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Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology:

Theoretical and Methodological Affinities
Carlo Semenza

Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Via S. Anastasio, 12, 34100, Trieste,

Italy, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Carlo Semenza (2001) Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology: Theoretical and Methodological
Affinities, Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 3:1, 3-10, DOI:
10.1080/15294145.2001.10773326
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TARGET ARTICLE
Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology:
Theoretical and Methodological Affinities

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Carlo Semenza (Trieste)

Abstract: The position is taken in this paper that psychoanalysis

can better profit from findings in neuroscience (and vice versa)
through the mediation ofcognitive science. It is argued that cognitive science is highly compatible with Freud's background and
thinking. This opinion stems from a reconsideration of Freud's
neuropsychological work, with particular reference to his book
on aphasia.
Cognitive neuropsychology and psychoanalysis are also
thought to share some basic theoretical tenets and methods; for
example, the assumption of transparency and the emphasis on
single case studies.
Some basic concepts developed within cognitive (neuro )psychology may indeed be painlessly incorporated into psychoanalytic theory. Among these, the concepts of modularity and
informational encapsulation as well as the distinction among different types of memory appear to have a particular importance.

Psychoanalysis and neuropsychology, both focused on

establishing a theory of the mind, departed from each
other a century ago, an event that marked the birth of
the former discipline. This happened because Sigmund
Freud, then a well-known neurologist and neuropsychologist, could not see how neurological notions
could effectively shape his new creature and the fascinating domains it promised to uncover, as he had
Acknowledgments: This paper is based on an invited talk given at the
Neuro-Psychoanalysis Center of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute,
May 6, 2000, and a less formal seminar held in Boston on June 13,2000.
I am grateful to Arnold Pfeffer, Mark Solms, and Toni Greatrex for their
kind invitations, and to all members of the audiences for their inspiring
comments. Antonio Alberto Semi, Alessandra Ceola, and Konstantinos
Arvanitakis had the patience to discuss the framework of the talk with
me, providing both useful comments and caring encouragement. Giorgio
Sacerdoti did the same. Sadly, he passed away in the summer of 2000.
This work is dedicated to his memory.
Carlo Semenza, M.D., is Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Trieste, Italy.

hoped. In his letter of the September 22, 1898, to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud stated that he believed in an organic
foundation for behavior: Since, however, he had, apart
from his own conviction, no useful theoretical or practical foothold, he concluded that he had to behave as
if only psychological facts were available and his writings remained consistent with this statement.
Sigmund Freud's unwilling choice, however, may
not be necessary anymore. Contemporary science provides us with theoretical and methodological tools, unavailable a century ago, that, while bridging the gap
between psychoanalysis and neuropsychology, may
also help the one discipline take advantage of the
other, in view of their undoubtedly common aim. This
paper will argue that the new, useful notions are not
so much those brought about by "hard" neuroscience,
of which, despite undeniable successes, we are still
very much in need, but rather those inherent in cognitive theory. Once properly understood and used, these
notions will also reveal themselves to be surprisingly
consistent with Freud's thought, style, and cultural
background. In this respect one may even be tempted
to speculate that the founder of psychoanalysis came
close to discovering by himself most of the modern
tenets of cognitive neuroscience. On a more cautious
note, however, we may be satisfied with the fact that
most of the new neuropsychological theoretical and
methodological apparatus of cognitive neuroscience
can be easily and profitably incorporated into theoretical psychoanalysis without any cost. Contrary to
widely expressed concerns, the richness of psychoanalysis has nothing at all to lose, and arguably much
to gain, from such an exchange.

Carlo Semenza

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Freud's Problem with Neurology

