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Carmeli, Z., & Blass, R. (2013). The case against neuroplastic analysis: A further illustration of the irrelevance of neuroscience to psychoanalysis through a critique of Doidge's “The Brain that Changes Itself.” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 94(2), 391–410.
Wilson, B. (2014). Are psychoanalysis and neuropsychology compatible? In S. Cooper & Ratele, Kopano (Eds), Psychology serving humanity. Proceedings of the 30th international congress of psychology (pp. 84–90). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Neuropsychoanalysis is by definition an interdisciplinary enterprise, a dialogical effort, a hyphen. Some authors have referred to it as a link between psychoanalytic schools and the neurosciences, or as the attempt to insert psychoanalysis into the neurosciences (Solms & Turnbull, 2011). In a field constituted by the coexistence of different perspectives, it is expected that issues of identity may arise. From time to time, then, the question of what is neuropsychoanalysis reemerges. I would like to comment here on two recent publications that turn our attention to these matters. Although this is not the normal theme of the digest, which typically surveys empirical research, recent pieces that address the entire enterprise also seem worthy of mention in this section occasionally.
In 2007, Blass and Carmeli, two psychoanalysts, wrote a polemical paper entitled “The case against neuropsychoanalysis: On fallacies underlying psychoanalysis' latest scientific trend and its negative impact on psychoanalytic discourse.” In this article, the authors questioned the potential value of neuroscientific findings for psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly regarding four topics: trauma and memory, motivation and affect, dream theory, and theories of the mind. The main argument put forth by these authors was that neuroscience can tell us about the biology of the mind but it cannot tell us about the meaningfulness of that biological