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ARTICLE HISTORY Received 16 March 2022; Accepted 17 March 2022
In his article “Some Implications of New Developments in Neurobiology for Psychoanalytic Object Relations,” Kernberg (2021) applies neurobiological insights to psychoanalytic drive theory, placing it within the continuum of human motivation from biology to psychology. He revisits and revises the psychoanalytic theory of dual drives and the formation of the dynamic unconscious mind in view of the recent neuroscientific findings of affective brain systems - particularly considered through the formulations of Kleinian object relations theory (Klein, 1946). The main thesis of the article assigns a primary motivational role to the affective brain systems and their expression within the matrix of object relations.
This commentary finds (1) emphatic agreement with the formulations of the main thesis but (2) disagreement with its wider premises, namely those related to the concept of the drives.
To summarize our agreement briefly: Kernberg emphasizes that the affective brain systems fall into two categories: the positive “affiliative” one of CARE/LUST/PLAY and the negative “antagonistic” one of PANIC-GRIEF/RAGE/FEAR. These positive and negative affects color early experiences of infant-mother object relations as “good” and “bad.” To use Melanie Klein’s monikers, they are “good breast” experiences - if satisfying, or “bad breast,” if frustrating (Klein, 1946). The valence of the affective systems in the brain maps onto the infant’s experiences of nascent object relations. The self and object aspects get coupled and internalized under the affiliative “positive” and antagonistic “negative” affects. These experiential couplings become building blocks for the development of the mind along the pleasure-unpleasure axis. The psychoanalytic insights of object relations theory are thereby connected to the neurobiological properties of the brain.
The identification of the existence of affective systems in the brain provides a