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“Freud's Model of Dreams and the Neurobiology of Sexuality”
Under my coordination, the Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Chapter of the APA began meeting in August 2003, with the aim of studying the fundamentals of neuroscience and the bases for major concepts in psychoanalysis and their clinical applications. In the first stage, we have touched upon the origins of psychoanalysis and neuroscience through Freud's works on aphasia and the “Project” (1895), with the intention of correlating certain concepts of the “Project” with contemporary neuroscientific thinking.
The chapter has monthly meetings and is open to both members and nonmembers of the APA alike. During the spring of 2004, we have been working on the subject of dreams with the object of determining whether it is possible to find a correlation between the Freudian dream model (Freud, 1900) as a wish fulfilment (with its origin in early infancy and containing sexually repressed material) and the properties of the neurobiological system, which, hypothetically, we consider to be the neurobiological mediator in the search for situations of sexual pleasure.
Freud's contribution, through the study of dreams and of science in general, highlights that dreams make sense and introduces the interpretative-hermeneutic method, thus producing an important epistemological modification. For the fulfilment of desires, a central axis is given in their origin in infancy and containing previously repressed sexual desires.
We have studied the SEEKING system (SS) described by Panksepp (1998), a system that acts as mediator in brain-mind interactions, as in the case of dreams with childhood sexual content. The group arrived at the following conclusions:
“Dreams are the fulfillment of desires.”
“Dreams are the fulfillment of desires that appear disguised.”
“Dreams are the disguised fulfillment of repressed desires.”
“Dreams are the disguised fulfillment of repressed childhood sexual desires.”
Panksepp's SS has the following main characteris