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Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)Howard Shevrin
a
aUniversity of Michigan Medical Center, Riverview Building, 900 Wall Street, Ann Arbor,
MI 48105-0722, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.
To cite this article:Howard Shevrin (1999) Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor), Neuropsychoanalysis: AnInterdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 1:1, 55-60, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.1999.10773246
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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views
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Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)
Bridge building between psychoanalysis and neurosci
ence, disciplines that on their face appear to be worlds
apart, has been deemed by some foolhardy and by
others premature, yet as the Solms and Nersessian
summary Freud s affect theory and Panksepp s po
sition paper attest, the time may be ripe and the enter
prise fruitful. Most gratifying from a psychoanalyst s
standpoint is the call made by Panksepp for drawing,
not only on psychoanalytic insights, but for integrating
Howard Shevrin, Ph.D., is Professor
Psychology, Department
Psychiatry, University
Michigan, Ann Arbor.
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The psychology an infant communicating. In:
The
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ed. U Neisser. New York: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 121-173.
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networks. In:
Minnesota Symposium on Child Psychol-
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J
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Allan
N
Schore
9817 Sylvia Avenue
Northridge
C
91324
e mail: [email protected]
the psychoanalytic method with psychological and
neuroscience research approaches. As someone who
has been committed to this integration in my own re
search (Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and Williams,
1996), I welcome these exciting efforts to advance
interchange between psychoanalysis and neuro
science.
In my commentary I will be limiting my observa
tions
to some the issues raised concerning the rela
tionship
affect to consciousness, motivation, and
action. Insofar as the Panksepp paper is in part a de
tailed response to the Solms and Nersessian summary
7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)
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S
of
Freud s views, in my comments I will necessarily
at times be referring to both papers.
I would like first to make one general observation
on the role
of
theory in psychoanalysis and neurosci
ence. As Panksepp observes and seems rather to la
ment, a purely empirical approach is deeply
entrenched in contemporary neuroscience (as in all the
life sciences) which is accompanied by a profound
suspicion
of comprehensive theories. He refers tren
chantly and vividly to the contrast between Freud s
wide-ranging hypotheses, often metaphorically ex
pressed, against the accumulating peppercorns of evi
dence from the basic and clinical neurosciences. The
time, he believes, is ripe to stop simply accumulating
these peppercorns and to bring them into some hi
erarchical relationship to each other so that complex
functional domains can be conceptualized. In this
task Freudian theory can be
of
great help
if
only as
an initial approximation which will undoubtedly be
modified in the light
of
new evidence.
Psychoanalysis can contribute to neuroscience in
two important ways by providing, (1) a theory on a
complex level
of
functional integration that takes indi
vidual subjectivity and personal context into account,
(2) a method of inquiry that investigates the intimate
subjective and behavioral expression of this functional
integration in a manner and depth no other psychologi
cal method approaches. On its part, neuroscience can
offer psychoanalysis an objective and detailed ac
counting
of
brain mechanisms and processes bearing
on its hypotheses, either providing support, raising
questions, or suggesting useful modifications of them.
Above all, neuroscience together with psychoanalysis
can create a comprehensive picture of the mind and
its neurophysiological and neuroanatomical instantia
tion in the brain. It is in that spirit that I now undertake
to examine the three issues concerning affect identi
fied previously.
The Relationship
ffect to Consciousness
According to Solms and Nersessian, Freud hypothe
sized that affects are perceived in a distinctive mod
ality of consciousness calibrated in degrees of
pleasure and unpleasure Consciousness is concep
tualized along the lines of a sense organ which trans
duces quantitative unconscious oscillations in the
tension of instinctual needs into qualitative experi
ences
of
pleasure and unpleasure. These qualitative
conscious experiences are mental and representa-
Howard Shevrin
tional; the quantitative unconscious processes are
mental and nonrepresentational.
How well does Panksepp s understanding
of
re
lated neuroscience findings it with this theory linking
affect to consciousness and the unconscious? In short,
what kind
of
bridge exists, or still needs to be built?
With respect to the central role
of
pleasure and unplea
sure Panksepp expresses some reservations, stating
that broad categories (like) positive and neg
ative affect (reminiscent of Freud s global plea
sure-unpleasure dimension)
may be obfuscating
our pursuit
of
the basic systems that actually exist in
the brain. Panksepp then refers to at least a
dozen
basic systems that actually exist in the brain associ
ated with different qualities of basic affect experience.
How might psychoanalytic theory s presented by
Solms and Nersessian accommodate these findings?
