PERSONALITY PSY234

Lecture 3: Neuropsychoanalysis

A/Prof Simon Boag

email: [email protected]
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 1
Readings (suggested)
• Solms, M & Turnbull, OH (2011). What is
neuropsychoanalysis? Neuropsychoanalysis,
13, 133-145
• Blass, RB, & Carmeli, Z (2007). The case against
Neuropsychoanalysis. Intl Jnl of
Psychoanalysis, 88, 19-40

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 2
Readings (suggested)
Additional:
• Boag, S (2017). On dreams & motivation:
comparison of Freud’s & Hobson’s views.
Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1-13
• Colace, C (2014). Drug dreams. London: Karnac
• Colace, C & Boag, S (2015). Reply to Hobson.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 51, 107-125
• Hobson, JA (2015). Reply to Colace & Boag.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 51, 126-131
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 3
Outline

1. Introduction to Neuropsychoanalysis
• Drives & Affective neuroscience
2. Freudian dream theory & neuroscience
• Dreams as wish-fulfilment
• Dreams & REM sleep
• Dreams & dopamine
3. Criticisms of neuropsychoanalysis

4
1. Neuropsychoanalysis

• Background: Freud trains in neurology

• Project for a Scientific Psychology
(1895/1950)
• “We must recollect that our provisional ideas
in psychology will presumably some day be
based on an organic substructure” (Freud,
1914)
• Freud (1938/1940): pharmacological therapy
for psychological disorders?

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 5
Neuropsychoanalysis

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 6
Neuropsychoanalysis

• Neuroscientific study of Freudian theory

• Subjective data alone do not provide a solid
foundation for a science of psychoanalysis
• Evolutionary roots of mind
• Emphasises emotional life & subjectivity
• Emphasises motivational drives
• Animal/human research
• Resurrecting Freudian theory
• Neuroscience of dreams
• Clinical neuroscience
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 7
“The concept of drive seems to be unfashionable
in psychoanalysis nowadays. It is unclear why this
happened, but it has had the unfortunate result
of divorcing psychoanalytic understanding of the
human mind from knowledge derived from all
other animals. We humans are not exempt from
the evolutionary biological forces that shaped
other creatures. It is therefore difficult to form an
accurate picture of how the human mental
apparatus really works without using a concept at
least something like Freud’s definition of
“drive”...” (Solms & Turnbull, 2002, p. 117)
8
Affective neuroscience

• Homeostatic drives (hunger, sex)

• Primary emotional systems
• Panksepp (1998, 2015): 7 subcortical ‘basic
emotional command systems’
• Evidence: within/cross-species neural circuitry
• SEEKING (appetitive foraging): mesolimbic-
mesocortical dopamine pathway
• LUST, FEAR (freezing & flight), RAGE, CARE,
PANIC/GRIEF (separation distress), & PLAY

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 9
SEEKING system

Expecting/Wanting system involved in:

(i) goal-directed activities
(ii) generating anticipation & excitement
(iii) ‘coupling’ (linking drives to objects)
(iv) ‘enacting’ via consummatory actions (Wright
& Panksepp, 2012)

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 10
 “The SEEKING system, under the guidance of
various regulatory imbalances, external
incentive cues, & past learning, helps take
thirsty animals to water, cold animals to
warmth, hungry animals to food, & sexually
aroused animals towards opportunities for
orgasmic gratification”
(Panksepp, 1998, p. 167)

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 11
2. The interpretation of dreams
(Freud, 1900)
• “Royal road to the Unconscious” (Freud, 1900)
• Drives & motivational states (desires)
• Desires, waking fantasy & sleeping fantasy
• Undisguised wish-fulfilment
• Regression to primary process

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 12
“… there is a dream that I can produce in myself
as often as I like—experimentally, as it were. If I
eat anchovies or olives or any other highly
salted food in the evening, I develop thirst
during the night which wakes me up. But my
waking is preceded by a dream; & this always
has the same content, namely, that I am
drinking. I dream I am swallowing down water in
great gulps, & it has the delicious taste that
nothing can equal but a cool drink when one is
parched with thirst”
(Freud, 1900, p. 123)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 13
Freud’s analysis:
biological frustration & dreams

• Salty foods cause dehydration

• Dehydration causes a ‘desire’ (or wish) to drink
during sleep
• Dream of drinking is an imaginary
(hallucinatory) satisfaction
• Minnesota Starvation Experiment (1944-5):
“Hunger made the men obsessed with food.
They would dream & fantasize about food, read
& talk about food …”
• ‘Guardians of sleep’
• http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/10/hunger.aspx
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 14
 “The thirst gives rise to a wish to drink, & the
dream shows me that wish fulfilled. In doing so
it is performing a function—which it was easy to
divine. I am a good sleeper & not accustomed to
being woken by any physical need. If I can
succeed in appeasing my thirst by dreaming that
I am drinking, then I need not wake up in order
to quench it. This, then is a dream of
convenience. Dreaming has taken the place of
action, as it so often does elsewhere in life”
(Freud, 1900, pp. 123-4)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 15
Nightmares?

