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Leuzinger-Bohleber, M.:
Nachträglichkeit and Trauma,
Perspectives from Psychoanalysis from Psychoanalysis and Embodied Cognitive Science
(an interdisciplinary approach integrating findings from contemporary neurosciences)
Leuzinger-Bohleber, Marianne, Frankfurt, Germany
(Presented at the Conference «FREUD'S SCREEN MEMORIES in the Light of the Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Neurosciences» in Prague, May 4-6, 2006)
Abstract
During the last decades a dream of Sigmund Freud seems to turn into reality: Will the enormous development in the Neurosciences allow a "scientific foundation of psychoanalysis in the sense of natural sciences?
This question will be elaborated in this paper focusing on "Nachträglichkeit" and Memory which have always been central issues in psychoanalytic conceptual research and practice. Recent developments in the cognitive and neural sciences suggest that a) memory is not to be conceived as stored structures but as a function of the whole organism, as a complex, dynamic, recategorizing and interactive process, which is always "embodied". b) Memory always has a subjective and an objective side. The subjective side is given by the individuals history, the objective side by the neural patterns generated by the sensory motor interactions with the environment. This implies that both "narrative" (subjective) and "historical" (objective) truth have to be taken into account achieving stable psychic change as is illustrated by extensive clinical materials taken from a psychoanalysis with a severely traumatized patient (with a childhood during WW II).
Summary
In my introduction I asked if the dialogue with contemporary neurosciences opens a new and fascinating window for psychoanalysis to the scientific community and its further development as a science of the unconscious or if the chances of this dialogue are overestimated and could even be kind of a seduction for psychoanalysis.
Let me go back to this question in my summary using the following graph to formulate some concluding epistemiological remarks on the contemporary dialogue between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences.
Freud´s impressive self analysis of his screen memory as well as my short clinical case study are examples for clinical research in psychoanalysis, which can be regarded as a circular research process, which take place in the psychoanalytic situation in a professionally described framework with the aim of gaining "new insights" into unconscious processes that come to light in transference and countertransference, dreams, slips of the tongue, acting out, and so on. The so called "Junktim-research" (characterizing the inseparable bond between therapy and research as described by Freud, 1926e) is based on the application of the psychoanalytic clinical research method. We owe almost all of our considerable insights into unconscious processes to this kind of "clinical psychoanalytic research". In my opinion, and here I don´t share Kandel´s point of view, who only speaks of hermeneutics in contrast to "real- natural sciences" in this context - clinical psychoanalytical research for me still is the heart of psychoanalytic research. It is a research method of its own - and as other research methods in the time of Scientific Pluralism - psychoanalysis has developed this method in order to adequately investigate its specific research object, unconsious fantasies and conflicts, as well as specific crieria for the quality of this kind of research, as we have discussed in detail in an article in the Int.Journal which will be published in the next issue. I am convinced that it is the richness of clinical and conceptual research in psychoanalysis which still makes us attractive for other scientists, e.g. Neuroscientists. It can not be replaced by any other form of research, of course also not by fMRI or PET studies. The journal ZEIT quotes a neuroscientist who plans to study psychoanalytic processes in the fMRI. In my view this is a new form of omnipotence which has nothing to do with serious interdisciplinary research.
Of course, discoveries and hypotheses collected in the psychoanalytic situation can later become the subject of clinical or extra-clinical research, thus aiming at communicating one's own personal observations and interpretations of clinical data in a transparent and self-critical ("scientific") way to "Others", not personally involved psychoanalytical or non-psychoanalytical observers. Clinicians who want to perform clinical research, the clinical researchers, have to think systematically and self-critically about their clinical observations, testing them again and again in new clinical situations, comparing them with others described in the psychoanalytic literature, and, finally, understanding or conceptualizing them for being capable to describe them verbally.Thus in a broad sense this kind of research could also be characterized as "extra-clinical": reflecting and writing takes place after the analytic session. ((But because this kind of psychoanalytic research focuses on clinically relevant insights in order to deepen the understanding of certain patients or groups of patients we prefer to define this kind of psychoanalytic research as "clinical research" in contrast to conceptual, empirical and interdisciplinary research, as three categories of "extra-clinical" research (mainly with extra-clinical research aims).))
