
- 6 The grounding of libido in the life-world experience
- 7 Beyond the pleasure principle: the affirmation of existence
- 8 The question of truth claims in psychoanalysis
- Concluding remarks
- References
- Index
Summary
A common opinion among psychoanalysts today is that psychoanalysis has to be integrated with neuroscience if it is to be accepted as a science. Such an opinion would have been met with much scepticism just a few years ago, and could have been conceived of as a consequence of lacking faith in psychoanalysis, and as a threat to the psychoanalytic project. Neurology, which in the last few years has made such impressive progress, has indeed awakened enormous interest among psychoanalysts. In a guest editorial in the International journal of psychoanalysis Olds and Cooper (1997: 219) write as follows:
Freud himself was an early pioneer in biological interdisciplinary study, and we are reminded that he gave up this line of inquiry in part, at least, because neuroscience had not reached the point where such a project could be fruitful.
Now, however, an enormous amount of new information is becoming available through techniques of molecular biology, brain imaging, genetics, computer modelling and other studies and this may be the time to begin thinking anew of the linkages of psychology and the brain. More particularly, we may begin to ask what these new studies can contribute to psychoanalysis, as well as how psychoanalytic understanding of mental functions may help to guide empirical studies of cognition and neural structures.
Mark Solms, perhaps the leading representative for an integration of neurology and psychoanalysis, together with Oliver Turnbull has published the book The brain and the inner world (2002), which can be seen as a kind of manifesto for an integrated neuropsychoanalytic science, and which has been given the name ‘neuropsychoanalysis’.
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- Psychoanalysis in a New Light , pp. 40 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010