You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychoanalysts have recognized that our theory of mind is untenable. Attempts have been made to forsake the scientific aspirations of metapsychology by basing psychoanalysis on social/interpersonal or hermeneutic foundations. Such projects have helped rid clinical practice of destructive influences of outmoded theory. Yet we have not been able to replace metapsychology, for no alternative theory conforms as well to the reality of internal conflict and defense. The result of this impasse has been internal conflict and defensiveness within the psychoanalytic community, reflecting hopelessness about the possibilities of grounding psychoanalytic work on objective knowlege.
Meanwhile, from neurophysiology, cognitive science, and developmental research, elements of a scientific model of the mind have begun to converge. In this important monograph, Wilma Bucci integrates these elements into a theory that is both compatible with the clinical observations of psychoanalysis and accessible to objective investigation and modification.
The brain appears to be modular, composed of semiautonomous information processors dedicated to particular tasks. The result is “an imperfect device; the new and powerful representational system of language has been overlaid on a set of other representational systems that were previously in place, but without adequate mechanisms for integration of the systems having been developed” (p. 321). The various modes of functioning of these diverse representational systems constitute the “multiple codes” of the book's title. Bucci divides these systems into two distinct types: symbolic and subsymbolic (perhaps an unfortunate term). Language is the preeminent symbolic system. It utilizes discrete entities (words), with arbitrary referents and logically structured interrelations, and processes them sequentially. Symbolic processing also occurs in nonverbal systems, particularly in visual thinking, where sensory images can serve as the discrete symbolic entiti