Dealing with a Traditional Criticism

A first consideration must precede any other in this

paper: Are we now in a better position vis-a-vis
Freud's problem with neurology? Despite a century of
progress and despite the somehow artificial enthusiasm raised by new technologies, we are not much
closer, in my opinion, than Freud was to a useful,
advanced neurophysiology. To be fully honest we do
not even know the register on which to match psychology and neurology. We still do not know enough about
the organization of the functioning of the nervous system. This may sound pessimistic, but it in no way
implies that we are stuck in an impasse. On the contrary, we can legitimately claim to be in the mainstream of science.
In order to describe the present state of affairs in
cognitive neuropsychology as well as in psychoanalytic theory, it may be useful to draw an analogy with
what happened in genetics. This science may indeed
claim to have reached, to a certain extent, a satisfactory level of reductionism, where molecular and functional notions are thought to be effectively integrated.
We have known for half a century that the molecular
structure of DNA mediates genetic transmission, according to rules whose essence we are now able to
grasp. However, the discovery of DNA and of its beautiful double helix structure would not have been fully
appreciated if we had not first identified it as the structure, within the chromosomes, directly involved with
genetic information. Even before the discovery of the
chromosomes, we knew the precise laws of genetics,
and these are valid to this day. This was due to the
efforts of a monk, Gregor Mendel, who around 1865,
entirely unaware of DNA and chromosomes, was able
to workout the laws of genetics, just by observing
the growth of peas in his garden. Gregor Mendel's
endeavor held by no means less spectacular results
than Crick and Watson's experiments in the following
century. There is no shame, therefore, in being in Mendel's position, which is the one that both the cognitive
neuropsychologist and the psychoanalyst can comfortably occupy today-deriving laws of behavior from observation. Without these laws it will be impossible to
understand the underlying neural structures. On the
other hand, mere localization of function, at present,
has not progressed since Freud's time; and it is not
progressing in a significant way, at least for the purposes we here have in mind. 1

One criticism that has been made of cognitive neuropsychology-and one that may be directed to psychoanalysis as well-is the argument that there is nothing
to learn about mental functions from the observation
of mental pathology. Pathological findings are interesting only as clinical phenomena but have nothing to
say about the normal mind; only laboratory experiments and observations of normal behavior would illuminate this.
However, as psychoanalysis could have taught
neuropsychology long ago, who is in a position to
decide whether the observations made in laboratory
experiments, designed according to the experimenter's
prejudices, have a greater epistemological value than
the observations made of patients whose brains have
been damaged by accidents of nature, entirely blind
to the investigator's expectations (as with patients on
the couch)? In all cases the ultimate filter is the observer's theory, which may be more or less correct.
In pathological cases there is indeed a further
advantage: Phenomena happen independently of the
observer's expectations; counterintuitive findings may
prompt adjustment or total changes to theory.

lOne single useful finding, however, may sooner or later come from
modern instruments: the ability to distinguish activation of a structure
from its active inhibition. The fact that nowadays this distinction is not
distinguishable says a lot about the value of modern localization findings.

What Freud Missed

Freud could have and indeed might have realized what
I have just noted, perhaps in exactly the same way.
However, he did not have at his disposal the sort of
psychology that may ultimately mediate between psychoanalysis and neuroscience (i.e., cognitive psychology). Since we have this instrument, we may now be
more optimistic than Freud. We cannot but admire,
however, how close he came to a proper cognitive
science. Cognitive neuropsychogists cannot but be in
awe of the many methodological and theoretical affinities displayed by psychoanalysis and cognitive neuropsychology. Before discussing some of these affinities,
the term cognitivism must be defined via a discussion
of cognitive neuropsychology and its origins and
Freud's own scientific background.

Basic Notions about Cognitivism

The philosophical foundations of cognitivism, as we
use the term here, are quickly defined by the features
Howard Gardner (1985, pp. 6-7) listed in The Mind's
New Science:

Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology

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1. The usefulness of the concept of representation.

2. The computer metaphor.
3. The (momentary) deemphasis of affect, context,
culture, and history.
4. Its foundation in the Western philosophical-scientific tradition.
5. A belief in the importance of an interdisciplinary
focus.
How do these theoretical points reconcile with
Freud's position? The main and most original point of
cognitivism is the belief that it is useful and legitimate
to posit a separate level of analysis called the level of
mental representation; that is, the level where the status of represented information at a given point of processing is specified. Working at this level, a scientist
deals with entities such as symbols, rules, images, and
codes that constitute the content and format of the
represented information. In addition, a cognitive scientist explores the ways in which these representational entities are joined, transformed, and confronted
with one another. Reasoning at this level is useful and
does not conflict at all with an analysis of behavior
at the neurological level. Indeed, it may drive such
analyses. Surely, psychoanalysis lays claim to the
same objectives.
The computer metaphor was of course beyond
Freud's grasp. We shall see, however, that some of
the ways in which mental computations are assumed
to be carried out were already known and were not at
all unfamiliar to Freud.
Gardner's third point may also be seen as incompatible with psychoanalysis. One must, however, keep
in mind that deemphasis of affect, and so on, is seen
only as a temporary necessity. In order to keep the
field of investigation clear we have to assume that
noise/friction does not exist. Nothing, however, prevents us, in principle, from aiming directly for a theory
of affect; for example, Western science, from Galileo
on, maintains only that it is easier to start from a simplified situation. Freud was too deeply educated within
Western scientific and philosophical traditions to ignore or disapprove of such strategies. The fact that he
also respected Eastern wisdom (e.g., the Cabala) cannot undermine this point. Finally, so far as interdisciplinary issues are concerned, a quick look at what
Freud (1919) considered and listed as the ideal content
of an analyst's curriculum provides a satisfactory
answer.

