Lucy Biven doesn't mention Psychoanalysis in the title of this paper, which seems appropriate, since the information and opinions she offers in this paper do appear to pertain much more to an overall view of the “Human Condition” than to any clinical practice of Psychoanalysis. Her belief that Psychoanalysis needs to be more scientific, and not primarily artistic, seems like a bias that one might agree or disagree with. In agreement or not, her opening sentence that “Psychoanalysis is certainly an art, but this paper makes a case that it should be more of a science” certainly sets up her paper with her bias, from its inception. As an author who has spent decades writing and publishing books and articles on Psychoanalytic clinical process, and on developmental interactions with long case examples of clinical process, I have felt like a “stranger in a strange land” when entering, reading, and re-reading her paper.
Although I have my own prejudices that might be reflected in how I analyze the shortcomings of her paper, I wish to begin by giving Lucy Biven her due tribute for painstakingly defining and organizing the “seven basic emotional systems in the brain.” Her references also reveal the large degree of scholarship that has gone into this paper. Certainly, I believe that what Biven offers in this regard helps all of us to become familiar with the various dimensions of brain activity that stimulate differentiated emotional modes of reaction in us as humans, and which overlap with a broader species of “mammals.”
Many of the examples that Biven offers to define the 7 emotional systems of the brain are experimental animal experiments. She defines how we overlap with these rodents and mammals, and how we may differ.
The problems begin I believe when Biven attempts to extrapolate
from such “rat” experiments, not only to humans, but to humans in psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. She never seems to make an adequate transition into psychoanalytic thinking. Further, she certainly does not forge a path into the clinical situation, where the development of the subjective self and of symbolic meaning are most relevant. She does not attempt any analogies with the meaning of psychic fantasy, and particularly of unconscious psychic fantasy. In fact, in one attempt to refer to “free association” she speaks of how her own associations to everything in the atmosphere of her daughter's wedding had the same emotional valence of “happiness,” even though different thoughts about different things observed were described.
Her point seems to be that the emotion defined how the thoughts of things observed and felt all linked together. The emotional state did the linking. O.K. Fine. But how does that relate to the clinical situation in which “free association” is related to the Internal World, not to the external world, and to the preconscious and unconscious emerging as defenses are surrendered?
Then in an attempt to speak of the shortcomings of Psychoanalytic phenomena for scientific thinking she devalues the analytic patient's expressions as “behaviors and verbal reports.”
She says that “behaviors and verbal reports” can be interpreted in different ways—causing controversies–as opposed to a hypothetical communal sharing in “objective” observation of concrete physiological/visceral/emotional reactions to brain systems. I had a strong reaction to her reducing analysands' self and unconscious expressions to “behaviors and verbal reports.” As far as I know, when analytic patients only offer behaviors they are acting out, and when they only offer “verbal reports,” they are defensively contriving their self-expression, rather than allowing the spontaneous emergence of unconscious feelings and psychic fantasy imagery. “Reports” would be seen as a defensive attempt to limit and control the analytic situation. Such “reports” would imply avoiding being present in the room with the Analyst, and avoiding being in their own minds and selves in the present.
Biven offers one attempt, at the end of the 19-page article, to give an example of psychoanalytic theory only to show the limitations of
psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, where transference is worked with. She speaks generally, and I would propose stereotypically, of a man who acts out self destructively in work situations with “bosses” because he had a “dictatorial” father who he is rebelling against in transference displacement. She says that Psychoanalysis can help such a man to identify his rebellious and self-destructive behavior in the present with bosses, as coming from reactions to his father of his childhood past. She then postulates that this “re-learning” might have a temporary beneficial effect in this man's life, curtailing situations that might lead to him being fired by bosses in work situations. However, she focuses on the limitations of such “re-learning,” since renewed stress might again trigger the old reactions that are related to still prevailing old brain circuitry; overcoming the new “brain circuitry” that is built in analysis, as the transference situation becomes conscious. This is the culmination of an argument that aims at defining the limitations of psychoanalysis in general, which she buttresses by citing a research study in which the data supposedly show that 20% of psychotherapy cases fail (Biven, p. 37), and further that the opening of unconscious emotional affect can result in an overwhelming psychic situation that has regressive rather than progressive effects. She never mentions how this would be worked with in a containing psychoanalytic situation, where negative transference is analyzed, and symbolic meaning of the emotions opening up is offered through interpretation. In any case, the example Biven gives totally skips over the analysand having an Internal World, or a transference situation in the session with the analyst, as opposed to just with his bosses. Yes, I agree with Biven that stress, and certainly new trauma, or re-living old trauma, can temporarily wipe out the cognitive and conscious gains that go with making unconscious phenomena conscious. However, the symbolic meaning of the transference can once more emerge into consciousness, as the stress is reduced, and as a new integration process evolves, following the regressive splitting and dissociation.
