On 16 April 2004 Cheri Budzynsky wrote: > The May issue of Scientific American has an article on Freud and > Neuroscience for those that are interested. I am a little dismayed by > these articles since it is a very small group of neuroscientists that > believe that neuroscience can explain Freud. These articles tend to > sound like there are a large of numbers who believe this. For anyone who > is interested, check it out.
I�ve now had an opportunity to see the article on Freud and neuroscience in the current issue of Scientific American (�Freud Returns�). I never cease to be astonished at the confidence with which erroneous assertions about Freud are made in such articles. The author Mark Solms, psychoanalyst and neuroscientist, writes: �When Freud introduced the central notion that most mental processes that determine our everyday thoughts, feelings and volitions occur unconsciously, his contemporaries rejected it as impossible.� This piece of psychoanalytic mythology has been shown to be false by historians of psychology since the 1960s and 1970s, yet it is still being propagated in popular articles by pro-Freud writers like Solms. Schopenhauer had posited something like the notion Solms ascribes to Freud before the latter was born. Francis Galton, writing in �Brain� in 1879-1880, described the mind as comparable to a house beneath which is �a complex system of drains and gas and water-pipes�which are usually hidden out of sight, and of whose existence, so long as they act well, we never trouble ourselves.� He went on to discuss �the existence of still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the level of consciousness, which may account for such phenomena as cannot otherwise be explained.� (Incidentally, Freud subscribed to �Brain� at that time.) The historian of psychology, Mark Altschule, wrote in 1977: �It is difficult � or perhaps impossible � to find a nineteenth century psychologist or medical psychologist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance.� Solms cites the cognitive neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel among an increasing number of neuroscientists who are reaching the conclusion that the current model of the mind as revealed by neuroscience �is not unlike the one that Freud outlined a century ago.� Is this the same Eric R. Kandel who wrote in 1999 that �the neural basis for a set of unconscious mental processes� provided by current discoveries in neuroscience �bears no resemblances to Freud�s unconscious�? Kandel continues: �[This unconscious] is not related to instinctual strivings or to sexual conflicts, and the information never enters consciousness. These sets of findings provide the first challenge to a psychoanalytically oriented neural science.� (Am. J. Psychiatry, 155:4, p.468) That Solms is well-versed in Freudian mythology, but ignorant of the facts that have been documented to refute them, is confirmed by his writing that when Freud argued for the existence of �primitive animal drives� in humans his ideas were received with �moral outrage� by his Victorian contemporaries. This account purporting to give an overall picture of the situation at that time has been refuted so many times by scholars who have researched the period that one despairs that the actual facts will ever penetrate the hermetically sealed world of psychoanalytic traditionalists. Solms presents (in the usual imprecise fashion of such descriptions) Freud�s notions of the id and ego as having correlates in current brain research. But, as William McDougall pointed out eighty years ago, the notion expressed by Freud that the ego stands for reason and circumspection and the id stands for the untamed passions goes back to �Plato�s doctrine of Reason as the charioteer who guides the fierce unruly horses, the passions, which are the motive powers.� Sometimes it seems that there is almost no psychological insight in the history of the human race that Freudians do not ascribe to Freud. Supposedly in support of Freud�s notions of infantile development (highly bowdlerised, as is the nature of such presentations) Solms writes that one would be hard-pressed to find a developmental neurobiologist �who does not agree that early experiences, especially between mother and infant, influence the pattern of brain connections in ways that fundamentally shape our future personality and mental health.� There are several comments one might make in regard to this statement. How could it be otherwise than that life experiences influence the pattern of brain connections in a baby, growing into infancy, in a way that is crucial to the future development of the brain? The idea that we owe the origination of such notions to Freud, or that to accept them is to credit Freud�s specific notions of infantile psycho-sexual development, is absurd. Whether it can be said that such experiences �shape� the future personality and mental health partly depends on what precisely is meant by the word �shape� in this context. That they have considerable *influence* on the future personality and future mental health of the individual is without doubt the case, but the extent that they are a *determining* factor is a matter of dispute. Solms writes at this point that �It is becoming increasingly clear that a good deal of our mental activity is unconsciously motivated.