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Dear Editor,
Talvitie and Ihanus (2011) are right to posit and then to question the metaphysical assumptions behind neuropsychoanalysis, or for that matter any other scientific enterprise (p. 1588), and they correctly state that: “as far as psychoanalytic explanations refer to the mental unconscious, they cannot be verified with the help of neuroscience” (p. 1583, Abstract). But it seems to me that they have neglected some important problems common to all the conceptions that came under their scrutiny, including the ‘interfield conception’ they advocate.
Like Blass and Carmeli (2007), I believe that psychoanalysis is an autonomous discipline, endowed with a specific method and an object of study of its own, and that it would be misguided to look in other fields, such as the neurosciences, for ‘proof’ of any of its tenets. However, I maintain that, just like any other discipline, psychoanalysis can learn from what happens in the neighbouring fields. For instance, it is important to know of neurological