A Neuro-Psychoanalytical Dialogue for Bridging Freud and the Neurosciences

The book presents an overview of the term neuro-psychoanalysis and traces its historical and scientific foundations as well as its cultural implications. It also investigates some blind spots, open questions, and future possibilities. It examines the cooperative and conflicted relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Contributions from different fields investigate the neurological basis of psychoanalysis as well as the psychological terms of neurology. They also discuss what psychoanalysis has to offer neuroscience. The emerging neuro-psychoanalytical dialogue is further enriched by the voice of a culturally informed history of science. The book facilitates a dialogue between leading authorities on these topics, creating an unprecedented opportunity to better understand the “language” of the psyche. Specific concerns include the discussion of corporeality, how the body figures into psychoanalysis, the meaning of the unconscious in connection with dreams, unconscious fantasies, and the field of epigenetics. Following a historical perspective, the book engages in a re-reading of Freud’s drive theory. It explores his concept of “life” at the threshold of science and culture as well as the relationship between various representations, somatic states, and the origin of drive. The book argues that acknowledging the different methodological approaches of psychoanalysis and neuroscience and their dialectic relationship, could open up a fascinating body of neuro-psychoanalytical knowledge through the ensuing epistemological and methodological dialogue.

Content

• Sigrid Weigel: Introduction
  p. 1–10
• Mark Solms/Oliver H. Turnbull: What Is Neuropsychoanalysis?
  p. 13–30
• Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber: Enactments in Transference: Embodiment, Trauma and Depression. What Have Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences to Offer to Each Other
  p. 33–46
• Sigrid Weigel: Embodiment in Simulation Theory and Cultural Science, with Remarks on the Coding-Problem of Neuroscience
  p. 47–71
• Gerhard Scharbert: Signs and Souls: The Prehistory of Psychoanalytical Treatment in Nineteenth-Century French Psychiatry
  p. 75–89
• Tamara Fischmann: Dreams, Unconscious Fantasies and Epigenetics
  p. 91–105
• Sigrid Weigel: Beyond the Death Drive: Freud’s Engagement with Cell Biology and the Reconceptualization of His Drive Theory
  p. 109–125
• Yoram Yovell: Drive and Love: Revisiting Freud’s Drive Theory
  p. 127–136
• Pierre J. Magistretti/Francois Ansermet: The Island of Drive: Representations, Somatic States and the Origin of Drive
  p. 137–147
• Ulrike Kadi: Couch Potato: Some Remarks Concerning the Body of Psychoanalysis
  p. 151–162
• Edith Seifert: “The Medulla Oblongata Is a Very Serious and Lovely Object.” A Comparison of Neuroscientific and Psychoanalytical Theories
  p. 163–170