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In recent years, a dialogue has developed between cognitive science and psychoanalysis. The goal of this dialogue seems to be to formulate a theoretical and conceptual integration of the two. We argue that this movement toward integration has overlooked an age-old debate concerning the primacy of rationality and thought (now in the guise of cognition) versus the primacy of irrationality and emotion (now championed by psychoanalysis), which may unalterably divide these two schools. A brief summary of this affect versus cognition debate in Western intellectual history is presented, followed by a review of contemporary empirical work. Both illustrate how affect and cognition refer to qualitatively different modes of mental processing. A presentation of the respective foci, investigative methods, and models of cognitive science and psychoanalysis further bears out how these two approaches polarize along these dimensions. As long as these issues remain unresolved, conceptual integration is premature. We therefore propose a methodological integration in which
The authors are on the faculty, Derner Institute, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York.
Preparation of this chapter was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health First Award Grant 1 R29 MH48955-01A1 to Joel Weinberger.
the research methods and tools of cognitive science are employed to test psychoanalytic propositions, with the goals of furthering a scientific foundation for psychoanalytic theory and enriching the cognitive science model of the mind. Two research programs, which exemplify such an integration, are briefly described.