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Report on the 15th International Neuropsychoanalysis Congress, New York City: “Current Neuropsychoanalytic Research”

The 15th Annual Congress of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society was held in New York City from July 24th to 26th, 2014 at the New School, followed by a post-congress discussion on 27 July at the Arnold Pfeffer Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. The congress, entitled “Current Neuropsychoanalytic Research,” illuminated the achievements and challenges faced in the last 15 years by presenting an impressive array of research talks on a wide variety of topics. The event was attended by over 280 delegates from all over the world, including countries as diverse as South Africa, the UK, Japan, the Netherlands, and Puerto Rico, to mention just a few. The congress began with an Educational Day on Thursday, 24 July. First, in a lecture entitled “Psychoanalysis for Neuroscience,” Ariane Bazan gave a clear overview of some central psychoanalytic concepts that neuroscientists might find recognizable in brain terms. She covered the concept of drive and traced its correspondence to the dopaminergic SEEKING system described by Panksepp (1998). Activation of the SEEKING system leads to exploratory behavior, which is needed whenever there are regulatory imbalances of a somatic source. These features are close to Freud’s concept of drive, which lies at the “frontier” between body and mind. In terms of pleasure, Bazan reminded us of the experience of satisfaction that originates from the relief of tension, which Freud thought of as pleasure. Bazan spoke about how somatic needs are represented (Vorstellung) and become desires. She also mentioned the role of hallucination when an unsatisfied need is present, and how it later evolves into a fantasy. Bazan also addressed the topic of the primary process whose goal is to seek relief of tension through the most immediate and direct route. Objects to relieve tension through a specific action are found in external reality. The secondary process is present when the ego inhibits the immediate impulse toward discharge, allowing thoughts to replace hallucinations. Bazan also discussed the concepts of repression and the dynamic unconscious, which are related to inhibition of emotional action. The second speaker was Oliver Turnbull, who gave a talk entitled “Neuroscience for psychoanalysts.” A key aspect of his presentation focused on emotions, which rank among the oldest processes within the nervous system, mediated primarily by subcortical circuits. He reviewed Panksepp’s (1998) seven basic emotion systems, including the PANIC and SEEKING systems, which have reinvigorated certain debates within psychoanalysis about the concept of drive. Turnbull then described cognition as newer than affect, mediated primarily in corticothalamic systems. Turnbull also briefly reviewed evidence supporting the claim that consciousness is old and subcortical, and that much of mental life happens out of awareness; this evidence has lead Solms to propose that the ego is unconscious and the id conscious and emotional, contrary to earlier psychoanalytic conceptions. The talk also covered the role of the prefrontal cortex in the regulation of emotions through abstract thought, and how emotions also influence decision-making. The congress had its official start on Thursday afternoon with the accustomed welcome and introduction by Mark Solms. He contextualized the theme of the congress by first noting that, since our inaugural congress in London in 2000, we have always had a theme, with a Research Day that first was a separate meeting following the congress, and then began to be integrated into the main body of the congress, until this year, in which neuropsychoanalytic research has become the main content of the congress itself. Instead of reviewing the history of neuropsychoanalytic research, Solms set the stage by reminding us of Eric Kandel’s paper of 1999, which discussed the need for more interchange between psychiatry, psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Solms mentioned how psychiatry addresses disorders of the mind by classifying, describing, and treating them. He talked about how Freud wanted to fully understand them. Psychoanalysis is thus