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.
In the summer of 2000, inspired by the First International Conference on Neuro-Psychoanalysis (London), the Neuropsychoanalysis Research Unit was established at the Department of Psychoanalysis and Counseling Psychology of Ghent University, Belgium. Its uniqueness lies in the combination of the historical, phenomenological, psychoanalytical, epistemological and neuroscientific approaches to the mind–body problem.
Our department has long had an interest in the history of psychoanalysis and, more broadly, of psychology. Translations into Dutch of various early psychoanalytical texts, a close study of Freud's so-called preanalytical writings, and the organization of several meetings on that topic can bear witness to this interest. The most important international meeting in that regard certainly was the one organized at the University of Ghent in May 1995, on “Freud's Preanalytical Writings,” at which scholars from different disciplines and diverging psychoanalytical orientations stressed the importance of that part of Freud's work for current research in the intersection of neuroscience and psychoanalysis. A French book with a selection of the presented lectures was published with L'Harmattan ( Aux sources de la psychoanalyse, 1998). An English volume will come out shortly with Rebus Press.
With respect to the psychoanalytic approach, the research unit is characterized by the input of the Lacanian theory and clinical practice, which is studied in addition to and in combination with the Freudian viewpoint. Beyond Lacanian dogma and beyond what may seem at first sight to be its esoteric terminology, we focus on the relations between the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, as well as on the crucial role played by the signifier in shaping the psychic system. In this regard, the supposed circular causality between mind and body, or between symbol and matter, should be made operational and linked with detailed empirical research. In this way, it ought to be possible to take