When Biven speaks about medications having differentiated effects on different emotional brain systems I experience her bias away from being a psychoanalytic practitioner again. Yes, I can agree if her point is to say there really are different emotional systems with different brain chemical reactions. How this relates to the psychoanalytic situation, or psychoanalytic psychotherapy situation, I am at a loss to define.
Lucy Biven is looking for a larger scientific scope and vantage point to understand all the complicated aspects of human motivation. She states that in Psychoanalytic theory only John Bowlby and Heinz Kohut went beyond Freud's view of sexual and aggressive drives. She credits Bowlby with the expansion of human emotional experience (not actually sure she is looking at “motivation”) to that of an attachment drive, which is not driven by sexual or libidinal impulses towards pleasure. She credits Bowlby with the positive side of longings for social affiliation and attachments, and with the consequent suffering of grief in loss, as being basic to the human condition. She even sees the grief related to separation from old attachments as being an experience that links to love, as it implies love lost, and I suppose as it renews the capacity to love when grief is tolerated. However, in citing Bowlby and not Melanie Klein (Bowlby's analyst), Biven limits grief to separation in a behavioral sense, because Bowlby's studies were all behavioral while Klein's studies are all clinical. So Biven does not venture into the symbolic meaning of mourning a particular loved one and how this can take place in psychoanalysis (see Kavaler-Adler on “Developmental Mourning,” 1992a,1993/2013a, 1995, 1996/2014a, 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005, 2006, , , 2018). She sees Bowlby mainly as a pioneer in psychoanalytic theory, which goes beyond Freud, and does see Grief as an important category of the emotional brain systems. She credits Heinz Kohut in going beyond Freud in proposing “narcissistic affirmation” (Biven, p. 37) as another avenue of psychoanalytic speculation that bypasses the limits of Freud's two-drive systems.
Nevertheless, Biven's point here is to again point out the limits of psychoanalytic theory. She declares that the neurological theory of emotional brain systems expands our horizons much further than even these later pioneers in psychoanalytic theories. Then she proceeds to valorize specific ones within the overall seven. She thinks psychoanalysts neglect
the area of “seeking” that has “euphoric anticipation” at its positive pole, while they have come to acknowledge Bowlby's views on Attachment.
Biven sees the emotional system of seeking as leading to the growth of the brain towards the independence of the self, or what I would call “self agency.” I would beg to differ regarding seeing psychoanalysts as neglecting the growth of “agency.” Other than the obvious roots of psychoanalytic thinking about “agency” in Margaret Mahler (1971, 1975) in terms of the Practicing Period within the wider scope of “Separation-Individuation,” I would point to my own writings on the growth of “Agency,” as well as those of Melanie Klein on her theory of Reparation in the Depressive Position (Klein, 1937). In 2006 I published two articles in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis entitled “From Neurotic Guilt to Existential Grief: On the Way to Compassion, Agency, and Interiority,” Part One and Part Two. I show in these two articles the organic evolution of self agency, along with many other ego functions, as a natural mourning process proceeds in developmental terms during intensive Object Relations psychoanalysis, along with separation-individuation, self integration, and transference analysis. This mourning involves separation grief, but also the abandonment affect states written about by James Masterson (1976, 1981, 1985, 2000), and the depressive position guilt and loss (regret, Kavaler-Adler, 2013) process of Melanie Klein. See also Kavaler-Adler on The Anatomy of Regret…(2013) and “The Conflict and Process Theory of Melanie Klein (1992).
Here again Lucy Biven asserts her critique of the limitations of psychoanalytic theory by speaking of how neuroscientific empirical research has shown that Rage is not inevitably pleasurable, but rather is extremely unpleasant. She cites Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein (Biven, p. 35) as fallaciously declaring aggression to be pleasurable. In contradiction, Biven quotes Pankseg's 1998 research-based observation that “Rage arousal is an unpleasant experience, except of course, when one is about to win the day.” Rage is one of the seven emotional brain systems.
I propose that psychoanalytic thinking has progressed beyond Hartmann, Kris and Lowenstein's theory that aggression (rage, sado-masochism) is
pleasurable. I think we have more clinical evidence than in the past that aggression is addictive because of its intensity. However, addictive attraction to intensity is not the same as pleasure. Intensity is powerfully addictive, in masochism, as well as in sadism, which is why “Kink” has become a prevalent theory and practice. In fact, today there are even “kink” therapists. Affection is pleasant, but lacks the intensity of sado-masochism. Therefore, it does not seem to have the same addictive magnetism. Also, ego/self contained assertive aggression is not as addictive as sadism and masochism. It can give a sense of power and agency, but it lacks the intensity of Rage and sadism. The growth of self agency and assertion are pleasurable. Still they lack addictive intensity.
