Freud and the Sciences. circa 1900 and circa 2000
The project followed a counterinvestigation arrangement: While Sigmund Freud crossed the boundaries of contemporary neurology and developed psychoanalysis in his work, psychoanalysis since the 1990s has been (re)discovered from the perspective of neuroscience. The attempt to reunite disciplines, which have been separate since Freud's time, has been carried out predominantly with the help of imaging techniques (fMRI, PET). Its aim has been a unified neuro-psychoanalysis.
The project on the one hand examined the role of scientific references in Freud’s development of psychoanalytic theory. On the other hand, it examined the significance of the rediscovery of Freud and what aspects, indicators, and terms become thereby relevant for neuroscience research.
For the period around 1900, the impacts of science and medicine on Sigmund Freud’s work were studied, in which emphasis was placed on neuroscience and developmental biology and Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Some important factors were French psychiatry of the 19th century, whose reflections on the relationship between delusion and dream or language and symptom have likewise affected Freud’s views, as well as the traditions of the Johannes Müller school, which emerged from Freud’s teacher Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke. The discussion of particular concepts, such as those defined by Freud with recourse to the vocabulary of contemporary neuroscience, has become independent with respect to its science of origin by having taken on a new meaning within the developing writing on psychoanalysis.
For the time around 2000, the project was able to demonstrate how the terms of psychoanalysis change when they are recast as neuro-psychoanalytic concepts. Difficulties, especially with regard to the position of metapsychology as the driving concept, were identified and analyzed with respect to the implied understanding of subjectivity and culture. Along the lines of psychoanalytic research interest in the “demands of neurosciences,” the question was raised as to which (unconscious) desires and fears are tied to the attempt of a neuroscientific foundation of psychoanalysis. In any case, it must be noted that the dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis is far from over.
The project, whose perspective was particularly shaped by cultural studies and the history of science, managed to position itself as a player within the debate on neuropsychoanalysis (as well as a partner of the International Society for Neuro-psychoanalysis and Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Sigmund-Freud-Institut, Frankfurt a.M.) through meetings and talks with the visiting scientists Tamara Fischmann (Sigmund-Freud-Institut, Frankfurt a.M.) and Christine Zunke (Universität Oldenburg).
Publications
A Neuro-Psychoanalytical Dialogue for Bridging Freud and the Neurosciences
Freud und Adorno
Zur Urgeschichte der Moderne
Freuds Referenzen
Dichterwahn
Über die Pathologisierung von Modernität
Christine Kirchhoff
- Anpassung und Unvernunft. Die Bedeutung der Lebensnot bei Freud und Adorno, in: Christine Kirchhoff, Falko Schmieder (eds.): Freud und Adorno. Zur Urgeschichte der Moderne, Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2014
- Aufschub, Hoffnung, Reihenbildung. Freud und die Naturwissenschaften, in: Gerhard Scharbert, Christine Kirchhoff (eds.): Freuds Referenzen, Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2012, 216–230
- Wozu noch Metapsychologie?, in: Markus Brunner, Jan Lohl i.a. (eds.): Politische Psychologie heute? Themen, Theorien und Perspektiven der psychoanalytischen Sozialforschung, Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2012, 347-366 (revised and updated version of “Wozu noch Metapsychologie?,” in: Journal für Psychologie 18.1 (2010))
- Vom Überleben des Wunsches als Todestrieb. Nachträglichkeit, Subjekt und Geschichte bei Freud, in: Falko Schmieder (ed.): Überleben. Historische und aktuelle Konstellationen, München: Fink 2011
- Von der Wiederkehr des unbewußten Wunsches als Todestrieb und der Nachträglichkeit in der Theorie, in: Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse 62, Bad Cannstatt: Fromman-Holboog 2011
- Wenn jemand spricht, wird es hell. Sehen des Unsichtbaren in Psychoanalyse und Neurowissenschaften, in: Trajekte 21 (2010), 45–47
- Wozu noch Metapsychologie?, in: Journal für Psychologie18.1 (2010)
- Affected by the Other. On Emotion in Psychoanalysis, in: Sabine Flach, Daniel Margulies, Jan Söffner (eds.): Habitus in Habitat I – Emotion and Motion, Bern: Peter Lang 2010, 111–12
- Zur Nachträglichkeit kollektiver Erinnerungsprozesse: Erinnerung als Entübersetzung, in: Harald Schmid (ed.): Geschichtspolitik und kollektives Gedächtnis: Erinnerungskulturen in Theorie und Praxis, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2009, 107–122
- “Das hat doch etwas zu bedeuten?” Von Überlebseln und Phasen, in: Frank Dirkopf i.a. (eds.): Aktualität der Anfänge. Freuds Brief an Fließ vom 6.12.1896, Bielefeld: transcript 2008, 77–93
Gerhard Scharbert
- Cognitio animi experimentalis – Intoxication, Hallucination, Imagination, and Modernity, in: Sabine Flach, Daniel Margulies, Jan Söffner (eds.): Habitus in Habitat II – Other Sides of Cognition, Bern: Peter Lang 2010, 171–183
- Verbale Kommunikation nach einem Locked-in-Syndrom, in: Christine Kühn i.a. (eds.): Das Locked-in-Syndrom. Geschichte, Erscheinungsbild, Diagnose und Chancen der Rehabilitation, Frankfurt a.M.: Mabuse 2010, 147–162 (with Karl-Heinz Pantke, Natalie Arsalan)
- “Psychologus nemo, nisi Physiologus” – Johannes Müller und die Perspektiven einer médecine philosophique: Eine Entdeckung aus dem Universitätsarchiv, in: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 29.1 (2010), 213–227
- Freud and Evolution, in: History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 31.2 (2009), 295–312
- Mensch und Maschine, in: not 3 (2009), 66–67
- Review of: Claudia Breger, Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, Tanja Nusser (eds.): Engineering Life. Narrationen vom Menschen in Biomedizin, Kultur und Literatur, Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2008, in: Weimarer Beiträge 3 (2009), 468–472
- Vererbung, Nervosität, Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens. Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours’ vergessener Text “Un Chapitre oublié de la pathologie mentale,” in: Trajekte 17 (2008), 39–42