The newly formed International Society for Neuro-Psychoanalysis held its first conference, sponsored by the Anna Freud Centre, in London, July 20–23, 2000. The meetings, which were organized by Mark Solms on the topic of “Neuroscientific and Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Emotion,” attracted 420 delegates from all parts of the world. About half of the participants who came to hear Oliver Sacks, Mark Solms, Antonio Damasio, and Jaak Panksepp speak were from the United States.
Neurologist and author Sacks observed that not since 1914 had neuroscientists and psychoanalysts been as interested in learning from each other. In that year, A. R. Luria, a Russian neuropsychologist in close communication with Freud, organized a conference on Tourette's syndrome for representatives of both disciplines. With the advent of the Communist revolution, Luria had to renounce his interest in psychoanalysis. Since then, said Sacks, neuroscientists and psychoanalysts had barely been on speaking terms. Now they face the necessary and difficult challenge of developing a common language as they attempt to find “points of contact” between the two disciplines.
As an analytically trained neuropsychologist and co-editor of the new journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis, Mark Solms is in the unique position of straddling both disciplines. In his overview of Freud's theory of affect, he pointed out that psychoanalysts and neuroscientists “are studying the same thing … the human mind and how it works.” Neuroscience studies the outer surface of human consciousness, Solms said, while psychoanalysis makes its inferences about the mind by studying the inner world.
For many psychoanalysts and a small but growing number of neuroscientists, emotion represents the primary sensory modality of the inner world According to Solms, Freud's writings on drive-discharge and pleasure-unpleasure are highly consistent with the latest neuroscience texts regarding the role of emotion in regulating homeostasis. Freud also anticipated current writings on evolutionary biology by positing that basic patterns of discharge, laid down in early childhood in the form of emotions, compel a caretaker to attend the helpless infant, thus ensuring its survival. Although these patterns of discharge undergo further elaboration with ego development, they represent an underlying substrate to the mind's functioning that provides a point of contact with neuroscience.
Photo by Beatrice Smimow
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, author of Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens, presented a model of affect that attempts, as Freud's did, to integrate mind with body. Damasio defined emotion as follows:
Emotions are based on collections of chemical and neural responses that form a pattern; they are engendered by chemical mechanisms, not neural discharge onto an organ.
All emotions, even negative ones, play a regulatory role, creating circumstances advantageous to the organism exhibiting them.
Emotions depend on brain devices shaped by evolution, although learning and culture can alter their expression and give them new meaning.
Damasio's model of affect makes an important distinction between emotions and feelings. Emotions are psycho-physiological phenomena, representing complex but stereotypical patterns of responses that may be observed either visually or via instruments, e.g., when increases in respiration and blood pressure accompany intense affect. In contrast, feelings are subjective experiences corresponding to a set of internal images. These images are based on sensory neural patterns that map basic emotional responses.
The model begins with an object, situation, or memory of which the individual may or may not be conscious. Processing the object's image produces signals that activate emotion induction sites, which are genetically and experientially pre-set to respond. These sites are largely subcortical, but — depending on the emotion involved — they also include some cortical sectors of the brain. For example, the amygdala is activated by fear-inducing stimuli, while the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is “turned on” by external and internal inducers of sadness. Activation of the emotion induction sites triggers a full range of body and brain responses (chemical, visceral, and musculoskeletal) that constitute the emotional state.
In the body, a set of multi-dimensional neural patterns are activated that lead to changes in the individual organism's somatosensory representations, e.g., heightened visual acuity in the face of danger. The organism's cognitive state is altered with the release of neuromodulators, such as opioid or analgesic substances produced in response to fight/flight.
The transfer from emotion to feeling occurs when an individual senses his emotional state. How he comes to know what he feels — how sensory neural patterns are transformed into an image in the mind — is a problem having to do with consciousness that, according to Damasio, has not yet been solved. Significantly, Damasio's model recognizes that the experience of a feeling, whether conscious or unconscious, can lead to further activation of specific emotion-induction sites.
Beatrice W. Smirnow, Ph.D., is a child/adult analyst in Alexandria, Va., and a faculty member of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Neuro-Psychoanalysis, which began publication in 1999, is the official organ of the International Society for Neuro-Psychoanalysis. Subscription information is available on the Web at or from the publisher, UIP, at 1-800-835-3487 or by e-mail at . A longer version of this article will be appearing in an upcoming issue of the journal.
Jaak Panksepp, author of Affective Neuroscience, followed Damasio with a verbal and video presentation that demonstrated that human beings and animals are profoundly similar with regard to four basic neurochemically mediated affect systems:
A seeking system related to an animal's interest and delight in exploratory behavior.
A rage system activated by frustration.
A fear response system, associated in human beings with intense anxiety.
A panic system that underlies attachment and social bonding.
Panksepp emphasized that the effects of the neuropeptides, which mediate the panic system (oxytocin, prolactin, dopamine, and opioids), are dependent on socially supportive environments. In autistic children, for example, opioid antagonists, which increase an animal's responsiveness, work best in a context of social support. Similarly, therapy has been shown through imaging studies to have a biological effect on the brain. In a general discussion at the end of the conference, many from the audience spoke of feeling excited and stimulated by what they had heard but also frustrated by the difficulty of identifying the “points of contact” to which several speakers referred. Some mentioned the problem of convincing dubious neuroscientists that psychoanalysis has anything to offer. Others focused on the challenge of integrating neuroscientific ideas with the clinical work of psychoanalysis. Several analysts felt that psychoanalytic views were not represented sufficiently during the weekend.
Solms assured the audience that its input would be taken into consideration for the next conference, which will be on memory and is scheduled for April 2001 in New York City.