Debate: Is Psychoanalysis Relevant to Neuroscience? 

Psychoanalysis seems like spirituality in cultures where people have a strong dependence on spirituality. In other words a displaced form of spirituality. So goes the theory of transference. But what about people with a strong secular state culture like France? And indeed it's there that Freud's theories found a proper systematic application as well as foundation. I am thinking about Jacques Lacan. But

Your comments about Spirituality are not Freudians, but Jungians. Many Jungians are also Christians, as far as I have observed over many years.​@sarbajitghosh5244

Not to mention Berlin described psychoanalytic theory about as well as an undergraduate, and that’s being generous!

That's an interesting observation because I got the same impression. I was quite disappointed by the somewhat arrogant tone coming from the one side - as if neuroscience developed in a vacuum.

Psychoanalysis is not an academic discipline. It is, at the best of times, an artform that the therapist is good at. At the worst of times the therapist is a charlatan.

@@lepidoptera9337 Nope, there is plenty of room in the academy for diverse areas of study, even those we don't personally value. Perhaps it should be reclassified as part of Humanities or Philosophy or Hermeneutics.

@@seymourtompkins You may want to read up on the definition of science (which is what we are talking about here, if I read the title of this video correctly). Psychoanalysis does not fall under that. It doesn't have to. What it does have to do is help people. I am not sure I want to see it in the humanities, either. I certainly don't want to see it under philosophy. Philosophy is bullshit and good psychoanalysis is not. It's a therapeutic discipline. Let's call it physical therapy for the mind. It tries to make minds more flexible. It tries to give them more options to move out of their own stress positions that cause pain.

@@lepidoptera9337 You make some good points. However, I do think it's more than just another therapeutic discipline. That would be oversimplifying things quite a bit regarding a discipline that revolutionized the modern conception of the mind. Many scholars have written as much. Even if one regards it as nothing more than a therapeutic discipline, it still needs more empirical investigation. The best place to do that is in the Academy. We can't do that if there's no department for it. Part of the problem is that analysis has always had an independent and sometimes a hostile relationship with the Academy (for lots of historical reasons). That's why it set up its own institutes for training, study, etc.

@@seymourtompkins Psychoanalysis can't tell us anything about the higher functions of the human mind, like logical thinking. It is mostly concerned with emotional states that are not under control of the conscious, reasoning person. It tries to liberate us from false learned reflexes that cause pain and suffering. It is also not value-free like good science would be. Psychoanalysis tries to make a person happier, better, more functional. Science observes but psychoanalysis has active goals. It wants to change its subjects, not merely understand them.

Either you can dread becoming “shackled” to a speciality or you can aspire to become an expert in it.

100%.. the divide between philosophy and science that is only widening is blasphemy against god.

That question was answered in the debate…

Jung and Adler are irrelevant in contemporary psychoanalysis proper.

I feel that it makes life way more interesting and fun. Something intellectuals seem to want to dismiss

Psychoanalysis is not a science and never will be. It doesn't have to be. What it does have to be is responsible and effective.

It's pretty rare to find hard sciences people in the field of neuroscience tbh. The field is full of statistical errors.

@@lepidoptera9337 worth noting that Intensive Short Term Psychodynamic therapy is the most effective form of therapy and the most evidence backed. Psychoanalysis has been used responsibly and effectively

@@Jooshyb No doubt, but it's not science by any useful definition of the word science. Science is the rational explanation of nature. The aim of psychotherapy is to help people, it is not to explain how the minds of people work. It is mental caregiving. Ideally it is done using evidence and maybe even scientific methods, but that alone is not sufficient to make it a scientific discipline.

Scientists do not have a problem with abstract thinking. In any are of science you can publish a purely hypothetical paper. What you can't do is call your hypothesis a law, or a scientific proof. You have to wait for the experiments to include that in the scientific status of a proof. If your field is completely based on speculations, it is philosophy, not science.

Of course it is relevant if you are a white guy and you have seen the black versions. Oh my...

Penis envy is only one special case. Freud’s other work is totally underrated as Mark says. Dissing & dismissing Freud as a quack is disingenuous, especially in the historical context. Odd than even she admits it.

