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memory along just these lines. unconscious, too, so only a small part of the ego
Neuroscientists have also identified (bulb at top) was left to manage conscious
unconscious memory systems that medi- experience, which was closely tied to
ate emotional learning. In 1996 at New perception. The superego mediated the ongoing
York University, LeDoux demonstrated struggle between the ego and id for dominance.
the existence under the conscious cortex Recent neurological mapping (below) generally
of a neuronal pathway that connects per- correlates to Freuds conception. The core brain
ceptual information with the primitive stem and limbic system responsible for
brain structures responsible for generat- instincts and drives roughly correspond to
ing fear responses. Because this pathway Freuds id. The ventral frontal region, which
bypasses the hippocampus which gen- controls selective inhibition, the dorsal frontal
erates conscious memories current region, which controls self-conscious thought,
events routinely trigger unconscious re- and the posterior cortex, which represents
membrances of emotionally important the outside world, amount to
past events, causing conscious feelings the ego and the superego.
that seem irrational, such as Men with
beards make me uneasy.
Neuroscience has shown that the ma-
jor brain structures essential for forming
conscious (explicit) memories are not Dorsal
frontal
functional during the first two years of cortex Posterior
life, providing an elegant explanation of cortex
what Freud called infantile amnesia. As
Freud surmised, it is not that we forget
our earliest memories; we simply cannot
recall them to consciousness. But this in- Ventral
ability does not preclude them from af- frontal
cortex Brain stem
fecting adult feelings and behavior. One
Animal Within
FREUD ARGUED THAT the pleasure
principle gave expression to primitive, FREUD SKETCHED a neuronal mechanism for
animal drives. To his Victorian contem- repression (above) in 1895, as part of his hope
poraries, the implication that human be- that biological explanations of the mind would
one day replace psychological ones. In his
havior was at bottom governed by urges
scheme, an unpleasant memory would normally
that served no higher purpose than car- be activated by a stimulus (Qn, far left) heading
nal self-fulfillment was downright scan- from neuron a toward neuron b (bottom). But
dalous. The moral outrage waned during neuron alpha (to right of a) could divert the
subsequent decades, but Freuds concept signal and thus prevent the activation if other
neurons (top right) exerted a repressing
of man-as-animal was pretty much side-
influence. Note that Freud (shown later in life)
lined by cognitive scientists. drew gaps between neurons that he predicted
Now it has returned. Neuroscientists would act as contact barriers. Two years later
such as Donald W. Pfaff of the Rocke- English physiologist Charles Sherrington
feller University and Jaak Panksepp of discovered such gaps and named them synapses.
BETTMANN/CORBIS (photograph of Freud circa 1930); A. W. FREUD ET AL., BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PATERSON MARSH LTD., LONDON (drawing)
MARK SOLMS holds the chair in neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town in South
tory aggression); the fear-anxiety sys- Africa and an honorary lectureship in neurosurgery at St. Bartholomews and the Royal Lon-
tem; and the panic system (which in- don School of Medicine and Dentistry. He is also director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neu-
cludes complex instincts such as those ro-Psychoanalysis of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, a consultant neuropsycholo-
that govern social bonding). Whether gist to the Anna Freud Center in London and a very frequent flier. Solms is editor and trans-
other instinctual forces exist, such as a lator of the forthcoming four-volume series The Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund
rough-and-tumble play system, is also Freud (Karnac Books). Solms thanks Oliver Turnbull, a senior lecturer at the University of
being investigated. All these brain sys- Wales Center for Cognitive Neuroscience in Bangor, for assisting with this article.
Another pillar of Freuds model is that wrong. We have always argued that and its implications for psychiatry. For
because the true meaning of dreams is dreams are emotionally salient and more, see Hobsons book Dreaming: An
hidden, the emotions they reflect can be meaningful. And what about REM sleep? Introduction to the Science of Sleep
revealed only through his wild-goose- New studies reveal that dreams can occur (Oxford University Press, 2003).