What is neuropsychoanalysis?

Abstract

The authors examine the historical, philosophical, and scientific foundations of what they term the “inter-discipline” of neuropsychoanalysis. With the support of historical evidence, they unravel how the traditional strict separation of psychoanalysis and the neurosciences, as still practiced by certain scientists in both fields, is grounded in a misreading of Freud: Rather than advocating such a separation on principle, Freud developed his purely psychoanalytical method for pragmatic reasons–neuroscience in his time simply was not advanced enough to yield fruitful results. While psychoanalysis continued to use subjectivity to explore the internal perception of the mental apparatus, neuroscience developed tools to study the physical realization of the mental apparatus in the brain. The authors argue that a position of correlation between the two modes is likely to yield stronger results than a single-track focus. Far from constituting a new school of psychoanalysis, neuropsychoanalysis provides a link that integrates research being conducted along the psychoanalysis/neuroscience boundary.