Cognitive Science Meets Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Reviews the book, Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind's Staging of Gods, Angels, and Devils by Mark Pizzato (2011). Pizzato's concern is not a synthesis of cognitive science and cultural theory in the pseudo-Hegelian sense but rather as a struggle between competing forces. There is thus for Pizzato not just an antagonism within the order of being or an antagonism within the order of society but an antagonism between these two orders. Pizzato's explanation near the opening of the book is worthy of citation. In this present work, Pizzato displays how the notions of good and evil develop through the brain's evolution and manifest themselves through the performances of deities (both good and evil). He traces the theater of the brain from its first recording in prehistoric cave art all the way through recent popular films. Throughout all of these discussions, Pizzato's concern is with the position that God and the Devil take on the brain's stage. Pizzato traces the various depictions of gods and devils in order to understand how the human subject is struggling with its evolutionary heritage. The subject matter that the book addresses is immense. What stands out about Inner Theatres of Good and Evil is Pizzato's ability to call on his background in Lacan's thought and to facilitate an encounter between Lacan and cognitive science. Though there is a strong divide among Lacanian thinkers on this subject, Pizzato is a compatibilist. That is to say, he believes that Lacan registers of the symbolic, imaginary, and real correspond to the specific aspects of the brain's anatomy. This belief enables him to make an important contribution to both the expansion of the cognitive sciences into the humanities and to the advancement of Lacanian theory. Anyone seeking to find a way to reconcile these two seemingly disparate intellectual paths would not go wrong immersing herself or himself in Pizzato's Inner Theatres of Good and Evil. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)