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internalized dyadic relationships reflecting intolerable primitive aggression and aspects of infantile sexuality.
IV. Ac. Other areas of neuroanalytic interest: Dynamic implications of Neurological lesions, Dream studies, Symbolization, Drives and Affects Mark Solms (2000a; Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000) has established a paradigm of clinical psychoanalytic observation on a series of patients with right parietal lesions. He has discovered that what was previously termed a ‘cognitive deficit’ in such patients can have important dynamic underpinnings which cause parts of the cognitive processes to become unconscious. By intervening psychoanalytically, it was possible to reverse the dynamic process in question and to recover such cognitions – dynamically excluded from consciousness via primitive defense mechanisms – back to conscious awareness. He found that such dynamically mediated self-deception correlated with right parietal lobe damage was attributable to a complex regressive narcissistic configuration, avoidance of depressive affect and diminished capacity for ‘whole object’ relationships. However, the overall theoretical underpinning and the methodology of this and similar studies has came under the scrutiny of Blass and Carmeli (2007, 2015; Carmeli and Blass 2013), who critiqued the validity of Solms’ claims. Other specific neurological lesions with resultant regressions and dynamically altered states of consciousness were studied by Wilner and Aubé (2014), Buzsáki (2007) and Uhlhaas et al. (2009).. Further targets of the neuroanalytic study of the dynamic unconscious include dream processes (Solms, 1997; 2000b), specific parameters of primary process symbolization (Shevrin, 1997), and the neurobiology of drives and affects (Wright and Panksepp, 2014; Kernberg, 2015; Johnson, 2008). The precise contours of the relationship between the neurosciences and psychoanalysis are the subject of spirited debate. The articulation/translation between the two disciplines poses a number of epistemological, ontological, methodological and clinical questions touching on the mind-body, mind-brain problem and interdisciplinary discourse in general. How that articulation might work also speaks to the conception that each analyst has of what is essential to psychoanalytic work. As with any interdisciplinary study, the applicability of neuroscientific investigations has been surrounded by reservations, debates and controversies. Historically, the issue has been debated by Freud (1940a), Winnicott (1949), Alexander (1936, 1964), McDougall (1974, 1993), Green (1999), and more recently by Hinshelwood (2015), Pulver (2003), Blass and Carmeli (2007, 2013, 2015), Yovell, Solms, and Fotopoulou (2015), Albertini (2015), Scarfone (2014b), and many others, covering a wide range of perspectives. Many analysts find helpful to inform themselves of emerging discoveries pertaining to specific areas of psychoanalytic interest, e.g. documented neurobiological correlates of early traumatic histories and their partial reversibility by psychoanalytic treatment, (Kernberg, 2015; Blum, 2003, 2008, 2010; Mancia, 2006a, b.; Busch, Oquendo, Sullivan and Sandberg, 2010). Canestri’s (2015) proposal to talk about «intersection between disciplines which are diverse in
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