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Howard Shevrin
a
To cite this article: Howard Shevrin (1999) Jaak Panksepps Response: Commentary by Howard Shevrin,
Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 1:2, 247-250, DOI:
10.1080/15294145.1999.10773265
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.1999.10773265
247
ONGOING DISCUSSION
248
Howard Shevrin
guished from the way the term information is used by
cognitive psychologists when they talk about information processing: the former is based on the concept
of reducing uncertainty, the latter on the content of
psychic processes.
A word more about the primary process. In this
connection I very much appreciated Panksepp's insistently calling attention to what he called the primitive
force that affect organization can assume, and his willingness to consider equating this primitive force with
the psychic energy of drives. I believe that what I have
described above might provide an account of what
Panksepp is correctly addressing as important.
Ongoing Discussion
249
and one with which I am in general agreement. Mental
processes including affect, whether conscious or unconscious, are representational and qualitative as a
direct result of their inherent organization; they do not
acquire representational or qualitative status because
they are a "perception" of something else. The pertinent analogy is to how a muscle responds to neural
innervation: it contracts because that is what it is built
to do; its contraction is not a "perception" of the
"sensory" neural input. Similarly, the affect structures of the brain respond to innervations in accord
with their built in structures and functions; they are
not "perceptions" of "sensory" inputs. Perceptions
result when perceptual structures are activated. Aside
from theoretical considerations, a growing body of
subliminal perception and implicit memory research
attests to the qualitative and representational nature
of unconscious processes.
As we proceed further in our discourse it will be
of critical importance for each to be clear how the
terms conscious, unconscious and nonconscious are
used.
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Howard Shevrin
other affective states. The subliminal method allows us
to operationalize unconscious processing, the clinical
method draws upon the full richness of subjective
data, and the neurophysiological method provides both
a converging measure independent of the other two
methods and an entree into brain events.
In closing, I would like to say that the initial position papers and subsequent commentaries and responses have considerably enriched my knowledge
and stimulated many ideas and new possibilities. I
hope my comments have been of comparable interest
to others.
References
Some Suggestions for an Empirically Based
Convergence of Psychoanalytic and
Neuroscience Methods
In their concluding remarks Solms and Nersessian cite
a way in which psychoanalytic and neuroscience approaches can be integrated by drawing upon neuropsychological lesion studies through which certain
hypotheses can be tested bearing on psychoanalytic
dream theory as contrasted with alternate theories.
This is proving to be a rich and rewarding approach
and is methodologically similar to the approach illustrated above concerning the hypothetical working of
lithium, Prozac, and Anafranil. But these approaches
do not deal directly with the analytic clinical situation
as Green underscores. Panksepp would like to draw
on the richness of subjective experience elicited in
the treatment situation itself. We have made a first
approach to addressing this problem.
In our research we have combined clinical, cognitive, and neurophysiological methods with encouraging results (Shevrin, Willimas, Marshall, Hertel, Bond,
and Brakel, 1992; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and
Williams, 1996). We have been able to track electrophysiologically stimuli related to unconscious conflict
and conscious symptom experience presented supraand subliminally. The stimuli have been selected from
a series of in-depth" clinical interviews conducted in
the context of a psychodynamic evaluation. Thus far
we have relied on the event-related potential as the
neurophysiological marker. It is entirely possible to
combine this electrophysiological marker with neuroimaging to establish patterns of localization, with skin
conductance responses to measure sympathetic activation (see Wong, Shevrin, and Williams [1994] for such
evidence), and with biochemical markers of stress and
Bernat, E., Bunce, S., & Shevrin, H. (submitted), Eventrelated potentials differentiate positive and negative
mood adjectives during both supraliminal and subliminal
visual processing.
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addicted brain: Neural sensitization of wanting versus
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feeling, low in energy. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn.,
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W. J. (1996), Conscious and Unconscious Processes: Psychodynamic, Cognitive, and Neurophysiological Convergences. New York: Guilford Press.
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Bond, J. A., & Brakel, L. A. (1992), Event-related potential indicators of the dynamic unconscious. Consciousness & Cognit., 1:340-366.
Wong, P., Shevrin, H., & Williams, W. J. (1994), Conscious
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Howard Shevrin
Department of Psychiatry
University of Michigan Medical Center
Riverview Building
900 Wall Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
e-mail: shevrin@ umich. edu