The COPE Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience was created in 2009 by the BOPS Committee on Psychoanalytic Education to develop educational materials and programs about the relationship of psychoanalysis and neuroscience for APsaA candidates, members, and institutes. Our new mission statement reads:
Our purpose is to explore and disseminate knowledge about psychoanalytic theory and practice in relation to contemporary res.earch in cognitive and affective neuroscience, and in other cognitive sciences. We aim to promote a basic level of knowledge in this realm through the American Psychoanalytic Association, while stimulating advanced research, scholarship, and writing in this area.
The group was constituted to include psychoanalysts, neuroscientists and philosophers. We sought a diversity of points of view about the relationship between psychoanalysis and neuroscience in order to support a critical and reflective response to the issues. Thus we made sure to include individuals who were committed to exploring the connections between psychoanalysis and neuroscience and “neuro-skeptics.”
In a time of rapid change in neuroscience and of theoretical pluralism within psychoanalysis, the work of our study group is exciting and controversial. Here are some of the issues we consider:
Can the work of cognitive and affective neuroscience be used to support the fundamental propositions of psychoanalytic theory?
Is it more useful if such interdisciplinary work contradicts some of our long-held theories?
Can it help us evaluate when one form of clinical psychoanalytic theory is more accurate than another?
From another point of view, can psychoanalysts offer insights that will inform and guide the research work of neuroscientists?
Can we apply the methods of neuroscience to obtain a “second look” at the process and outcome of psychoanalytic treatment?
Can we answer the critique of Adolf Grünbaum and others who have accused psychoanalysis of circularity?
Can interdisciplinary work between psychoanalysis and neuroscience be useful for the education of psychoanalytic candidates, psychiatrists, psychologists and other interested students?
Or alternatively, does neuroscience lack clinical relevance to psychoanalysis?
Is it being misused to promote shallow clinical thinking or scientism?
Looking closely at the intersection of the two fields, we have found support for each of these propositions in various examples. The exciting advances we have found call for careful examination and critical thinking, as we seek to bring them to the attention of APsaA members and audiences.
Members of our group include Virginia Barry, Linda Brakel, Marcia Cavell, Erik Gann, Andrew Gerber, Marcia Kaplan, David Olds, Regina Pally, Bradley Peterson, Arnold Modell, and Elise Snyder, with consultants Ronald Albucher, Amit Etkin, Graciana Lapetina and Maggie Zellner.
Since its inception the COPE Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience has coordinated a discussion group entitled Research on the Relation of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience in each of APsaA's two yearly meetings. In addition, at the January 2013 meeting, we inaugurated a Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Symposium. Recent programs in these two formats have included presentations by Mark Solms on “The Conscious Id” and “What is a Mind?”; Howard Shevrin on “Toward a Science of Psychoanalysis” and “Clinical Meaning and Empirical Science”; Helen Fisher on “The Drive to Love and the Biology of Mate Choice”; Charles Fisher on “Dream Interpretation in the Rainforest and the Function of Dreaming”; and Richard Kessler and Maggie Zellner on “Clinical Implications of the Conscious Id.”
We offer consultation to psychoanalytic institutes interested in developing seminars on psychoanalysis and neuroscience. On the APsaA website, we maintain an archive of syllabi for similar courses.
A small group comprising Richard Kessler, Maggie Zellner, David Olds, Anna Chapman and Larry Sandburg is compiling a composite video curriculum organized by topic.
Charles P. Fisher, M.D., is co-chair, with Richard J. Kessler, of the Committee on Psychoanalytic Education (COPE) Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience. He is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.
Richard J. Kessler, D.O., is chief medical officer of Adults and Children with Learning and Developmental Disabilities, Inc. and faculty at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education affiliated with the NYU School of Medicine.
Ron Albucher is developing an interactive video presentation as part of a course for Stanford psychiatry residents. The same presentation may be readily adaptable for use elsewhere. It is flexible enough to be used at different levels according to the user's training and background.
Virginia Barry and Charles Fisher have initiated what we hope will become a continuing feature in JAPA, reporting on a psychoanalysis and neuroscience presentation at a recent APsaA meeting. Howard Shevrin's most recent presentation, with Michael Snodgrass, is the subject of their first report.
Topics for future exploration:
How to read critically in neuroscience.
The neural correlates of unconscious defenses.
What we can learn from the psychoanalytic study of patients with brain lesions.
Psychoanalytic and neuroscientific studies of social cognition.
Intergenerational transmission of psychic change, as mediated by epigenetic factors.
Critical study of psychoanalysts' and neuroscientists' beliefs about the relation of brain and mind.