Extra-clinical research strategies have been developed in a major effort "to be communicative, understandable and open for scientific critique by analysts as well as by non analysts" and thus to establish a dialogue with other scientific disciplines. In this context the dialogue between contemporary psychoanalysis and the neurosciences indeed is very important: it shows that (clinical and conceptual) psychoanalysis still has something to offer to other scientific disciplines and is regarded as a creative and innovative scientific approach. According to Kandel psychoanalysis still represents the most coherent and intellectually most satisfying view of the human mind. In this sense I personally really hope that the German journalists are right talking about a "renaissance of psychoanalysis".
In my paper I tried to illustrate that - on the other hand - psychoanalysis, too, might be enriched by the interdisciplinary dialogue with the neurosciences. I wanted to show that it may enlarge our clinical understanding of memory processes of certain groups of traumatized patients (as Mrs.M.) and help us to further develop our own psychoanalytic concepts (of memory processes, screen memories, Nachträglichkeit, remembering and working through). I tried to discuss that some of the original ideas on memory as Freud has developed in his 1896 paper still can be considered to be true, e.g. his conceptualization of screen memories and Nachträglichkeit as constantly re-written remembered narratives on the one hand, having a core of "historical truth" ( " Echtheit der Kindheitserinnerung") on the other hand. With these conceptualizations Freud seems to be in excellent concordance with modern memory research.- I also tried to illustrate that newer research done in the field of the so called Embodied Cognitive Science goes beyond Freud´s understanding of memory processes analyzing the early bodily roots of visualized and verbalized forms of memories before the development of declarative memory around the third year of life, understanding remembering as a product of a constructional "embodied" process not only of the brain, but of the whole organism. Thus early trauma as one decisive form of "historical and biographical truth" has been inscribed in the body. Remembering or reconstructing the "historical truth of trauma" is thus a precondition for a process of recategorization of unconscious traumatic experiences, the re-gaining of the capability to visualize and to verbalize in order to create vivid and constantly changing narratives, an "integration of the trauma in one´s identity" , therefore a presupposition for a structural change of behavior.
On the other hand my yearlong experience with this interdisciplinary dialogue warns me to be too optimistic and to expect too much from this arising discourse: we often don´t speak the same language, mean different phenomena by using the same terms, are identified with different epistemological and scientific traditions and need a long breath in order to really understand each other and develop stable bridges for a common understanding or even for a common research endeavour. We also should be aware of the challenging and complex epistemological and methodological questions connected to this dialogue, e.g. the well known danger of the "eliminative reductionisms" or of the projection of solutions for unsolved problems of the own discipine to the foreighn one. The philosopher of science, Michael Hagner, mentions another danger in his current book He discusses that "looking into the living brain" might even be a seduction for many current scientists as well as for jounalists and the public creating the fantasy to get a fast and "objective" picture of the functioning mind. In this sense there is a danger that neuroimaging techniques could replace psychoanalysis in the public and perhaps also in the scientific discourse. Hagner concludes: " The alteration (from psychoanalysis to the application of neuroimaging techniques, M.L-B) could lead to the danger that the variety and relevance of mental life will be evaluated according to their possibilities to be visualized... The prize for such a development is that the investigation of the deeper connections, correlations, explanations, calculations and narratives, in other words the historical, scientific, textual linear thinking, will be displaced by a new, visualizing, "superficial" kind of thought.
In respect to the sciences of human beings this means that the "deep digging", for which pychoanalysis was standing, could be replaced by the superficial insights into neuroimaging pictures. In this case the understanding of human beings would turn into an "externalization of materialized forms of representation". I don´t mean that the subject will be eliminated, but another anthropology could turn into reality which - in a double sense of the word - would produce structures of the surface." (p.278,79, translation: M.Leuzinger-Bohleber).
I am pretty sure that Freud - would he be among us today - would recognize this kind of seduction and reflect it critically. At the same time I am also sure that he would be fascinated and curious getting to know more about the current boom of new findings concerning the functioning brain - and would love to be engaged in a dialogue with contemporary neurosciences. So: let´s just accept the birthday present of modern brain research and contemporary neurobiology to Freud and critically, cautiously, go on with the interdisciplinary research endeavour studying new fascinating dimensions of the old "mind-body problem" of European culture and philosophy.
© Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, 2006
Other texts from the Conference Freud 2006.
Other online articles on psychoanalysis.
