Neuroscience and psychodynamics

I was taken by surprise to read a positive article concerning psychoanalysis. In response I would like to make some comments on facts and their interpretation, the individual and his or her context and the impossible relationship between mind and brain.

I agree that psychoanalysts can have an interesting dialogue with neuroscientists, but it oversteps the mark to conclude that consciousness (and unconsciousness) can be explained by the working of the brain. There is an interaction between a working brain and its context. In this sense I agree with Hobson's (2003) comments on the two directions of causality, but there is more to be considered: consciousness and unconsciousness are not explained by this interdependence.

The neuroscientific concept of the ‘mirror neuron’ is merely an interpretation, and one that for me is no more than a false explanation, or at least a tautology. To call a neuron firing during the execution and observation of the movements of another person a ‘mirror neuron’ is, of course, an interpretation of the two simultaneous phenomena. To say more on this matter we need an interpretation by the subject him- or herself. When Hobson writes that minds mirror one another, that statement does not tell us anything about self-consciousness.

In considering the interaction between one person and another in relation to identity and self-consciousness, the mirroring stage plays an important role. However, as investigators we remain outsiders. To learn about the subjective experience of mirroring we need the interpretation of the subject. This interpretation will include the symbolic function of human beings (i.e. the potential to recall a reality by a word) and goes beyond the imitation (mirroring) of words. Of course, the subject hears the spoken words from the other within the context. But there is more than just the repetition of the word of the other. This is what is referred to as the hole in the being, or the gap between the thing and the word (as Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre postulated). When we consider the subject as a thing among other things, then something very strange happens when the subject names him- or herself; a hole is then made in the person's own being. This is what is referred to as alienation: ‘The human being has a special relation with his own image – a relation of gap, of alienating tension’ (Lacan, 1988).

There is always a gap between the spoken word and the thing for speech to exist, but once the subject speaks, he actualises the gap again and again. What then can be the relation between the mind and the brain? Nowadays the neurosciences are popular, so it is quite accepted to say that the psychic functions are epiphenomena of the brain. For me this statement is much too simplistic. It does not take into account that there is a fundamental difference between a word and the thing it describes. As mirroring needs a distance between the two objects, so it is a fortiori necessary that there is a distance between the symbolic and the material. The distance between word and thing creates a suspense in which symbolic function tries to bridge that gap. Interpretation is one of these metaphorical bridges.

Since there is a fundamental gap between symbol and thing, between thought and matter, it is impossible to explain the mind as a product of the functioning brain. Thoughts are not the excreta of neurons. In this sense the (un)conscious can not be found in the neuron. Explaining the mind as a product of the brain is a metaphor, and a bad metaphor.