Bulletin of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

As the oldest member of the South Brazil Group, and a founding member of the International Society of Neuropsychoanalysis, I invited the members of our group to introduce themselves to you, the reader, as you may be from the region and not know how to get in touch or to dive into the field! My name is Maria Sonia Goergen, MD, and you can read about me at another section.

As we come from various regions in the South, we will start with a few here and continue in the next bulletin.

Fabio Thá

In the heat of the debate about lay analysis, Freud wrote: “I only want to feel assured that the therapy will not destroy the science.” This is a real risk for psychoanalysis, not only for its therapeutic dimension, but mainly for its historical characteristics since it is a discipline that has grown on the fringes of official “science.” We know that this marginal position was never desired by Freud, who always fought for psychoanalysis to remain within the scientific community. Therefore, it is essential for psychoanalysts not to alienate themselves from the scientific discussions of their time, to be willing to dialogue and expose themselves to criticism. They should not view their theory as a dogmatic body of knowledge but as a scaffold in the construction of the theoretical building. This attitude is opposed to the tendency of the organized groups (and with analysts it is not different) to close themselves off and stick to unquestionable dogmas.

As far as I know, after Freud, only twice has psychoanalysis opened to the scientific debate of the day. The first time was in the 1950s, when Jacques Lacan promoted its rapprochement with the formalism that was then announced as the great tool for understanding mental processes. However, the Lacanian movement suffered the same fate of the groups, isolating itself from the scientific debate.

The second time was in the 1990s when neuroscience and psychoanalysis set out to build bridges between the two disciplines. As