At the same time Freud constantly pointed towards the need for scientifc analysis into his theories. In other words he desperately wanted to work using the scientific method but the possibilities at that time were so limited. They were only discovering the neuron to begin with. For me the arrogance also stems from pretending neuroscience as a field developed in a vaccum and not precicely because of the practical work of people like Freud.

Sounds like you've never met an American neuroscientist, hahah. The more STEM obsessed, the more arrogant, the less humble and thoughtful.

I don't think that there is a hierarchy because I think they are describing or attempting to do very different things and even if there is overlap it is not on the same level - or very rarely. In a way i think that this is far more fruitful potentially than if there was a hierarchy as there are many and unexpected possibilities for information to cross inform the other discipline.

It’s not that simple ,as there are things neuro CANT DO that psycho can do ,so N needs P in ways P needs N !!!! Mike

@@mikelipschitz7281 do you know, a year after writing this answer to you above, and having now almost finished reading Interpretation of Dreams during pandemic lockdown with my study group (we’re on Chapter 7: Regression now), I would revise my answer a bit.I think you’re right - the meta-psychical aspects of Freudian theory are describing something different to anatomical aspects of brain, and adds a richness that neuroscience cannot easily measure. I’m still learning, I think it’s fascinating to learn from both important disciplines - neuroscience and psychoanalysis (in no particular order).

You think because he didn't reference any of the touchstones (or one might even say, 'stereotypes') of 'textbook Freudianism' (castration anxiety, dream interpretation, tripartite model of the psyche, etc.) that there was 'no psychoanalytic concept application'? Solms was quite clear about what aspect of psychoanalysis he /was/ applying: namely, attending to the subjective experiences of the patient, being vigilant about the emergence of themes that emerge, and undertaking to interpret those themes. This is certainly not something that the psychoanalysts that emerge, nor is it the exclusive domain of psychoanalysts today, but it is something that renders it distinct from cognitive, behavioural, or neurological approaches. You have committed the same error as Stackgold here in thinking that because Mark's clinical vignette/published work does not conform to your very-impoverished understanding of what constitutes psychoanalysis, that he has abandoned it as either a conceptual framework or a modality of treatment, and instead only continues to invoke psychoanalysis as a kind of symbol devoid of content. This would be akin to someone who doesn't know anything about classical music arguing that Liszt abandoned classical music when he wrote Bagatelle sans tonalite because it lacks a tonal centre or that a psychologist is not really practicing psychotherapy if they don't employ operant conditioning with every/any of their patients.

@@purgatoriprytania5382 yes he didn't reference those touchstones because they are ridiculous and actually hamper attending to the subjective experience of the patient, and being vigilant about possible themes emerging, is a far cry from imposing Freudian oedipal themes on the words uttered, your analogy with classical music is superfluous, nothing I wrote is akin to that

@@sacredsoma Again, if you're arguing-and I'm not sure that you are even launching an argument, or just embarking on an unfocused screed against whatever it is you imagine psychoanalysis to be about-that not referencing those touchstones in Freud's works means you're not doing psychoanalysis then it is completely analogous to the two examples I utilised in my response. You simply do not know what your'e talking about, as is clear from your insinuation that psychoanalysis is about 'imposing themes' on the subjective experiences of the patients that one works with. The fact of the matter is that oedipal themes *do* emerge in the discourse and recollected experiences of some patients, but any good analyst-or psychotherapist in general-does not embark upon a course of treatment by seeking to hammer the patient's utterances into shapes so that they neatly fit the moulds of the different complexes enumerated by Freud. Freud himself cautioned against approaching interpretation this way, but given that you haven't read Freud, let-alone any of the dozens of theorists who followed in his wake, I suppose can't be expected to know anything beyond the usual cliches.

@@purgatoriprytania5382 OK I have read Freud and I despised it. You write that " The fact of the matter is that oedipal themes do emerge in the discourse and recollected experiences of some patients." OK I take that as a statement of faith. I don't share that faith and just as it is pointless convincing a Muslim of the absurdities of that religion, I will not urge you to read Borch-Jacobsen's "The Freud Files", or the numerous works by Frederick Crews on the Viennese witch doctor.