• Anxiety dreams, nightmares

• Psychical Conflict: “… the dreamer fighting
against his own wishes is to be compared with
a summation of two separate, though in some
way intimately connected, people…” (Freud,
1916-17, p. 218)
• Repression & censorship (see Boag, 2006)
• Boag, S. (2006). Freudian dream theory, dream bizarreness, & the
disguise-censor controversy. Neuro-psychoanalysis, 8, 5-17
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 16
Dreams & REM sleep

• Aserinsky & Kleitman (1953):

• Rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep
• 4 stages of non-REM sleep
• REM sleep occurs in 90-100 minute cycles
• REM associated with brainstem activation
(pons)
• Paradoxical sleep: highly active brain (as if
awake)

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 17
Dreams & REM sleep

• 70-95% of normal Subjects report dreaming if

awoken during REM sleep
• NREM sleep: 5-10% dreaming reports
• NREM sleep dreams are often impoverished
(less vivid/non-visual) compared to REM
dreams
• Mammals & REM states
• REM in utero

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 18
Dreams & REM sleep

• Hobson & McCarley (1977)

• Activation-synthesis model of dreams/AIM
model
• Dreams occur due to chaotic brain stem activity
associated with REM sleep
• “Motivationally neutral”
• Dreams are meaningless: Random images &
illogical thinking
• Dream-bizarreness: “loss of organising capacity”
(Hobson & Pace-Schott, 1999, p. 211)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 19
20
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 21
REM=Dreams: Problems

• Random images & coherent dream plots?

• Dreaming can occur independently of REM
sleep:
i) Vivid dreaming can occur prior to REM sleep
(Solms, 1999, 2000)
ii) Brain-stem lesions which eliminate REM sleep
do not eliminate dreaming (Bischof & Bassetti,
2004; Solms, 2000)
• Loss of dreaming associated with other parts
of the brain
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 22
Dreams & psychosis

• 1940-1975: Schizophrenia & leucotomies

(prefrontal lobotomy) to reduce psychotic
symptoms
• Surgical damage to dopamine pathway
• Result: Cessation of dreaming & impoverished
fantasy & curiosity in waking life

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 23
Neuropsychoanalysis of dreams

• Mesolimbic-mesocortical dopamine pathway

important for dreaming (Solms, 2000)
• Damage to dopamine pathway: REM
unaffected, but dreaming ceases
• Anti-psychotics which block dopamine (DA)
inhibit dreaming
• Chemical DA stimulation: increase in
frequency & vividness of dreams

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 24
The role of dopamine (DA)

• Dopamine: motivation & reward

• SEEKING & wanting (desire)
• Dopamine pathway motivates “the subject to
seek out & engage with external objects which
can satisfy inner biological needs” (Solms,
2000, p. 4)
• Damage to dopamine pathway associated with
reduction of motivated behaviour
• Dreams & dopamine suggest dreams are
linked with desires (‘wishes’)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 25
Drug dreams & Freudian theory
• Biological drive frustration paradigm (Colace,
2014; Colace & Boag, 2015)
• Drugs of addiction hijack the brain’s natural
reward system
• Test of Freudian theory: drug addicts should
dream of taking drugs when undergoing
withdrawal
• Drug dreams & Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine,
Amphetamines, Heroin (Colace, 2004, 2014)

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 26
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 27
Shifts in theory

• Then: McCarley & Hobson (1977): Dreams are

“motivationally neutral” (p. 1219):
meaningless, random images

• & now: “…. the unfettered play of dopamine in

REM sleep is in keeping with the assumption
that dreaming is “motivated” & that important
motivational goals may be revealed in
dreams” (Hobson, 2014, p. 41)

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 28
Does Hobson accept Freudian
dream theory?
• Hobson (2013): Freudian dream theory is
“obsolete & entirely replaceable” (p. 144)

• Hobson (2015): “Of course, some dreams

evince desires & hopes… I regard the wish-
fulfilment hypothesis as unoriginal, trivial, &
incomplete” (p. 127)

• Many note that Hobson’s dream theory is

converging with Freud’s (eg. Boag, 2017;
Hopkins, 2016; Solms, 2013)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 29
3. Criticisms of
neuropsychoanalysis
• Reductionistic (Blass & Carmeli, 2007)
• Cannot address ‘meaning’ & subjectivity:
• “… just as we cannot determine the meanings
of van Gogh’s paintings through chemical
analysis, neuroscientific models will not
replace psychological explanations” (Talvitie
& Ihanus, 2011, p. 1587)
• Clinically irrelevant (Barratt, 2015; Pulver,
2003)
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 30
Summary

• Neuropsychoanalysis is the neuroscientific study

of psychoanalytic theory
• Affective neuroscience proposes 7 sub-cortical
emotion systems
• The role of dopamine pathways in dreaming may
offer some support for Freud’s dream theory
• Critics of neuropsychoanalysis argue that
neuropsychoanalysis cannot address subjectivity
& meaning

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 31