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Evolutionary and psychoanalytic theory have long interacted, but full integration was impeded by metapsychology, which could not be validated empirically. This paper links the ethological and evolutionary concepts of dominance and territoriality to the analytic concepts of oedipal psychodynamics and narcissism, thus providing a conceptual bridge between the two theories.
Cultural evolution, which can operate through downward causation, is now the dominant force affecting mankind's future development, and coexists symbiotically with genetic evolution. The psychoanalytic movement is an advanced component of the resulting noosphere.
Freud's work and life reveal diffuse intellectualized phallic narcissism, as does the psychoanalytic culture he generated.
This paper was presented at the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, January 2000.
Dr. Whitehead teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Department of Psychiatry; Member, North Carolina Psychoanalytic Society. He was formerly Associate Clinical Professor, University of California, Los Angeles Department of Psychiatry; Faculty, Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute.
Acknowledgments. Thanks to Sheila Hafter Gray, M.D., Heather Craige, M.S.W., Michael McGuire, M.D., and Professor Joshua Lederberg for their helpful critiques.
During the 1950s and 1960s, these elements contributed to a period of stasis followed by renaissance, which among other innovations, produced evolutionary psychiatry and evolutionary psychoanalysis as well as revisions in the theory, technique, and organization of the psychoanalytic movement.
These developments may be seen as advanced manifestations of cultural evolution resulting in reintegration and modulation of genetically derived intellectual phallic complexes. When these culturally manifested instinctual transformations are analyzed we define a new paradigm, psychoanalytic evolution, which could have profound impact in guiding a therapeutic cultural evolution.