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Dr. Shapiro has said more about the whole enterprise of integrating psychoanalysis with neuroscience than about the structural model or the ego per se. However, one cannot choose the criticisms which come one's way, and since Dr. Shapiro is unlikely to be the only person who has such grave reservations about what I am up to, I welcome this opportunity to clarify my position in relation to the fundamental questions that he has raised. Once we have placed these questions behind us, I hope we can move on to the scientific questions that I had thought we would discuss, namely, the psychological proposals that I have advanced in relation to the anatomical realization of the ego.
I must apologize at the outset for the fact that much of what I am going to say is abstruse and philosophical. Unfortunately, that cannot be helped, because the objections which Dr. Shapiro has raised are primarily philosophical objections. He has not disagreed with my empirical findings or theoretical proposals; rather he has questioned their philosophical foundations.
As I understand his paper, Dr. Shapiro is struggling with the following basic issues. He accepts that there can be no minds without brains, but in the belief that I am suggesting that we can reduce the mind to the brain, he argues strongly for the retention of a psychological approach to the mind. Since he seems to believe that I am saying that neurons are identical with thoughts, he finds it necessary to remind me that an action potential is not a thought, that it is a unit of brain activity. On this basis Dr. Shapiro defends what he considers to be the unfashionable viewpoint of Cartesian dualism. He reminds us that, although it is not often recognized, this viewpoint has been