With respect to the indivisible relationship
of
af
fect to consciousness ascribed by Solms and Nerses
sian to Freud, Panksepp talks about how affect
regulators may
(descend) to preconscious lev
els of neural processing And elsewhere he cites Le
Doux s research on unconscious affect. If I follow
Solms and Nersessian in their understanding of Freud,
affects cannot be preconscious or unconscious, but are
quintessentially conscious. There is a potential discon
nect here that must be addressed, about which more
later.
It is also instructive to examine how Panksepp
views the id and its unconscious functioning in neuro
science terms. Here we find a potentially serious prob
lem. When Panksepp talks about the qualitative and
quantitative aspects of affective life, he does not ap
pear to be talking about the same coordinates as Solms
and Nersessian for whom the qualitative characterizes
conscious affect experience and the quantitative char
acterizes unconscious processes which are transduced
into conscious affect experience. Instead Panksepp is
referring to the quantitative aspects
of conscious
quali
tative affect experience. Thus a conscious unpleasant
feeling may be weaker or stronger than another un
pleasant feeling. In fact, Panksepp expressly rejects
the notion
of
what he refers to as a vague, hydraulic
concept like
drive .
In its place Panksepp would
prefer specific regulatory motivational functions
such
s
hunger, thirst, and thermoregulation, where
specific interoreceptive detector elements have been
identified in medial strata
of
the diencephalon. One
would of course wish to add sex to the list of specific
regulatory motivational functions.
Is there a problem here, or would Solms and
Nersessian reply that rising or lessening tension in any
7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)
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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views
motivational system would be perceived consciously
s
unpleasurable
or
pleasurable? But this reply would
create another problem: f the conscious perception is
limited to pleasure or unpleasure how would we know
which motivational system was activated? Since we
do know, at least after a certain age, what it
is
we
want or need, there must also be some conscious
awareness of the motivational state itself quite apart
from the consciousness of pleasure and unpleasure. I
would assume that Solms and Nersessian would
counter in Freud s behalfthat we arrive at such knowl
edge by inference from the specific motoric systems
that are activated (e.g., our genitals in the case of sex
ual motivation), rather than by direct experience (but
more about this in the next section on affect and moti
vation).
The other important characteristic of unconscious
processes as attributed to Freud by Solms and Nerses
sian is its nonrepresentational nature. Only conscious
ness is representational; only in consciousness do we
know what our minds are about. Unconsciously quan
titative nonrepresentational processes prevail that
seem quite similar to the computational accounts fa
vored by cognitive psychology and some in the neuro
sciences. Yet Panksepp in various places uses the
accepted terminology
of
neuroscience when he talks
about signal detectors at all levels
of
the nervous
system as in the previous quote in which he talks about
, specific interoceptive detector elements s intrinsic
to motivational systems that presumably are in psy
choanalytic terms part
of
the
ide
A detector is in the
same class as a sense organ; it responds to a signal
which may be an increase in a quantity of some sort
(e.g., heat), or a different qualitative input s might be
carried by a particular hormone (e.g., sexualarousal).
f
I understand Panksepp correctly, from a neuro
science standpoint it would be better to talk about hier
archical levels of organization, each with its own
pattern of qualitative and quantitative processes,
rather than restrict the qualitative to one level of the
hierarchy (consciousness) and the quantitative to an
other (the unconscious). As pointed out by Grossman
(1992), in his interesting analysis
of
the implications
for our understanding of Freud that can be drawn from
his early monograph
n phasia
(1953), Freud s fun
damental conception of the mind is of a complex hier
archy
of
levels of organization in which the important
processes happen at the boundaries where qualitative
transformations take place. Each higher level
de-
tects and in this sense represents what is going
on at a lower level. There are thus sense organs
throughout this hierarchy detecting and represent-
ing
qualitative and quantitative processes to be
passed on to the next level in the hierarchy. This view
leaves open the question s to where consciousness
and the unconscious
fit
into this hierarchical organi
zation.
The Relationship of Affect to Motivation
In his discussion of affect and motivation, Panksepp
makes an interesting distinction between a behav
ioral state of anticipatory eagerness and a simple
and unitary sensation of positive affect. He calls the
former a SEEKING system that can serve a wide
range
of
motivational urges. Panksepp relates this con
cept to research by Berridge and Robinson (1995) on
investigations of addiction in rats and humans in
which they demonstrated that affect and craving oper
ated independently
of
each other. Different neural sys
tems were involved. A craving can intensify without
any increase in unpleasure, and it can be gratified
without any increase in pleasure. Panksepp hypothe
sizes that the Berridge and Robinson wanting sys
tem of the brain mediates feelings of an obsessively
energized sense of desire and power rather than any
simple pleasurable sensation that we normally experi
ence when we fulfill our needs. It becomes moot
whether one should refer to experiences of desire or
power s affective or motivational experiences. Para
doxically one can say that they l motivational and
can either be pleasurable or unpleasurable, supporting
the Berridge and Robinson findings. Of course, one
can, s proposed by Panksepp, talk about two kinds
of affects, the basic emotional affects linked to
basic instinctual action readiness systems, and the
motivational affects
linked to sensory systems.
