How Will Psychoanalysis Integrate New Scientific Developments?

This report summarizes a panel (M. Murphy, 2000) that addressed the implications of new directions in science for psychoanalysis and for therapeutic technique. Elizabeth Mayer discussed empirical and theoretical developments in the sciences that point to a connected quality of physical reality. The notion of a connected or participatory universe has far-reaching implications for understanding what takes place in the clinical encounter. David Brin discussed the need for theories of human nature to consider the concept of emergent properties, the tendency of complex systems to reorganize themselves in ways that cannot be predicted. He discussed a recent emergent property of the personality system, the defiance of authority, which he described as a societal immune system against error. Both panelists stressed the need for open-mindedness in psychoanalytic conceptions of reality and of human nature.

Maureen Murphy, the moderator, opened the panel by noting that new and forthcoming developments in the biological sciences promise to tell us much about our origins, our history, and our future, as well as to influence who we are and who we become. However, psychoanalysis has been slow to confront these changes, perhaps because clinicians have difficulty