The Brain as Object of Phantasy: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Neurobiological Reductionism

Within the scientific and wider culture there endures a pervasive assumption: mental life is reducible to physical brain states. Neuroscientific inquiry commonly rests upon this neurobiological reductionist assumption, and clinical experience increasingly attests to such forms of thinking brought into the consulting room. As the notion of the body as object of unconscious phantasy evolves in psychoanalytic discourse, the brain emerges as a unique locus of inquiry. The present study is concerned with the unconscious dynamics underlying individual and collective representations of the brain, particularly the assumption of neurobiological reductionism as it is expressed implicitly and explicitly in the clinical and research context. I postulate a psychoanalytic interpretation of this position based upon a mind–body dissociation model, drawing upon Bion’s theory of functions and contemporary renderings. In brief, I conceive of this form of reductionism as sustained by a dissociation between material and psychical representations of self and other, serving as a defense against anxieties associated with relational ambivalence and the unknown. Neuroscientific and clinical material is described which serves to illustrate these ideas. This discussion presents a conceptual heuristic which can be utilized in clinical, scientific, and wider discourse concerning our relationship to the brain.