@@sacredsoma Dream interpretation is ridiculous? The notions of ego, id and superego are ridiculous? That's interesting.

Then why does it work? "Knowing about psychoanalysis is about as useful in predicting behavior as knowledge of poetry." You know that psychoanalysis actually derives a lot from arts, and its seems to be really useful. Poetry is people expressing their subjective experience.

@@Nobody-Nowhere yes and just like poetry and the arts, each analysis is completely unconnected to all previous psychoanalysis you have done. Each patient must be handled subjectively, hard rules cannot be applied without layers upon layers of caveat, and teaching someone the structure of psychoanalytics won’t ensure they can competently psychoanalyze. It is more the combination of oratory talent, intuition and interpersonal relationship building. With a veneer of neuropathological theory binding the whole thing together. Neuroscience is highly relevant to a psychoanalyst but psychoanalysis is completely irrelevant to a neurobiologist or cognitive neuroscientist. Both of those are hard sciences with predictive power, ie: if I retard your dopamine reuptake system it will raise your self reported mood and help to stabilize it. I can make a hypothesis I can test it experimentally in a very concrete way and once I have come to a firm conclusion I can apply the new theory to any patient and get approximately the same results, moreover I can teach the theory to other people in the field and they can apply my theory to their cases and they will also get approximately the same results. And if they don’t get the same results they will review my own findings with their results show there is not a significant reproducibility of my results and then we can start reducing possible causes of that through very rigorous well measured experimental controls. If I say “your dreams about being naked in a bus with an older woman are caused by an trauma experienced in the oral phase of development and it’s really a sign that you have developed an oedipal complex and want to have sex with your mother.” I cant do any of things above. There isn’t even a hard and fast definition for what the oral phase is? the edges are very blurry, what is an oedipal complex and what isn’t exactly? Why would trauma sublimate and then reappear years later in completely unrelated behavioral patterns? Can we predict with high certainty what patterns will develope based on the trauma experienced by a youth and use that prediction to effectively prevent the maladaptive coping mechanisms from occurring? Youre right in that sometimes psychoanalysis works, just like grief counseling sometimes works, just like hypnosis to stop smoking sometimes works. But when exposed to the rigor of the empirical model, they all fall apart and all though we can certainly say that these are all worthwhile professions and worth studying. They are not science, and the patterns noticed by psychologists shouldnt inform the decisions of anyone but other psychologists. And to clarify behavioral science, the sort of skinnerian black box model does pass most of the tests of empiricism. But it was a reaction to and denunciation of psychoanalysis by psychologists who basically made all the points i just did 60 years ago or so. Psychoanalysis strictly the application of principles (some based in science some not) in a dialectic methodology employed in conversations between a psychologists and a client.

@@rexluna5430 "teaching someone the structure of psychoanalytics won’t ensure they can competently psychoanalyze" Not all car mechanics are good car mechanics, and not all doctors are good doctors. Nothing out of the ordinary here. A good psychoanalyst needs to have a personality that suits the craft. Two totally different disciplines, one studies the mind other the brain. Also, there are no " veneer of neuropathological theory " in psychoanalysis, as it studies the mind.. not the brain. "if I retard your dopamine reuptake system it will raise your self reported mood and help to stabilize it" I dont think it works like that, for example SSRI meds have wide range of effect on different people. "There isn’t even a hard and fast definition for what the oral phase is? the edges are very blurry, what is an oedipal complex and what isn’t exactly? " Maybe you should study it, to understand it? It sounds more like you want simple easily defined answers. But what if the mind does not work like that? What if its chaotic in nature, constantly changing and in constant motion? You need for simple predefined clear cut answer does not mean that the universe or the mind operates like that.

@@rexluna5430 Also, if you are interested in a more structured psychoanalysis you might be interested in transference focused psychotherapy, that Otto Kernberg developed.

@@Nobody-Nowhere where does the mind come from? What is it? Quantify the mind for me clearly in a way that doesn’t involve simile or metaphor or make any vague inferences. Tell me what is this mind, what is it’s origin and what does it do? If you can do that with scientific rigor without crossing into metaphysical abstraction or requiring some sort of leap of faith I will reconsider whether or not the concept of mind is even relevant to the topic of science.