Freud Returns

Author(s): Mark Solms

Source: Scientific American Mind , Vol. 17, No. 2 (April/May 2006), pp. 28-34
Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/24939446

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 ( FREUD at 150 )
His Influence Today

Freud
Returns
The founder of psychoanalysis
was born 150 years ago, and
in 2006 his theories are en-
joying a rebirth. New life in-
deed, because not too long ago
his ideas were considered dead.
For the fi rst half of the 1900s,
Sigmund Freud’s explanations dom-
inated views of how the human mind
works. His basic proposition was that our
motivations remain largely hidden in our un-
conscious minds. Moreover, they are actively
withheld from consciousness by a repressive force.
The executive apparatus of the mind (the ego) rejects
G E T T Y I M AG E S

any unconscious drives (the id) that might prompt

behavior that would be incompatible with our civilized

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 Neuroscientists are finding that
their biological descriptions of the
brain may fit together best when
integrated by psychological theories
that Freud sketched a century ago
By Mark Solms

conception of ourselves. This repression is neces- observations of patients in clinical settings, inter-
sary because the drives express themselves in woven with theoretical inferences. Drug treat-
unconstrained passions, childish fantasies, and ments gained ground, and biological approaches
sexual and aggressive urges. to mental illness gradually overshadowed psy-
Mental illness, Freud said until his death in choanalysis. Had Freud been alive, he might even
1939, results when repression fails. Phobias, pan- have welcomed this turn of events. A highly re-
ic attacks and obsessions are caused by intru- garded neuroscientist in his day, he frequently
sions of the hidden drives into voluntary behav- made remarks such as “the deficiencies in our
ior. The aim of psychotherapy, then, was to trace description would presumably vanish if we were
neurotic symptoms back to their unconscious already in a position to replace the psychological
roots and expose these roots to mature, rational terms by physiological and chemical ones.” But
judgment, thereby depriving them of their com- Freud did not have the science or technology to
pulsive power. know how the brain of a normal or neurotic per-
As mind and brain research grew more sophis- sonality was organized.
ticated from the 1950s onward, however, it be- By the 1980s the notions of ego and id were
came apparent to specialists that the evidence considered hopelessly antiquated, even in some
Freud had provided for his theories was rather psychoanalytic circles. Freud was history. In the
tenuous. His principal method of investigation new psychology, the updated thinking went, de-
was not controlled experimentation but simple pressed people do not feel so wretched because

w w w. s c i a m m i n d . c o m SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND 29

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 Damasio, Kandel, Joseph E. LeDoux, Benjamin
Libet, Jaak Panksepp, Vilayanur S. Ramachan-
dran, Daniel L. Schacter and Wolf Singer.
Together these researchers are forging what
Kandel calls a “new intellectual framework for
psychiatry.” Within this framework, it appears
that Freud’s broad brushstroke organization of the
mind is destined to play a role similar to the one
Darwin’s theory of evolution served for molecular
genetics —a template on which emerging details
can be coherently arranged. At the same time, neu-
roscientists are uncovering proof for some of
Freud’s theories and are teasing out the mecha-
nisms behind the mental processes he described.

