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It is not difficult to understand why the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience should interest us. Psychoanalysis is a science of the mind, and we have known since ancient times that the activities of the mind are in some intimate way connected with the tissues of the brain. This connection was established, from the start, on clinical grounds. Physicians through the ages recognized that diseases of the brain–unlike those of any other organ–had immediate effects on the functions of the mind. The celebrated case of Phineas Gage, which was first reported in 1848, is classically cited in this context (Harlow, 1948, Harlow 1968). A tamping rod passed through the frontal lobes of his brain, with the following results: “His physical health is good, and I am inclined to say that he has recovered … [but] his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said that he was ‘no longer Gage’” (Harlow, 1868). Observations such as these, which demonstrate that the brain and the personality are inextricable, make it clear that the object of study in psychoanalysis is somehow intrinsically connected with the object of study of neuroscience.
Freud himself recognized this fact in his neurological writings, and he continued to acknowledge it throughout his psychological writings. Nevertheless psychoanalysis developed almost completely independently of neuroscience. We all know the reason for this: Despite the fact that Freud acknowledged that ‘the mental apparatus… is also known to us in the form of an anatomical preparation,’ as he put it (Freud, 1900, p. 536), he nevertheless always recommended that psychoanalysts should remain aloof from neuroscience. There seems at first sight to be a contradiction in this stance, but I will clarify Freud's position in a moment.
The mere fact that psychoanalysis and neuroscience developed separately for so long points to the reality that, notwithstanding the obvious connection between