It is hard to see how experiences
of
desire and power,
which appear to be motivational affects, are more
closely linked to sensory rather than action readiness
systems.
All in all it might be clearer conceptually and
closer to empirical findings (Berridge and Robinson,
1995), to identify a class
of
experiences as motiva
tional which is independent of another class of experi
ences called affective..Each such class would have its
unconscious
s well s conscious aspects so that we
could speak
of
unconscious motives becoming con
scious, and conscious affects becoming unconscious.
This alternative allows for a more flexible and varied
relationship between affect and motivation, conscious
and unconscious, than the view attributed to Freud by
Solms and Nersessian. It also makes possible a further
7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)
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58
distinction in experience that is also consonant with
the Berridge and Robinson findings. Increasing and
decreasing motivational tension, instead
of
being
linked to conscious experiences of unpleasure and
pleasure, would be linked to experiences of frustration
and gratification. It would thus become possible for a
state of frustration of an urge to be experienced as
pleasurable, and a state
of
gratification
as
unpleasur
able. There are many clinical instances
of
such combi
nations.
One significant problem encountered by this al
ternate view is how to account for the function affect
serves. In Freud s system as described by Solms and
Nersessian, and as accepted by Panksepp, affects as
cribe value to need states and thus function important
ly in adaptation. Value is defined as an affective repre
sentation of the internal state of the individual. Affect
informs us
of
what s doing in our minds and bodies.
But why do we need to be so informed? One can
imagine an organism in which internal need states are
acted on or inhibited without any detour into affect
experience; it is conceivable that the lower phyla live
in this way.
If
this is the case, what evolutionary event
made the development of affect adaptationally advan
tageous? Clearly it would be a mistake to argue that
affects are epiphenomenal, as Panksepp reminds us is
the view
of
some neuroscientists.
A possible answer is to be found in an interesting
hypothesis advanced by Panksepp as he tries to grap
ple with the question raised by Solms and Nersessian
concerning
what
are affects a perception
of?
He
urges investigators to devote research to regions
of
the brain where emotional values and external events
are first coordinated with a coherent map of the
body. He goes on to speculate that it is in these
brain zones
where
id and ego processes begin their
massively entangled battle for primacy that reverber
ates through all subsequent levels of neural develop
ment of each individual and species. Consistent with
these thoughts is Panksepp s later consideration
of
what he refers to as the great dilemma of the subjec
tive phenomenological
view
that seemingly purely
internal events, from one standpoint, are actually ex
perienced as related to the world. Although the
en-
tangled battle for primacy between id and ego takes
place internally, and perhaps in a specific brain local
ity as proposed by Panksepp, the battle is about what
is going on externally and what to do about it. It should
not be surprising that a high-functioning autistic self
centered and emotionally aloof 7-year-old, once put
on naltrexone became more sensitive to her parents,
but ascribed the change not to something inside her-
Howard Shevrin
self, but to differences in how her parents were re
sponding to her. And Panksepp adds perhaps they
were, through subtle interactions, that arose from her
increased intimacy with their lives. The point is that
we should not confuse the locus of action inside
with the function
of
that action which is always out
wardly directed. Adaptation at the individual level is
always about adaptation to a particular surround.
Or
to put it differently, we do not act to feel better, we feel
better when we act successfully in the world, which
in psychoanalytic terms means engaging in an action
resulting from some compromise between the id and
ego forces battling, as proposed by Panksepp, in the
centromedial areas
of
the mesencephalon and the re
ticular nuclei of the thalamus. From this standpoint
affect functions, not as a mere p r ption of internal
events, but as a messenger or signal for needed action
arising from the needful requirements
of
the individual
which must be met in a particular environment. This
function
of
affect is acknowledged by Solms and Ners
essian in the form of signal affect which is correctly
accorded a place at a high level of ego maturity. In
psychoanalytic theory signal affect functions uncon
sciously and signals an impending danger
if
the indi
vidual were to act on certain unacceptable wishes, or
even to become aware of them. I am suggesting that all
affects have that function. They are signals, sometimes
subtle and unconscious, sometimes gross and con
scious, which indicate the import of the internal battle
for what
we
must or must not do next. We know from
animal studies that even states
of
utter helplessness,
as in abandoned or lost baby monkeys, can result in
an adaptational posture given the extreme circum
stances the infant finds itselfin. After a period of futile
unanswered distress calls the baby monkey becomes
mute and assumes what appears to be a fetal position
which renders the monkey less noticeable to a preda
tor. The affect of helplessness is not simply the percep
tion of an internal state, but functions integrally as a
part of an action system.
