Reviewing contemporary neuropsychoanalysis
In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, Joshua Kendall reviews Casey Shwartz’s book: In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis.
In The Mind Fields deals head-on with contemporary debates between neuroscience and psychoanalysis that sometimes tend to polarize to extreme positions.
Sometimes psychoanalysis seems to ignore the functioning of the brain to such an extent that it risks becoming brainless, and neuroscience tends to forget so entirely the subjective experience of the individual so as to become mindless.
Shwartz profiles Mark Solms, the founder of neuropychoanalysis, and describes how he resolves this false polarization, namely by stressing the fact that anything that goes on in the mind goes on in the brain too, and vice-versa.
She also touches on the lively debate between Hobson and Solms over the role dreams play, and to what extent an excess of emphasis on data gathered by highly sophisticated technology might forget the actual experience of the individual.
Read the article.