Kant's Philosophy and its Relationship with the Thought of Bion and Money-Kyrle1

The authors assess the significance of the rediscovery of Kant's philosophy of mind, which in their view offers valuable insights into the basis of conscious and unconscious mental life, protomental structures and the organisation of the internal world. They draw attention to the importance of distinguishing between brain culture, as represented by the neurosciences in particular, and mind culture. The process of internalisation begun by Kant is stated to have been continued by present-day psychoanalysis, whose theories furnish some additional categories of the intellect. The ideas of Bion and Money-Kyrle are considered in the light of Kantian philosophy. The authors show how Kant's revolutionary shift from enquiring into things to enquiring into our mode of knowing them implied that the objects of experience were determined by the transcendental functions of the mind, seen as a priori elements. Space and time as pure intuitions, together with the categories of the intellect organised by the ‘I think’, were held by Kant to make knowledge possible. Noting that the unconscious is not to be equated with the Kantian noumenon, the author contend that Kant's epistemology can help psychoanalysis today to reflect on the epistemic status of its own referent, the conscious and unconscious mind, as well as of its procedures and predicates.