The Relationship
of
Affect to Action
As
already noted, affect, to be understood, must be
conceptualized as part of the individual s action ori
ented pursuit of need gratification and survival in a
particular surround. It is the first harbinger of intended
action. As such it provides some breathing space, or
delay, between motivational urgency and action. In so
doing it makes it possible to entrain a variety of cogni
tive capacities, most importantly memory, so that an
7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)
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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views 59
intended action can take into account previous experi
ence as well as current perceptions. Freud cogently
identified a series
of
danger situations which the indi
vidual must act to avoid. The mute monkey in the fetal
position is avoiding attracting a predator. But prior to
that point the monkey emitting its distress calls was
experiencing what Freud referred to
as
the loss of the
caretaking object, the single most survival threatening
danger any mammalian infant can face. The other dan
gers Freud identified loss of love, threat to bodily
integrity (castration anxiety), loss
of
self-regard-are
again all intimately tied to acting in a real world, even
when there are misperceptions of that world, as in
neurosis, which are at stark variance with any consen
sus as to what that reality is.
The intent
of
my comment on the relationship of
affect to action is to counteract the tendency in Freud
to base an understanding
of
affect on what appears to
be a purely utilitarian, Benthamlike conception: We
act in order to maximize pleasure and minimize un
pleasure; our motives are hostage
to
a calculus of plea
sure and pain, whereas, as Freud also recognized in
underscoring the importance of the four danger situa
tions, our actions are not indissolubly tied to pleasure
and pain, but are intimately related to our perceptions
and anticipations as to what will happen in the world
if
and when we act. Here one is reminded ofPanksepp's
system of SEEKING, which is essentially action ori
ented, having to do with desire and power, both of
which are faced outward toward the world.
A Few Final Thoughts
I mentioned earlier that I would return to the role
of
consciousness and the unconscious in a theory positing
a complex hierarchy
of
levels of organization in which
quantitative and qualitative factors interact at each
level. In his psychoanalytic monograph on topogra
phy, Gill (1963) concluded that a careful reading of
Freud suggested that id, ego, and superego functions
operated at a number
of
different levels. Instead of
conceptualizing the id as the repository solely
of
the
more primitive motives (drives), the id might be better
thought of as the motivational component in any act,
with the ego and superego functioning as moderating
and regulatory agencies at any level. Similarly, con
sciousness as subjective awareness can occur at any
level of the hierarchy, performing its primary function,
which is to make it possible for the individual to distin
guish between perception and memory
so
that action
in the real world can be ordered by a modification
of
past experience in the light of current experience (see
Shevrin [1998] for a fuller account). In neurosis the
past triumphs over the present by subverting the role
of
consciousness and can do so at any level.
The psychoanalytic dynamic unconscious is cre
ated by acts
of repression in which distinctions be
tween past and present, fantasy and reality are erased.
From this standpoint the dynamic unconscious can be
qualitative (e.g., containing representations
of past ex
perience), and quantitative (motivational strength).
What distinguishes it from consciousness are the prin
ciples according to which its representations are orga
nized, which Freud referred to as the primary process.
It is the operation
of
the primary process on such men
tal representations as memory and perception which
creates confusions of past and present and ignores
the vital distinction between current perception and
memory. The dominant force on any level
of
uncon
scious mentation is the wish with its insistence on
recreating past experiences
of gratification no matter
what the actual current real possibilities. The dynamic
unconscious is a poor learner.
In my reading of Panksepp I
find
repeated refer
ences to different levels of neural organization. In his
conclusion, for example, he states,
the
levels
of
com
plexity already revealed at the neuroscience lev
el are so vast that no one can have confidence in
relating them to human psychodynamics that arise
from the immeasurably complex interactions
of
many
neural systems. But it is this discovered complexity
at the neuroscience level that is the best harbinger of
future success in building bridges between the neuro
sciences and psychoanalysis.
