Pleasure is more than a mere sensory event, but rather it can be conceptualized as a complex, multiform experience involving memory, motivation, homeostasis, and, sometimes, negative affects. According to Freud, affect is a perceptual modality that registers the internal drive state of the subject rather than the objective experience of the external world, and the quality of this perceptual modality is calibrated in degrees of pleasure and displeasure. Within this conceptual framework, the aim of drive is always pleasure, and objects (...) become significant in so far as they provide a way of discharging drives pressure. Subsequent conceptual psychoanalytic developments have partially rejected such metapsychological theorizations, postulating that other intrinsic motivations that are independent from libido can be observed in humans. Intrinsic motivation broadly refers to a set of psychological concepts including the inherent propensity to pursue one’s choices, to seek out novelty and challenges, to satisfy curiosity and competence, and to extend one’s capacities and control over events. What these concepts have in common is an inner endorsement of one’s action, which is the sense that action is self-generated and is one’s own. The notions of pleasure, drives, and affects are all of utmost importance for a neuropsychoanalytic understanding of mental functioning, due to their capability to explain desire, thought, and behavior from the perspective of human subjective experience. The purpose of this paper is thus to discuss psychoanalytic conceptual developments that have addressed pleasure, drives, and affects, in the light of recent findings coming from neurosciences. In particular, we will explore for insights from Panksepp’s theory of primary-process emotional feelings, including the notion of “wanting” and “liking” as dissociable components of reward. In the last part of the paper, we will indicate possible theoretical implications for a neuropsychoanalytic understanding of libido-independent intrinsic motivations and their relationship with the self, including neuroscientific observations on self-related processes, agency, body-ownerships, and attachment. (shrink)

The discovery of psychoanalysis and of psychotropic medications represent two radical events in understanding and treatment of mental suffering. The growth of both disciplines together with the awareness of the impracticality of curing mental suffering only through pharmacological molecules – the collapse of the “Great Illusion” - and the experience of psychoanalysts using psychotropic medications along with depth psychotherapeutic treatment, have led to integrated therapies which are arguably more effective than either modality alone. The authors review studies on the role (...) of pharmacotherapy with psychoanalysis, and the role of the analyst as the prescriber. The psychotic disorders have specifically been considered from this perspective. (shrink)

In Search of Lost Culture: From Neuroimaging via Critical Neuroscience to Cultural Neuroscience – and back to Critique. The availability of new technologies for visualizing brain activity generated great expectations to identify the centers responsible for human action and behavior and to “reduce” all mental processes to neuronal states. Some scientists even called society to adapt to the new insights from brain research by giving up outdated concepts of autonomy and free will. This project spurred harsh critiques from philosophy, sociology, (...) and cultural studies, diagnosing the rise of a new phrenology. A critical neuroscience group took up these criticisms and pledged for a more nuanced reflection about the political, historical and ethical contexts and implications of current neuroscience and argued for an integration of societal concerns into the research agenda – rather similar to the agenda for responsible research of the EU. With the development of more sophisticated visualization strategies, new sub‐disciplines emerged, integrating sociocultural aspects into neuroimaging. Social and cultural neuroscience replaced overstated reductionist claims without leaving the overarching naturalist epistemology, but extending the ontological realm. New research objects such as empathy, religion or ‘Western’ vs. ‘East‐Asian’ attitudes of thinking started to populate the research domain. Especially cultural neuroscience was widely celebrated as new scientific bridge across the nature‐culture gulf. A closer look, however, reveals that this claim and the popular success of cultural neuroscience are based on a decisive lack of conceptual clarity. ‘Culture’ functions as fuzzy denominator for a broad range of social phenomena with unknown links to neurophysiological processes but visualized as brain states. Instead of implementing more reflexive forms of research, cultural neuroscience stabilizes problematic stereotypes and racist attitudes by an expansion of neuro‐culture. In light of this deflation of interdisciplinary cooperation a more radical critique of this ideology seems in place. (shrink)