Making Worlds in a Waking Dream: Where Bion Intersects Friston on the Shaping and Breaking of Psychic Reality

The free energy principle (FEP) has gained widespread interest and growing acceptance as a new paradigm of brain function, but has had little impact on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. The aim of this paper is to redress this. Brains rely on Bayesian inference during which “bottom-up” sensations are matched with “top-down” predictions. Discrepancies result in “prediction error.” The brain abhors informational “surprise,” which is minimized by (1) action enhancing the statistical likelihood of sensory samples, (2) revising inferences in the light of experience, updating “priors” to reality-aligned “posteriors,” and (3) optimizing the complexity of our generative models of a capricious world. In all three, free energy is converted to bound energy. In psychopathology energy either remains unbound, as in trauma and inhibition of agency, or manifests restricted, anachronistic “top-down” narratives. Psychotherapy fosters client agency, linguistic and practical. Temporary uncoupling bottom-up from top-down automatism and fostering scrutinized simulations sets a number of salutary processes in train. Mentalising enriches Bayesian inference, enabling experience and feeling states to be “metabolized” and assimilated. “Free association” enhances more inclusive sensory sampling, while dream analysis foregrounds salient emotional themes as “attractors.” FEP parallels with psychoanalytic theory are outlined, including Freud’s unpublished project, Bion’s “contact barrier” concept, the Fonagy/Target model of sexuality, Laplanche’s therapist as “enigmatic signifier,” and the role of projective identification. The therapy stimulates patients to become aware of and revise the priors’ they bring to interpersonal experience. In the therapeutic “duet for one,” the energy binding skills and non-partisan stance of the analyst help sufferers face trauma without being overwhelmed by psychic entropy. Overall, the FEP provides a sound theoretical basis for psychotherapy practice, training, and research.

Section: Psychoanalytic Resonancesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Surprise” and the Bayesian Brain: Implications for Psychotherapy Theory and Practice

Holmes

Nolte

2019

“…The Markov blanket is not only a protective screen thanks to which we can infer the external causes of the sensorium, it is also operates as a “projection screen” onto which sensory impressions are cast – that are actively solicited by habitual mechanisms (i.e., reflexes mediated by active states), which are used to make sense of the world (Friston et al, 2015a). As any other screen, the Markov blanket allows the separation of an internal dimension from an external environment of an organism, as the case of the cell, which typically represents an immediate and primordial example of a living system with a Markov blanket (Kirchhoff et al, 2018; Mellor, 2018). In this view, the boundaries of a neuron are defined by the external cell membrane, called plasmalemma , which is the Markov blanket of the neuron, ensuring separation and identification between an external environment and an internal state, protecting the cell from the external environment, guaranteeing its functions also through this distinction of environments and different electrical charges.…”

Section: Psychoanalysis and Free Energy Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…α-function (both awake and during sleep) transforms sensory impressions linked to a specific emotional experience in α-elements that proliferate and condense, forming the contact barrier. The elements can pass freely through the contact barrier between conscious and unconscious states, and the dreams allow us to access directly the contact barrier (Bion, 1962a; Mellor, 2018).…”

Section: Wilfred Ruprecht Bion: the Theory Of “Alpha Function”mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: The Bridge Between Mind and Brain

Cieri

Esposito

2019

In 1895 in the Project for a Scientific Psychology, Freud tried to integrate psychology and neurology in order to develop a neuroscientific psychology. Since 1880, Freud made no distinction between psychology and physiology. His papers from the end of the 1880s to 1890 were very clear on this scientific overlap: as with many of his contemporaries, Freud thought about psychology essentially as the physiology of the brain. Years later he had to surrender, realizing a technological delay, not capable of pursuing its ambitious aim, and until that moment psychoanalysis would have to use its more suitable clinical method. Also, he seemed skeptical about phrenology drift, typical of that time, in which any psychological function needed to be located in its neuroanatomical area. He could not see the progresses of neuroscience and its fruitful dialogue with psychoanalysis, which occurred also thanks to the improvements in the field of neuroimaging, which has made possible a remarkable advance in the knowledge of the mind-brain system and a better observation of the psychoanalytical theories. After years of investigations, deriving from research and clinical work of the last century, the discovery of neural networks, together with the free energy principle, we are observing under a new light psychodynamic neuroscience in its exploration of the mind-brain system. In this manuscript, we summarize the important developments of psychodynamic neuroscience, with particular regard to the free energy principle, the resting state networks, especially the Default Mode Network in its link with the Self, emphasizing our view of a bridge between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Finally, we suggest a discussion by approaching the concept of Alpha Function, proposed by the psychoanalyst Wilfred Ruprecht Bion, continuing the association with neuroscience.

“…A withdrawal process of a different nature also emerges in psychosis (De Masi et al, 2015). 24 In psychosis, we witness the disintegration of the psychic "membrane" separating conscious and unconscious processes when the "disobjectalizing function" of the death drive described by Green pervades the psyche (Mellor, 2018). The formation of the symbol, an essential component of psychic functioning, is no longer operational and the words are treated as things within the "symbolic equation" described by Anna Segal (1957).…”

Section: Free Association and The Entropic Brainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Entropy, Free Energy, and Symbolization: Free Association at the Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

Rabeyron¹,

Massicotte²

2020

Both a method of therapy and an exploration of psychic reality, free association is a fundamental element of psychoanalytical practices that refers to the way a patient is asked to describe what comes spontaneously to mind in the therapeutic setting. This paper examines the role of free association from the point of view of psychoanalysis and neuroscience in order to improve our understanding of therapeutic effects induced by psychoanalytic therapies and psychoanalysis. In this regard, we first propose a global overview of the historical origins of the concept of free association in psychoanalysis and examine how Freud established its principles. Then, from Freud's distinction between primary and secondary processes, we proceed to compare the psychoanalytic model with research originating from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. The notions of entropy and free energy appear particularly relevant at the intersection of these different domains. Finally, we propose the notion of symbolizing transmodality to describe certain specificities of symbolization processes within free association and we summarize the main functions of free association in psychoanalytic practices.