� Yes, indeed, as has been implicit in the writings of Rochefoucauld, Montaigne, Trollope, Austen, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, and so on, and explicitly spelled out by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche well before Freud wrote about this notion. The only remarkable thing about this passage in Solms�s article is that he is so determined to credit Freud with this commonplace. I could go on, but I�ll finish with Solms�s statement that �Today treatments that integrate psychotherapy with psychoactive medications are widely recognized as the best approach to brain disorders.� What he doesn�t say is that, in the UK at least (and Solms until very recently resided there), it is widely recognized that the most effective form of psychotherapy for this purpose is cognitive and behavioural therapy, not psychodynamic therapies that are based on Freudian concepts. That he then attempts to associate the aforementioned �psychotherapy� with (by implication, psychoanalytic-style) �talk therapy�, and thence to �brain imaging�, is more than a trifle disingenuous. For Solms, all roads lead to Freud, and it difficult to conceive of any findings that he would not proclaim as �consistent with� some or other contention of the Master. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 ------------------------------------------- Sun, 18 Apr 2004 05:53:58 -0400 Author: "Allen Esterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Freud Revisited > Cheri Budzynsky wrote on 16 April: > > The May issue of Scientific American has an article on Freud and > > Neuroscience for those that are interested. I am a little dismayed by > > these articles since it is a very small group of neuroscientists that > > believe that neuroscience can explain Freud. These articles tend to > > sound like there are a large of numbers who believe this. For anyone > > who is interested, check it out. > > The May issue of Scientific American is not in the shops as yet here in > London, so I�ve not had the opportunity of reading the article in > question. But, of course, I�ve seen others like it in recent years. (It�s > amazing how easy it seems to be for people who are eager to shout �Freud > was right� at every opportunity to get access to publications like > Scientific American. I suspect that many of the journalists associated > with such magazines have still to shake off the infatuation with Freud > that was for much of the second half of the twentieth century a feature > of United > States� cultural life (in all senses). > > No doubt the psychoanalyst and neuroscientist Mark Solms will feature in > the article. Here is an example of his approach to this issue, as > exemplified by his words quoted in an article in �Newsweek� on 11 > November 2002. It relates to experimental research by the neuroscientist > Jaak > > Panksepp on the ventraltegmental area of the cortex of the brain. > The author of > the article, Fred Guterl, writes: �When Panksepp > stimulated the corresponding region in a mouse, the animal would sniff > the air and walk around, as though it were looking for something... The > brain > tissue seemed to cause a general desire for something new. 'What I > was seeing,' he > says, 'was the urge to do stuff.' Panksepp called this > seeking.� > > We then get the view of the ubiquitous Dr Solms: �To Mark Solms of > University College in London, that sounds very much like > libido. 'Freud needed some sort of general, appetitive desire to seek > pleasure in the world of objects,' says Solms. 'Panksepp discovered as a > neuroscientist what Freud discovered psychologically.'� > > Note the steps in this 'argument'. A neuroscientist discovers a region in > a mouse�s brain which, when stimulated, causes it to walk around as if it > is seeking something, described by the neuroscientist as an �urge to do > stuff�. Solms associates that directly with Freud�s �libido� concept, and > proclaims the new research as the neuroscientific correlate of Freud�s > psychological 'discovery'. What nonsense! We didn�t need Freud to tell us > that human beings have an innate propensity to explore the world, and to > try to intensify emotional experiences. What has this got to do with > Freud�s concept of libido (except insofar as the latter is so > all-embracing that it becomes meaningless)? That Solms makes this > conceptual progression, and then proclaims the desire to explore the > world and obtain emotional experiences as something that Freud > Freud �discovered�, says much about his (and others like him) propensity > to > interpret virtually any new finding in neuroscience as demonstrating > that �Freud > was right after all!� (or, at the very least, that the > findings are �consistent with� Freud�s theories). Unfortunately, some > science correspondents (including here in the UK) tend to credulously > report such tendentiously exaggerated claims as if they were the last > word in modern brain research. (The headline for the �Newsweek� report > on Panksepp�s research on a mouse�s brain was �What Freud Got Right�.) > > Allen Esterson > Former lecturer, Science Department > Southwark College, London > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html > http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