Unconscious Motivation
Patients may no
When Freud introduced the central notion
longer lie on
that most mental processes that determine our
a couch, but
many of today’s everyday thoughts, feelings and volitions occur
psychological unconsciously, his contemporaries rejected it as
counseling prac- impossible. But today’s fi ndings are confi rming
tices stem from the existence and pivotal role of unconscious
Freud’s early mental processing. For example, the behavior of
techniques. patients who are unable to consciously remember
events that occurred after damage to certain
something has undermined their earliest attach- memory-encoding structures of their brains is
ments in infancy— rather their brain chemicals clearly influenced by the “forgotten” events.
are unbalanced. Psychopharmacology, however, Cognitive neuroscientists make sense of such
did not deliver an alternative grand theory of per- cases by delineating different memory systems
sonality, emotion and motivation— a new concep- that process information “explicitly” (conscious-
tion of “what makes us tick.” Without this mod- ly) and “implicitly” (unconsciously). Freud split
el, neuroscientists focused their work narrowly memory along just these lines.
and left the big picture alone. Neuroscientists have also identified uncon-
Today that picture is coming back into focus, scious memory systems that mediate emotional
and the surprise is this: it is not unlike the one that learning. In 1996 at New York University, LeDoux
Freud outlined a century ago. We are still far from demonstrated the existence under the conscious
a consensus, but an increasing number of diverse cortex of a neuronal pathway that connects per-
neuroscientists are reaching the same conclusion ceptual information with the primitive brain
drawn by Eric R. Kandel of Columbia University, structures responsible for generating fear respons-
the 2000 Nobel laureate in physiology or medi- es. Because this pathway bypasses the hippocam-
cine: that psychoanalysis is “still the most coherent pus— which generates conscious memories— cur-
and intellectually satisfying view of the mind.” rent events routinely trigger unconscious remem-
Freud is back, and not just in theory. Interdis- brances of emotionally important past events,
ciplinary work groups uniting the previously di- causing conscious feelings that seem irrational,
vided and often antagonistic fields of neurosci- such as “Men with beards make me uneasy.”
ence and psychoanalysis have been formed in Neuroscience has shown that the major brain
almost every major city of the world. These net- structures essential for forming conscious (explic-
works, in turn, have come together as the Inter- it) memories are not functional during the fi rst
national Neuro-Psychoanalysis Society, which two years of life, providing an elegant explanation
organizes an annual congress and publishes the of what Freud called infantile amnesia. As Freud
T O M S T E WA R T C o r b i s

successful journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis. Testa- surmised, it is not that we forget our earliest mem-
ment to the renewed respect for Freud’s ideas is ories; we simply cannot recall them to conscious-
the journal’s editorial advisory board, populated ness. But this inability does not preclude them
by a who’s who of experts in contemporary be- from affecting adult feelings and behavior. One
havioral neuroscience, including Antonio R. would be hard-pressed to fi nd a developmental

30 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN MIND A p r i l / M ay 2 0 0 6

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 neurobiologist who does not agree that early ex- paralyzed— and that it had been paralyzed con-
periences, especially between mother and infant, tinuously since she had suffered a stroke eight
influence the pattern of brain connections in ways days before. This showed that she was capable of
that fundamentally shape our future personality recognizing her deficits and that she had uncon-
and mental health. Yet none of these experiences sciously registered these deficits for the previous
can be consciously remembered. It is becoming eight days, despite her conscious denials during
increasingly clear that a good deal of our mental that time that there was any problem.
activity is unconsciously motivated. Significantly, after the effects of the stimula-
tion wore off, the woman not only reverted to the
Repression Vindicated belief that her arm was normal, she also forgot
Even if we are mostly driven by unconscious the part of the interview in which she had ac-
thoughts, this does not prove anything about knowledged that the arm was paralyzed, even
Freud’s claim that we actively repress unpalatable though she remembered every other detail about
information. But case studies supporting that no- the interview. Ramachandran concluded: “The
tion are beginning to accumulate. The most fa- remarkable theoretical implication of these ob-
mous one comes from a 1994 study of “anosog- servations is that memories can indeed be selec-
nosic” patients by Ramachandran, a behavioral tively repressed.... Seeing [this patient] convinced
neurologist at the University of California, San me, for the first time, of the reality of the repres-
Diego. Damage to the right parietal region of sion phenomena that form the cornerstone of
these people’s brains makes them unaware of classical psychoanalytical theory.”
gross physical defects, such as paralysis of a limb. Like “split-brain” patients, whose hemi-
After artificially activating the right hemisphere spheres become unlinked — a situation made fa-
A . W. F R E U D E T A L . , B Y A R R A N G E M E N T W I T H PAT E R S O N M A R S H LT D. , L O N D O N ( l e f t ) ; O L I V E R T U R N B U L L ( r i g h t ; a l l c o l o r i n g )

of one such patient, Ramachandran observed that mous in studies by Nobel laureate Roger W.
she suddenly became aware that her left arm was Sperry of the California Institute of Technology

Mind and Matter

F
reud drew his final model of the mind in 1933 (be- perience, which was closely tied to perception. The su-
low left; color has been added). Dotted lines repre- perego mediated the ongoing struggle between the ego
sented the threshold between unconscious and and id for dominance. Recent neurological mapping
conscious processing. The superego repressed instinc- (right) generally correlates to Freud’s conception. The
tual drives (the id), preventing them from disrupting ra- core brain stem and limbic system — responsible for in-
tional thought. Most rational (ego) processes were auto- stincts and drives — roughly correspond to Freud’s id. The
matic and unconscious, too, so ventral frontal region, which controls selective inhibition,
only a small part of the ego the dorsal frontal region, which controls self-conscious
(bulb at top) was left to thought, and the posterior cortex, which represents the
manage conscious ex- outside world, amount to the ego and the superego.