References
Berridge,
K
C., Robinson, T. (1995), The mind of an
addicted brain: Neural sensitization
of
wanting versus
liking.
urr
Direct. in Psycholog. Sci. 4:71 76.
Freud,
S
(1953), On Aphasia: A Critical Study. New York:
International Universities Press.
Gill, M M. (1963), Topography and Systems in Psychoana
lytic Theory. Psychological Issues Monogr.
1
New
Yor
k:
International Universities Press.
Grossman,W. I (1992), Hierarchies, boundaries, and repre
sentations in a Freudian model of mental organization.
Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 40:27 26.
Shevrin,
H (1998), Why do we need to be so conscious?
A psychoanalytic answer. In: Advanced Personality ed.
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D F. Barone, M. Hersen, V B. Van Hasselt. New
York: Plenum Press.
Bond, J., Brakel, L.
A
W., Hertel,
R
K.,
Williams, W. J (1996), Conscious and Unconscious Pro
cesses: Psychodynamic, Cognitive, and Neurophysiolog
ical Convergences. New York: Guilford Press.
Howard Shevrin
University
Michigan Medical Center
Riverview Building, 900 Wall Street
Ann Arbor, MI48105-0722
e-mail: shevrinumich.edu
Clifford Yorke
Affects, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience
Commentary by Clifford Yorke (South Moreton, England)
I
When I was still a student, I had the temerity to speak
during a discussion, at the British Psycho-Analytic So
ciety,
of
a paper that touched on the subject
of
affects.
Although I had read a good deal of Freud I was, per
haps, unduly influenced by Rapaport (1953) and oth
ers when I asserted that the understanding of affects
was perhaps the weakest part
of
the psychoanalytic
theory of the way the mind worked. No one contra
dicted me, and no psychoanalytic elder pointed out
that a firm foundation for a psychological theory of
affect already existed in Freud's writings. As my ac
quaintance with Freud deepened, and I began to know
better, I looked back on the episode with some as
tonishment.
It might be thought that the uncritical reaction to
my ill-judged assertion was due to a reluctance, on
the part
of
the enlightened, to contradict a student,
however callow, who had dared to take part in open
debate. That is unlikely: It would surely have been
more helpful to set to rights such a wrong-headed dec
laration. It began to dawn on me that the plain fact of
the matter was that no one knew I was wrong. How
can this be explained?
Solms and Nersessian are surely right when they
say that Freud's theory of affects is scattered through
out an extensive literature covering some 40 years of
experience and reflection, and that no single work is
devoted to a full exposition
of
its fundamental judg
ments and concepts. That would certainly account for
some of the misunderstandings, though not perhaps all
the misrepresentations. Some of the latter have come
from willful distortions of Freud's thinking by those
who come from outside the profession and who, for a
Clifford Yorke, F.R.C.Psych., D.P.M., is a Training and Supervising
Analyst, British Psychoanalytic Society.
number of reasons, wish to blacken his character or
transmogrify his ideas. Detractors of this kind need not
concern us here. More important are the uninformed
criticisms that come from inside the discipline; and in
this connection we have to ask ourselves whether there
are reasons for the misrepresentations other than those
put forward by the authors of the outstanding, summa
rizing paper with which we have been presented. I
believe there are.
The fact that affects, and the anticipation of them,
so often function as motivators has led many analysts
to believe that their link with those activating forces
that Freud called
drives
can bejettisoned. Freud's con
cept of drive
Trieb
has been under fire, for very many
years, for reasons that call for closer consideration
than this occasion permits (Strachey translated
Trieb
as
instinct,
but
drive
is preferred today). Many psy
choanalysts have no difficulty in recognizing manifes
tations of aggression and sexuality, but seem not to
understand the concept of drives by which Freud
sought to explain their motivating power. It is widely
believed today that affects can replace drives rather
than be linked with them. f Freud's theory of affects
is misunderstood, so is his theory of drives. So I want
to underline, in the course of what follows, his defini
tion of drives
as
emphasized by Solms and Nersessian
in their paper, adding one or two points. However,
a few remarks seem in order that apply, within the
profession, to a good deal
of
Freud criticism in general
and not simply to the more specific issues of drives
and affects.
1
Many practicing clinicians are satisfied with a clinical theory that
appears to help them to understand their patients better without recourse
to the theory of mind that lies behind it. Freud's theory of mind is known as
metapsychology because it goes beyond the consideration
of
consciousness
alone the exclusive concern of many preanalytic psychologists. It is a
theory at a higher level
of
abstraction than a clinical theory (Freeman,
1992, 1995; Yorke, 1995, 1996).