From hysteria and shell shock to posttraumatic stress disorder: comments on psychoanalytic and neuropsychological approaches

The Emerging Role of Interdisciplinarity in Clinical Psychoanalysis

Given the tight interconnections proposed between brain and psyche, psychoanalysis was conceptualized as an interdisciplinary theory right from the beginning. The diversification of knowledge performed by different science and technology fields, concerned with the same matter (explaining mind and brain and connecting them), makes this interdisciplinarity even more visible and evident. This challenges the integrative potential lying in psychoanalytic meta-theory.

The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

OBJECTIVE

To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

METHODS

The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.

RESULTS

Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.

CONCLUSIONS

Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.