Knowledge and Ignorance in Psychoanalysis

In 1986, Nobel laureate biologist Walter Gilbert referred to the Human Genome Project as “the grail of human genetics…the collective answer to the commandment ‘know thyself’” (see Shattuck, 1996 p. 173). Gilbert's exuberant statement reflects the level of assertiveness and pride generated among the researchers in human genetics and biology as a result of their impressive discoveries.

Psychoanalysis as a profession has, by and large, been very slow in responding and investigating such claims. Many psychoanalysts have viewed biological research as irrelevant to psychoanalysis. Some others, in private exchanges, have characterized it as a cultural defense against introspection and the awareness of the unconscious process; they have prepared themselves for another long siege such as the one Freud encountered at the turn of the century. John Gedo is one of the few who have diligently worked to integrate biological research into psychoanalytic theory and practice. As far as I know, he is the only one who anticipated these developments long before they occurred.

In this essay, I address the difficulties that lie in the path of psychoanalysts who strive to incorporate into their clinical work and theoretical orientation an interdisciplinary perspective that takes seriously into account the knowledge generated by recent neurobiological research, cognitive science, and developmental studies. My essay is some what autobiographical, given the fact that I am still engaged in this struggle and have not as yet achieved the level of integration I have wished for. As a medical student, I had approached my studies in biology as the dues I had to pay to become a psychoanalyst, and I was delighted when I reached the point at which I could devote all my time to the understanding of the human mind, more or less to the exlusion of the understanding of the body.

I have, of course, always assumed that my interest and activities as a psychoanalyst are, for the most part, scientific. Like most o