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For the psychoanalyst who is curious about what is going on in the brain that underlies the subjective dynamics we work with, Jaak Panksepp's Affective Neuroscience sounds instantly interesting, of course. For the analyst who finds neuroscience incomprehensible or irrelevant, however, this book is equally worth opening for several reasons. It provides a tremendously reader-friendly introduction to the brain; it focuses on something that makes sense to an analyst, the emotions; and it offers data on practically every page which, in exhilarating ways, supports, complements, or challenges central aspects of psychoanalytic thought.
In the preceding pages Dr. Kernberg has presented a thorough overview of Affective Neuroscience, so this review will focus on several aspects of Panksepp's central premise—that emotions are hardwired—which relate to psychoanalysis. I will not expand on the other themes in this important book, but the reader should know that Panksepp offers data on a number of other aspects of emotion of central interest to psychoanalysis. He describes how the emotional circuits are relatively “open” systems that are highly influenced by experience, and how emotional systems interact with each other; he argues that emotions play a central role in consciousness; and he presents a model for the neurobiological seat of the self.
One of the most exciting aspects of this book is the sheer weight of evidence, eloquently explicated by Panksepp, that emotions are hard-wired. The basic emotions which have so far been studied have discrete circuitries and neurochemistries, although they overlap and interpenetrate in many cases. These basic emotional systems as delineated by Panksepp are the SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, CARE, PANIC (separation distress), LUST, and PLAY systems. (Panksepp capitalizes the terms to indicate that he is using these terms scientifically to delineate specific neural systems, although I find it easy to hold onto the scientific specificity of the terms wit