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In this issue of Neuropsychoanalysis, three original articles cover topics that range from metapsychological concepts to novel perspectives on psychopathology. Readers will find much to contemplate: nuanced explorations of several recent neuroscience models that have stimulated lots of neuropsychoanalytic ideas, such as the free energy principle, the default mode network and the basic emotion systems; and original research on the development of the basic mother-infant relationship, which adds to the literature on that topic with a rich qualitative perspective.
If there were any doubts about the role Freudian metapsychology would play in the new discipline of neuropsychoanalysis, one would be well advised to look to this journal’s very first edition, featuring the article “Affect and the Integration Problem of Mind and Brain” (1999), by the master metapsychologist Barry Opatow. That brilliant offering foreshadowed metapsychology’s placement as the bridge between mind and brain. Over the years, highly profitable metapsychological explorations of dreams, consciousness, drive theory and defenses ensued. Still, perhaps nothing could rival the neuropsychoanalytic generativity of Karl Friston’s theories about free energy and predictive coding. This leading neuroscientist of the modern era (Bohannon, 2016), in his 2010 article “The Default-mode, Ego-functions and Free-energy: A Neurobiological Account of Freudian Ideas,” co-authored with Robin Carhart-Harris (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2010), ushered in a renewed appreciation of the significance of Freud’s economic metapsychological perspective. His collaboration with Mark Solms eventually led to the Solms’ landmark reworking of Freud’s Project, “New Project for a Scientific Psychology,” which we published last year (Solms, 2020).
Adding to that developing literature, in this current issue we are offered two articles inspired by Friston’s revolutionary neuroscientific work and grounded in psychoanalytic principles. Novac and B