You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
DeLuca's paper presents the psychoanalyst with several interesting points: an accurate examination of a pathological phenomenon (confabulation) whose definition, uniqueness, and causality are still under discussion; an alternative model constructed on the cognitive neuroscience perspective emphasizing the differences between the various forms of confabulation; and the possibility of comparison with psychoanalytic theories, specifically relative to this phenomenon as well as in a wider sense concerning the verisimilitude of certain statements of Freudian metapsychology.
The neurosciences can offer to psychoanalysis some tools that allow one to verify the biological plausibility of certain psychoanalytic hypotheses and to find confirmation or refutation of them in the experimental field, while psychoanalysis can supply the neurosciences with a heuristic potential that cannot be underestimated. In these brief notes I will try to illustrate this viewpoint.
My task in presenting these notes is greatly facilitated by Mark Solms's comment, which excuses me from describing the fundamental principles of the Freudian topographical model of the mind (Freud, 1900, 1911, 1915). With the addition of examples taken from his clinical experience with bilateral ventromesial frontal lesioned patients, Solms highlights what is essential to the Freudian task: the problem of the psychoanalyst is not only to construct a causal hypothesis, but above all to find meaning in the manifestations of psychic life. This is evidenced by the different consideration that the symptoms merit in DeLuca's work and in the discussion by Solms. The latter emphasizes the fact that behind the “positive” (or “productive”) manifestations of the organic lesions, there are “underlying wishes,” in consonance with the Freudian model of the mind. It is therefore clear that while DeLuca will put the accent on the deficit, the psychoanalyst will also emphasize the “productive” aspect of the symptom and its meaning.
It mi