Biven speaks of the sympathetic nervous system as being responsible for fight versus flight self-protective instincts. She also speaks of the paranoid aspects of the psychic reactions that accompany such black and white fight and flight behavior. I propose that this nervous system's reactions can be likened to Melanie Klein's “paranoid-schizoid position” psychodynamics. When Biven offers the example of gastro-intestinal difficulties being body reactions of the fight and flight, black and white, primitive mode of the sympathetic nervous system, I think of a patient's “knots in the stomach.” Knots in the stomach can be the body expression of knotty psychic conflicts that haven't made it beyond the visceral level, into consciousness, because of defensive opposition to unconscious rage that threatens self-sabotaging self-destruction. The visceral level symptom is a compromise formation. It is a compromise between expression and total dissociation. The dissociated visceral level psychic conflict can lead to an analytic patient's associating to the internal world Object who their rage is felt toward. I've witnessed the opening of the psychic visceral knots. Consciousness emerges, most frequently, with the expression of anger/resentment towards the analyst in the transference. We can see here the projection, projective-identification, and the splitting of the paranoid-schizoid position (Klein, 1946). Bringing the rage and projection to the conscious level, where symbolic meaning for interpersonal communication can be found modifies the paranoid-schizoid visceral reactivity, and encourages movement into the depressive position conscious affect experience, which articulates the growing dimensions of
the evolving subjective self.
Biven describes the Para-sympathetic nervous system as a center for grief and loss, and for affiliation attachment affects that cause physiological arousal. Given this description, I would like to point out the analogy of this neurological system to Melanie Klein's other main psychological position (a position of core anxieties, core defenses, and core affects), the depressive position. In the depressive position the main anxieties are related to fears of losing the object, of losing love, and of losing the Object due to one's own aggression. Consequently, loss and existential guilt—(not Fairbairn's spurious Moral Masochism guilt, 1952)—are felt together, not just as separation loss. Rather, loss is linked to the awareness of one's own aggression destroying relationship. When Biven speaks of the visceral arousal of “a lump in the throat,” and an “urge to weep” as related to the grief and loneliness that can be felt in the Parasympathetic neurological body, she is speaking of someone who may be unconsciously experiencing Melanie Klein's depressive position affect states of “pining for the Object,” feeling the loss of the Object, experiencing loneliness without the Object, and possibly the existential grief of regret related to awareness of “hurting the one you love.”
Ironically, Biven has a reference to a Klein in her paper, but it is not a reference to Melanie Klein.
She does have references to Ronald Fairbairn (his 1952 collected papers) and to Bowlby and Kohut. It is not irrelevant that John Bowlby was Melanie Klein's analysand, who went out and did empirical animal research on Melanie Klein's theories of both mourning and of reparation, and who then went back to Klein and said “I have been proving your theories.” The fact that Klein was too arrogant to accept this empirical contribution with any grace or gracious thank you—claiming that she didn't need such empirical validation to know it's true—does not detract from the profound bond that Bowlby felt with Melanie Klein in his motivation for his research.
Biven gives a nod to Freud, although mainly focusing on the limitations of his thinking, in relation to what we know today, and to what we know today in neurological research. A majority of Biven's references are to
those looking specifically at neurology, and not at psychoanalysis. She totally lacks any reference at all to Melanie Klein's work. To me this is shocking, particularly because Melanie Klein's theory is the strongest theory of affects and affective experience, both conscious and unconscious. Ruth Stein wrote a major paper on this, and then a book containing her study of Klein on affect theory, in 1991, entitled “Psychoanalytic theories of affects.” I have written books and articles on my theory of “Developmental Mourning” (Kavaler-Adler, 2007), which always is seen in relation to Melanie Klein's developmental view of affect progression, and accompanying psychic fantasy, going back to “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic Depressive States” in 1940. Melanie Klein's theories of progression from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position, and within the depressive position, speak of the progression towards more refined and differentiated affects, as the psyche progresses developmentally toward self integration.
So how is this not essentially relevant to any discussion of emotional systems in the brain, where affects originate? Also lacking is the abandonment depression affect state theory of James Masterson, with all its developmental understanding of character disorders, which goes back to Melanie Klein and Ronald Fairbairn (1952).
Nevertheless, I believe we owe a debt to Lucy Biven for her forays into the neurological brain psychology that helps us understand the various modes of emotion. I just request she progresses into the area of symbolic meaning, and into the subjective experience of the Self and Other within the Internal World. To me, these psychological areas characterize the essence of psychoanalysis, as opposed to behavioral symptomatology. In the end, the brain is a concrete Beta “thing in itself” (see Ogden on Bion, 1986, Bion, 1963), as opposed to a psyche employing symbolic level psychological processing, called “Alpha function” by Wilfred Bion (Bion, 1963). Wilfred Bion was also an analysand of Melanie Klein's, who extended Klein's theories in many directions, including into the interpersonal realm of “the container and the contained,” for active clinical symbolic meaning processing, on the part of the psychoanalyst. He also spoke of “the attacks on linking” (Bion, 1959) that operated in dissociated ways in the mind to evacuate affects, as well as interpretations from the analyst, before anything could be felt or communicated in the symbolic language of words.