Toward a Materialist Metapsychology: Major Operating Principles of the Brain Provide a Blueprint for a Fundamentally Psychodynamic Infrastructure: Commentary on Margaret R. Zellner's Paper

Perhaps much later than one would have wished, Freud's lifelong efforts to develop a comprehensive theory of mind is finally attracting attention from neuroscientists. I refer to the remarkable paper by Carhart-Harris and Friston that appeared in Brain in 2010, and now Zellner's (2012) paper honoring Kandel, appearing in this issue. I recommend that these two papers be read together because they aim at the same goal, but in vastly different ways. The goal they share is to demonstrate how the elements of Freud's theory fit remarkably well with current neuroscience brain findings. But how they do it is remarkably different.

Friston creates a brain model from the standpoint of how it moves and functions as a dynamic machine and how these functions relate to Freud's theory, but the model is short on localization. Zellner, as the title of her paper states, offers us a blueprint that is rich in localization and in how Freud's theory squares with what we know about localization, but is short on how its workings relate to Freud's theory.

One important consequence of this difference is revealed in how each model deals with Freud's metapsychology. Given that Freud looked upon his metapsychology as containing the basic explanatory principles of his theory, how each model deals with the metapsychology is central. Zellner in fact acknowledges this by promising in her title to show how a “materialist metapsychology” is embodied in the localized functioning of the brain. Friston,