The connections between neuropsychological findings and psychoanalytic theory are fascinating, and they breathe new life into Freud’s ideas. It is interesting, and even astonishing, to see that Freud’s ideas and conceptualizations are consistent, with minor modifications, with findings from brain research. Here is a paper by Mark Solms that draws such connections, made possible by his being both a neuropsychologist and a psychoanalyst. This paper is important, extremely interesting, rich in ideas, and not easy to read. Unlike many of his psychoanalytic colleagues, Mark Solms makes an effort to write clearly. Nevertheless, his sentences are sometimes long and contain several sets of parentheses, which makes reading difficult.
In this paper, Solms turns Freud’s model of the structure of the mind on
its head and argues that the
id is conscious and the ego is unconscious. Solms begins by
distinguishing between two
aspects of the way the body is represented in the brain: the external body and
the internal body.
The external body includes the parts of the cortex devoted to processing
the motor and sensory functions of different parts of the body. This is the
cortical homunculus. The
external body is the form of the self that a person perceives when looking in a
mirror: “This is my body. This is me.” The external body is represented
as an object, in the same way that other external objects are represented, such
as the desk on which I am writing.
Cortical Homunculus
The internal body
includes the representation of the body’s internal organs. This aspect
of the body is represented only minimally in the cortex and is represented
mainly in deeper areas of the brain. The internal body functions primarily
automatically, but it also activates the external body in order to serve its
vital needs.
The internal body is not perceived as an object but as a subject. It is
experienced as feelings. Feelings
are states of the subject that have biological value related to survival and
reproduction. When our bodily condition promotes survival and
reproduction, we experience pleasant feelings. When our bodily condition does
not promote survival and reproduction, for example when we are hungry, we
experience unpleasant feelings.
According to
Solms, the external body corresponds to the Freudian ego, and the internal body
corresponds to the id. Freud wrote the following about the ego: “The ego is first and
foremost a bodily ego; it is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly
from those arising from the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a
mental projection of the surface of the body.”
According to Freud, the ego arises from the memory traces of
perceptions. The associative activation of these memory traces forms the basis
of all cognition. Freud wrote the following about the id: “The id, cut off from
the external world, has a world of perception of its own. It detects with
extraordinary acuteness certain changes in its interior, especially
oscillations in the tension of its instinctual needs, and these changes become
conscious as feelings in the pleasure-unpleasure series.” In Freud’s view,
therefore, mental structures are always connected to the body.
Solms argues that the
internal body, the subject, identifies itself with the external body in a
manner similar to the way a child projects themselves into an animated
character that they control in a computer game. The computer
representation rapidly becomes invested with a sense of self, even though it is
not really the self.
A similar process can be seen in the rubber hand illusion, shown in the
image and in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7MJvk
The rubber hand illusion
In the rubber hand illusion, the participant hides their hand and looks
at a rubber hand. Using two paintbrushes, the experimenter simultaneously
“strokes” the participant’s real hand and the rubber hand. The experimenter
holds one brush in each hand and moves both brushes at the same time, in the
same way, and over the corresponding finger of the participant’s real hand and
the rubber hand.
Within a few minutes, the participant begins to feel that the rubber
hand is real. If the experimenter then tries to strike the rubber hand with a
hammer, the participant recoils in alarm. As with the character in a computer
game, the subject of the participant’s consciousness identifies the rubber hand
as their own hand. Solms
argues that this means that the bodily self is an idea, a learned
representation of the self.
As noted above, Solms identifies the external body with the ego and the
internal body with the id. According to Freud, the ego is partly conscious,
whereas the id is unconscious. Solms reverses this view.
One reason for this reversal is that even children born without a
cortex, a condition known as hydranencephaly, display consciousness. Solms
argues that consciousness is not generated in the cortex but in the brainstem.
Consciousness is not fundamentally perceptual in nature but affective. Thus, according to Solms, consciousness
is generated in the id, while the ego is fundamentally unconscious.
According to Freud, the ego is the organized part of the personality
structure that includes executive, cognitive, and perceptual functions.
However, much perceptual and cognitive processing does not require
consciousness. Driving, reading words, and perceiving and processing visual and
auditory stimuli, for example, can occur automatically and do not necessarily
require consciousness.
The functions attributed to the ego are largely cortical. If the ego is
unconscious, does the cortex make no contribution to consciousness? According
to Solms, the cortex contributes to consciousness by creating a
representational space for memory. The cortex stabilizes the objects of
perception and makes it possible to process them in detail. It transforms
fleeting states of consciousness into “mental solids,” that is, into objects
that can be thought about.
Cortical representations are themselves unconscious. However, when
consciousness reaches them through attention, meaning when attention is
directed toward them, they become conscious representations that can be
manipulated in working memory. Solms identifies this process with the Freudian
concept of “object presentation.”
According to Freud, objects that are present in consciousness, or
“presented to consciousness,” are linked with words, such as an object and the
word representing its name, which help us think about them. Objects in the
unconscious, in contrast, remain there on their own, without words (Simanke,
2017). The activation of
cortical representations by consciousness-generating mechanisms in the
brainstem transforms consciousness from feelings into objects that can be
thought about.
Thinking is a slow process, and it is therefore possible only because of
our ability to hold representations in the focus of attention, in working
memory. Freud called this process “cathexis.” Cathexis is an emotional
investment, a process by which mental or emotional energy is allocated to a
person, object, or idea.
Thinking uses the representation of an object to guide behavior: “To
obtain this thing that I want, I must do such and such.” Freud’s reality
principle refers to the mind’s ability to assess the reality of the external
world and act accordingly, as opposed to acting according to the pleasure
principle.
The corresponding theory in neuropsychology is predictive coding. According to this theory, the brain contains a model of reality
that helps us know what to expect, such as what we are about to see, hear, or
experience, and guides our actions in the world in accordance with these
expectations. We constantly test this model and correct it according to
feedback received through the senses.
The brain’s goal is to make the mental model resemble reality as closely
as possible, that is, to reduce “prediction errors,” instances in which our
expectations do not match reality. A discrepancy between the mental model and
reality produces “free energy,” which the brain seeks to minimize as much as
possible. Freud similarly argued that the purpose of secondary thought
processes, which are logical, conscious, and governed by the reality principle,
is to transform “free energy” into “bound energy.”
According to predictive coding theory, as long as nothing unexpected
occurs, mental processes operate automatically. Surprise leads to action in the
world and/or learning, meaning a modification of the mental model so that it
corresponds more closely to reality.
Once the brain, or the ego, has succeeded in learning and has gained
mastery over a mental task, the algorithm for performing that task becomes
automated, and consciousness withdraws from it. It becomes unconscious.
According to Solms,
repression may be a condition in which consciousness withdraws too early and
the behavioral algorithm becomes automated prematurely, before it has become
fully adapted to reality. Such premature automatization fails to reduce the
discrepancy between the mental model and reality, that is, the prediction
errors.
Persistent prediction errors, together with the feelings that accompany
them, may cause the repressed cognitive material to become activated again.
This is the “return of the repressed,” the classical mechanism of neurosis.
The therapeutic aim of psychoanalysis is to release repressed material
and, in neuropsychological terms, to transform automatic procedures into
episodic declarative knowledge, thereby making renewed learning possible so
that behavior can be adapted more appropriately to reality.
Simanke, R. T. (2017). Meaning and object in Freud’s theory of language.
The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98(6), 1551–1576.
Solms, M. (2013). The conscious id. Neuropsychoanalysis, 15(1),
5–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2013.10773711
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