Dorsal
frontal
cortex Posterior
cortex

Ventral
frontal
cortex Brain stem

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(
Freud himself anticipated the day when neurological
data would round out his psychological ideas. )
in the 1960s and 1970s — anosognosic patients ever met me before or that he had undergone an
typically rationalize away unwelcome facts, giv- operation to remove a tumor in his frontal lobe
ing plausible but invented explanations of their that caused his amnesia. As far as he was con-
unconsciously motivated actions. In this way, Ra- cerned, there was nothing wrong with him. When
machandran says, the left hemisphere manifestly asked about the scar on his head, he confabulated
employs Freudian “mechanisms of defense.” wholly implausible explanations: he had under-
Analogous phenomena have now been dem- gone dental surgery or a coronary bypass opera-
onstrated in people with intact brains, too. As tion. In reality, he had indeed experienced these
neuropsychologist Martin A. Conway of Dur- procedures — years before — and unlike his brain
ham University in England pointed out in a 2001 operation, they had successful outcomes.
commentary in Nature, if significant repression Similarly, when asked who I was and what he
effects can be generated in average people in an was doing in my lab, he variously said that I was
innocuous laboratory setting, then far greater ef- a colleague, a drinking partner, a client consult-
fects are likely in real-life traumatic situations. ing him about his area of professional expertise,
a teammate in a sport that he had not partici-
The Pleasure Principle pated in since he was in college decades earlier, or
Freud went even further, though. He said that a mechanic repairing one of his numerous sports
not only is much of our mental life unconscious cars (which he did not possess). His behavior was
and withheld but that the repressed part of the consistent with these false beliefs, too: he would
unconscious mind operates according to a differ- look around the room for his beer or out the win-
ent principle than the “reality principle” that gov- dow for his car.
erns the conscious ego. This type of unconscious What strikes the casual observer is the wishful
thinking is “wishful”— and it blithely disregards quality of these false notions, an impression that
the rules of logic and the ar- Fotopoulou confirmed objectively through quan-
row of time. titative analysis of a consecutive series of 155 of
If Freud was right, then his confabulations. The patient’s false beliefs
damage to the inhibitory struc- were not random noise — they were generated by
tures of the brain (the seat of the “pleasure principle” that Freud maintained
the “repressing” ego) should was central to unconscious thought. The man
release wishful, irrational simply recast reality as he wanted it to be. Similar
modes of mental functioning. observations have been reported by others, such
This is precisely what has been as Conway and Oliver Turnbull of the University
observed in patients with dam- of Wales. These investigators are cognitive neu-
age to the frontal limbic region, roscientists, not psychoanalysts, yet they inter-
which controls critical aspects pret their findings in Freudian terms. They claim
of self-awareness. Subjects dis- in essence that damage to the frontal limbic re-
play a striking syndrome gion that produces confabulations impairs cogni-
known as Korsakoff’s psycho- tive-control mechanisms that underpin normal
sis: they are unaware that they reality monitoring and releases from inhibition
are amnesic and therefore fill the implicit wishful influences on perception,
Brain scans show the damage that the gaps in their memory with memory and judgment.
fabricated stories known as
COURTESY OF OLIVER TURNBULL

causes disorders of psychological

function, which Freud could study only confabulations. Animal Within
clinically. A recent MRI image of a pa- Durham neuropsycholo- Freud argued that the pleasure principle gave
tient who confabulates grandiose sto- gist Aikaterini Fotopoulou expression to primitive, animal drives. To his
ries of his life reveals a lesion (arrow) studied a patient of this type in Victorian contemporaries, the implication that
in the cingulate gyrus — part of the
my laboratory. The man failed human behavior was at bottom governed by urg-
medial frontal lobe that serves func-
to recall, in each 50-minute es that served no higher purpose than carnal self-
tions Freud posited would normally
prevent unconscious wishes from al- session held in my office on 12 fulfi llment was downright scandalous. The mor-
tering a person’s rational self-image. consecutive days, that he had al outrage waned during subsequent decades,

