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Neuropsychoanalysis, as the readers of this journal study and practice it, tries to be a common ground to the various “schools” of psychoanalysis, which grew out of a multitude of single-case studies and the clash of personalities, different cultures, and disparate backgrounds. They all start with the knowledge of Freud’s theories, as he developed them – rich picking grounds to choose from. A sometimes underestimated problem while reading Freud is the translation of his work from German into other languages, because, as we know, the meaning of a text can subtly change in translation.
These two books, recently added to the Routledge Neuropsychoanalysis Series edited by Mark Solms, are good illustrations of that endeavor to find common ground and the strong feelings it elicits.
I read strong feelings in The unconscious in neuroscience and psychoanalysis: On Lacan and Freud by Marco Balzarini. In five chapters, he tries to show the danger to (Lacanian) psychoanalysis from the neurosciences. In his view, neuroscience affirms that “Freud” can be explained with neuropsychoanalysis. This poses, in his opinion, a danger to true psychoanalysis: it may be prohibited! So in this book, he proposes to show how the Freudian/Lacanian unconscious – a central concept in psychoanalysis – differs from the unconscious that neuroscience conceives.
In the first chapter, Balzarini explores the concept of the unconscious in current neuroscience. A smorgasbord of neuroscientific findings is presented and placed in relation to Lacanian thinking. We encounter neuroplasticity of the brain, procedural memory, and the contrasting views of localization versus functionalism in brain research. Drive and motor activity are placed in relation to the Lacanian concept of jouissance. Balzarini criticizes the perspective that language can be seen as information processing, which, in his view, reduces the mind to a machine. The affective consciousness of Solms is discussed, as is the idea that libido is the