The significance of consilience: psychoanalysis, attachment, neuroscience, and evolution

Self Cite

The main concepts of the free energy (FE) neuroscience developed by Karl Friston and colleagues parallel those of Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology. In Hobson et al. (2014) these include an innate virtual reality generator that produces the fictive prior beliefs that Freud described as the primary process. This enables Friston's account to encompass a unified treatment—a complexity theory—of the role of virtual reality in both dreaming and mental disorder. In both accounts the brain operates to minimize FE aroused by sensory impingements—including interoceptive impingements that report compliance with biological imperatives—and constructs a representation/model of the causes of impingement that enables this minimization. In Friston's account (variational) FE equals complexity minus accuracy, and is minimized by increasing accuracy and decreasing complexity. Roughly the brain (or model) increases accuracy together with complexity in waking. This is mediated by consciousness-creating active inference—by which it explains sensory impingements in terms of perceptual experiences of their causes. In sleep it reduces complexity by processes that include both synaptic pruning and consciousness/virtual reality/dreaming in REM. The consciousness-creating active inference that effects complexity-reduction in REM dreaming must operate on FE-arousing data distinct from sensory impingement. The most relevant source is remembered arousals of emotion, both recent and remote, as processed in SWS and REM on “active systems” accounts of memory consolidation/reconsolidation. Freud describes these remembered arousals as condensed in the dreamwork for use in the conscious contents of dreams, and similar condensation can be seen in symptoms. Complexity partly reflects emotional conflict and trauma. This indicates that dreams and symptoms are both produced to reduce complexity in the form of potentially adverse (traumatic or conflicting) arousals of amygdala-related emotions. Mental disorder is thus caused by computational complexity together with mechanisms like synaptic pruning that have evolved for complexity-reduction; and important features of disorder can be understood in these terms. Details of the consilience among Freudian, systems consolidation, and complexity-reduction accounts appear clearly in the analysis of a single fragment of a dream, indicating also how complexity reduction proceeds by a process resembling Bayesian model selection.

Section: Development Emotion and Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free Energy and Virtual Reality in Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis: A Complexity Theory of Dreaming and Mental Disorder

Hopkins

2016

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“…Regarding the relationship of NS with the regulatory principles of psychoanalysis, connections have been made between the level of organization in psychoanalysis with that of natural selection (Hopkins, 2003 , 2004 , 2015 ; Hopkins, “Group conflict and group violence: a perspective from Freud and Darwin,” forthcoming). A good example is found in Hopkins ( 2004 ; Hopkins, “Group conflict and group violence: a perspective from Freud and Darwin,” forthcoming), where he describes an organizational principle emerging from natural selection, which is the tendency toward outgroup aggression, which shows how the survival advantage granted by group identification (and outgroup aggression) may underlie the evolution of mechanisms of projection and introjection described by psychoanalysis.…”

Section: The Role Of Evolution Through Natural Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hierarchical Recursive Organization and the Free Energy Principle: From Biological Self-Organization to the Psychoanalytic Mind

Connolly

Deventer

2017

The present paper argues that a systems theory epistemology (and particularly the notion of hierarchical recursive organization) provides the critical theoretical context within which the significance of Friston's (2010a) Free Energy Principle (FEP) for both evolution and psychoanalysis is best understood. Within this perspective, the FEP occupies a particular level of the hierarchical organization of the organism, which is the level of biological self-organization. This form of biological self-organization is in turn understood as foundational and pervasive to the higher levels of organization of the human organism that are of interest to both neuroscience as well as psychoanalysis. Consequently, central psychoanalytic claims should be restated, in order to be located in their proper place within a hierarchical recursive organization of the (situated) organism. In light of the FEP the realization of the psychoanalytic mind by the brain should be seen in terms of the evolution of different levels of systematic organization where the concepts of psychoanalysis describe a level of hierarchical recursive organization superordinate to that of biological self-organization and the FEP. The implication of this formulation is that while “psychoanalytic” mental processes are fundamentally subject to the FEP, they nonetheless also add their own principles of process over and above that of the FEP. A model found in Grobbelaar (1989) offers a recursive bottom-up description of the self-organization of the psychoanalytic ego as dependent on the organization of language (and affect), which is itself founded upon the tendency toward autopoiesis (self-making) within the organism, which is in turn described as formally similar to the FEP. Meaningful consilience between Grobbelaar's model and the hierarchical recursive description available in Friston's (2010a) theory is described. The paper concludes that the valuable contribution of the FEP to psychoanalysis underscores the necessity of reengagement with the core concepts of psychoanalytic theory, and the usefulness that a systems theory epistemology—particularly hierarchical recursive description—can have for this goal.

“…For example, the dream might defend Freud against the possibility of seeing his own failings via displacing blame, such that the unpleasure associated with the self-reproach prevents the self-reproach from being acknowledged (i.e., repressed, or projected, according to Hopkins, 2015 5 ). Taken as such, the dream of Irma’s injection then reflects both Freud’s blindness of the seeing eye and the fulfillment of his wishes (the anxious denial of knowledge of being at fault).…”

Section: An Alternative Account Of Repression In Dreamingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5Hopkins (2015) writes that his interpretation of Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection with respect to projection is superior to Freud’s original wish-fulfilling one. While I do not disagree with Hopkins here, I simply point out that his projection interpretation is consonant with a general wish-fulfilling framework (a wish for something not to be the case).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7The free energy model has also been discussed in neuropsychoanalysis (e.g., Fotopoulou, 2013; Solms, 2013b; Hopkins, 2016), where Freud’s metapsychological economic position has been brought into relation to free-energy and hierarchical cortical systems (Carhart-Harris and Friston, 2010, 2012; Fotopoulou, 2013; Solms, 2013b; Hopkins, 2015). See Boag (2017), for a critical discussion of the general soundness of this account in terms of motivation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Dreams and Motivation: Comparison of Freud’s and Hobson’s Views

Boag

2017

The merits of Freudian dream theory continue to be debated and both supporters and critics appeal to empirical evidence to support their respective positions. What receives much less attention is the theoretical coherency of either Freudian dream theory or alternative perspectives. This paper examines Freudian dream theory and J. Allan Hobson’s alternative position by addressing the role of motivation in dreams. This paper first discusses motivation in Freudian theory and its relation to dreams and disguise-censorship. The role of motivation in Hobson’s theory is then considered. Hobson’s claim that dream plot and content selection is random and based on design error and functional imbalance is then discussed in relation to the protoconsciousness theory proposal that dreams serve an adaptive function. While there are apparent inconsistencies in Hobson’s position, his appeal to emotions and instincts provides a preliminary platform for understanding the role of motivation in dreams that is consonant with the Freudian position.