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 but Freud’s concept of man-as-animal
was pretty much sidelined by cognitive
scientists.
Now it has returned. Neuroscien-
tists such as Donald W. Pfaff of the
Rockefeller University and Panksepp of
Bowling Green State University believe
that the instinctual mechanisms that
govern human motivation are even
more primitive than Freud imagined.
We share basic emotional-control sys- Freud sketched a neuronal mechanism for
tems with our primate relatives and repression (above) in 1895, as part of his
with all mammals. At the deep level of hope that biological explanations of the mind
mental organization that Freud called would one day replace psychological ones. In
the id, the functional anatomy and his scheme, an unpleasant memory would nor-
chemistry of our brains is not much dif- mally be activated by a stimulus (“Qn,” far left)
heading from neuron “a” toward neuron “b”
ferent from that of our favorite barn-
(bottom). But neuron “alpha” (to right of “a”)
yard animals and household pets.
could divert the signal and thus prevent the
Modern neuroscientists do not ac- activation if other neurons (top right) exerted
cept Freud’s classification of human in- a “repressing” influence. Note that Freud
stinctual life as a simple dichotomy be- drew gaps between neurons that he
tween sexuality and aggression, how- predicted would act as “contact barriers.”
ever. Instead, through studies of lesions
B E T T M A N N / C O R B I S ( p h o t o g r a p h ) ; A . W. F R E U D E T A L . , B Y A R R A N G E M E N T W I T H PAT E R S O N M A R S H LT D. , L O N D O N ( d r a w i n g )

Two years later English physiologist

and the effects of drugs and artificial Charles Sherrington discovered such
stimulation on the brain, they have gaps and named them synapses.
identified at least four basic mammalian
instinctual circuits, some of which over-
lap. They are the “seeking” or “reward” system active medications are widely recognized as the
(which motivates the pursuit of pleasure); the “an- best approach for many disorders. And brain im-
ger-rage” system (which governs angry aggression aging shows that some talk therapy affects the
but not predatory aggression); the “fear-anxiety” brain in similar ways to such drugs.
system; and the “panic” system (which includes
complex instincts such as those that govern social Dreams Have Meaning
bonding). Whether other instinctual forces exist, Freud’s ideas are also reawakening in sleep and
such as a rough-and-tumble “play” system, is also dream science. His dream theory— that nighttime
being investigated. All these systems are modu- visions are partial glimpses of unconscious wish-
lated by specific neurotransmitters, chemicals that es — was discredited when rapid eye movement
carry messages between neurons. (REM) sleep and its strong correlation with dream-
The seeking system, regulated by dopamine, ing were discovered in the 1950s. Freud’s view ap-
bears a remarkable resemblance to the Freudian peared to lose all credibility when investigators in
“libido.” According to Freud, the libidinal or sex- the 1970s showed that the dream cycle was regu-
ual drive is a pleasure-seeking system that ener- lated by the pervasive brain chemical acetylcho-
gizes most of our goal-directed behavior. Modern line. REM sleep occurred automatically, every 90
research shows that its neural equivalent is heav- minutes or so, and was driven by brain chemicals
ily implicated in almost all forms of craving and and structures that had nothing to do with emo-
addiction. It is interesting to note that Freud’s
early experiments with cocaine — mainly on him-
(The Author)
self— convinced him that the libido must have a
specific neurochemical foundation. Unlike his MARK SOLMS holds the chair in neuropsychology at the University of Cape
successors, Freud saw no reason for antagonism Town in South Africa and an honorary lectureship in neurosurgery at St.
between psychoanalysis and psychopharmacol- Bartholomew’s and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
ogy. He enthusiastically anticipated the day when He is also director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuro-Psychoanalysis,
“id energies” would be controlled directly by a consultant neuropsychologist to the Anna Freud Center in London and
“particular chemical substances.” Today treat- a very frequent flier. He thanks Oliver Turnbull, a senior lecturer at the
ments that integrate psychotherapy with psycho- University of Wales, for assisting with this article.

