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.
IN WHAT FOLLOWS I SHALL MAKE AN ATTEMPT TO DELINEATE aspects of the biology of the mental apparatus—the biology of the mind. Let me explain in a few words the background assumptions which underlie this approach.
Freud and other analysts, using the psychoanalytic couch as their laboratory, have discovered important psychological concepts describing the mental apparatus. Since, in my view, solid descriptions of the mental apparatus will turn out to be descriptions of brain processes (see below), I believe we can, in principle, find a biology of these concepts, and I believe considerable data are already available for a beginning in this direction.
My approach is consistent with the view that psychoanalysis is a natural science (Freud, 1933); (H. Hartmann, 1950); (Brenner, 1981) and thus basically a biological science. Clearly, I am not in agreement with the view that psychoanalysis belongs in a "universe of discourse" separate from that of the other sciences (Gill and Holzman, 1976) or the view that psychoanalysis should avoid substantive, metapsychological concepts altogether (Schafer, 1976). And my approach does not involve throwing out psychoanalytic explanations of dreaming, for instance, and