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 tion or motivation. This discovery implied that colleagues now can and must subject convention-
dreams had no meaning; they were simply stories al wisdom to an entirely new level of biological
concocted by the higher brain to try to reflect the scrutiny. But an encouraging number of elders on
random cortical activity caused by REM. both sides of the Atlantic are at least committed
But more recent work has revealed that dream- to keeping an open mind.
ing and REM sleep are dissociable states, con- For older neuroscientists, resistance to the re-
trolled by distinct, though interactive, mecha- turn of psychoanalytical ideas comes from the
nisms. Dreaming turns out to be generated by the specter of the seemingly indestructible edifice of
forebrain’s instinctual-motivational circuitry. Freudian theory in the early years of their careers.
This discovery has given rise to a host of theories They cannot acknowledge even partial confirma-
about the dreaming brain, many strongly remi- tion of Freud’s fundamental insights; they demand
niscent of Freud’s. Most intriguing is the observa- a complete purge [see box on opposite page]. In
tion that others and I have made that dreaming the words of J. Allan Hobson, a renowned sleep

( If scientists can reconcile neurology and psychology,

patients could receive more integrated treatment. )
stops completely when certain fibers deep in the researcher and Harvard Medical School psychi-
frontal lobe have been severed— a symptom that atrist, the renewed interest in Freud is little more
coincides with a general reduction in motivated than unhelpful “retrofitting” of modern data into
behavior. The lesion is the same as the damage an antiquated theoretical framework. But as Fred
that was deliberately produced in prefrontal leu- Guterl wrote in a 2002 interview with Panksepp
kotomy, an outmoded surgical procedure once in Newsweek magazine, for neuroscientists who
used to control hallucinations and delusions. This are enthusiastic about the reconciliation of neurol-
operation was replaced in the 1960s by drugs that ogy and psychiatry, “it is not a matter of proving
dampen dopamine’s activity in the same brain Freud wrong or right, but of finishing the job.”
systems. The seeking system, then, might be the If that job can be finished— if Kandel’s “new
primary generator of dreams. This possibility has intellectual framework for psychiatry” can be es-
become a major focus of current research. tablished— then the time will pass when people
If the hypothesis is confirmed, then the wish- with emotional difficulties have to choose be-
fulfillment theory of dreams could once again set tween the talk therapy of psychoanalysis, which
the agenda for sleep research. But even if other may be out of touch with modern evidence-based
interpretations of the new neurological data pre- medicine, and the drugs prescribed by psycho-
vail, all of them demonstrate that “psychological” pharmacology, which may lack regard for the re-
conceptualizations of dreaming are scientifically lation between the brain chemistries it manipu-
respectable again. Few neuroscientists still claim— lates and the complex real-life trajectories that
as they once did with impunity— that dream con- culminate in emotional distress. The psychiatry
tent has no primary emotional mechanism. of tomorrow promises to provide patients with
help that is grounded in a deeply integrated un-
Finishing the Job derstanding of how the human mind operates.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the reap- Whatever undreamed-of therapies the future
pearance of Freudian concepts in mental science. might bring, patients can only benefit from better
It is not easy for the older generation of psycho- knowledge of how the brain really works. As
analysts, for example, to accept that their junior modern neuroscientists tackle once more the pro-
found questions of human psychology that so pre-
(Further Reading) occupied Freud, it is gratifying to find that we can
build on the foundations he laid, instead of hav-
◆ Freudian Dream Theory Today. Mark Solms in Psychologist, Vol. 13, ing to start all over again. Even as we identify the
No. 12, pages 618–619; December 2000.
weak points in Freud’s far-reaching theories, and
◆ The Brain and the Inner World. Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull. Other
Press, 2003. thereby correct, revise and supplement his work,
◆ The International Neuro-Psychoanalysis Society and the journal we are excited to have the privilege of finishing
Neuro-Psychoanalysis: www.neuro-psa.org.uk the job. M

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