The Rise of Cognitive Neuropsychology in

Modern Times and Its Origin in the 19th
Century
Cognitive neuropsychology developed in parallel with
cognitive psychology and other branches of cognitive
science, and it quickly became a respected partner. Its
main aim, like that of cognitive psychology, is to provide a description of the format and content of mental
representations, of the processes connecting and activating such representations, and in particular of the
"functional architecture" (i.e., the relation between
representations and processes). It pursues this aim by
studying the functional consequences of brain lesions.
Neuropsychology and cognitivism met naturally,
and the reciprocal exchange has been immensely fruitful. The reason is simple: Information processing
models like those of cognitivists can be "lesioned."
A theoretical model can thus be interrupted at its joints
(between one representation and another) or directly,
at one or more of the representational levels. Predictions can be made about how the functional system
would behave in the presence of such lesions. These
may then be tested directly in cases with concrete lesions in the brain. If the model is correct, the behavior
of the brain-injured patient should reflect its predictions; otherwise the model should be revised.
When cognitive neuropsychology developed
around 1980, an identifiable group of old masters, indeed the founders of neuropsychology, had just been
rediscovered in the preceding 20 years (mainly by
Norman Geschwind, a neurologist at Harvard). The
contributions of this group, which included Broca,
Wernicke, Lichtheim, Liepmann, Lissauer Dejerine,
Bastian, and Charcot (i.e., the creme of the neurologists of their time), had been all but forgotten. What
distinguished their way of reasoning was their use of
theoretical models and diagrams which, on close inspection, are not at all unlike those used by modern
cognitive psychologists. They seemed to describe
computational processes: They may, thus, be considered protocognitivists. It is interesting to consider why
they fell into such a long period of oblivion. Leaving
aside many other factors, like war, the decline of German culture, and academic rivalries, an important element was that they had been the target of ferocious
criticism by the generation of neurologists that immediately followed them. The reasons for this criticism
were often well grounded, but, on the whole, it was
also ungenerous vis-a-vis their vast achievements. The
group was accused of weak psychological theories,
inaccurate anatomy, naive understanding of the effects

of lesions (von Monakow was then developing the

concept of diaschisis), and little grasp of statistics.
Henry Head, the British neurologist, called them, contemptuously, the' 'diagram makers" -indeed the very
reason why we now prize them.

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Freud's Position in Neuropsychology

Freud himself was an important critic of the diagram
makers. It can never be stressed enough what a good
neuropsychologist he was. He deserves to be remembered with the fathers of neuropsychology, not just for
introducing a term like agnosia, but for entering into
the diagram makers' way of reasoning and then cogently criticizing their models. Indeed, he worked entirely within their logic, with the full intellectual
equipment that he later used for his own creature, psychoanalysis. His book On Aphasia (Freud, 1891) was
the best work on the subject of his time. It does not
really matter that he was ultimately wrong on several
specific issues. What matters more is that he came into
the enterprise of studying language with the theoretical
skills of a linguist, inspired by the (then nascent) German neogrammarian movement. Freud may thus be
considered the first neurolinguist. He realized that the
form of representation of language in the brain must
be such that local lesions can disturb the functioning
of a linguistically well-defined subset of structures. In
his own words, the reaction of the speech centers to
damage "suggests a certain concept regarding their
organisation." This is cognitive neuropsychology as
we know it today. This was the same man who later
invented psychoanalysis, using an analogous way of
reasoning.
Adding highly defendable linguistic constructs to
information processing diagrams has, indeed, been
one of the techniques that made cognitive neuropsychology so very successful. One basic concept that
influences cognitive neuropsychology, the concept of
modularity, as traditionally conceived, has been seen
as anathema to Freud. The reason for this is easily
discerned, but it reveals that Freud was not an adversary of the concept, but instead someone who could
have used the concept with profit.
The reason why Freud has been seen as an adversary of modularity is that he criticized the theory of
discrete anatomical centers for mental functions; for
example, Broca's or Wernicke's areas. He favored,
instead, the idea of a continuous processing space, situated (in the case of language) in the perisylvian regions of the left hemisphere. In this space, the most

Carlo Semenza
anterior portions would be more devoted to language
production than to comprehension, while the contrary
would apply to the more posterior parts. This, however, does not necessarily imply that Freud's approach
is incompatible with modularity. On the contrary, his
insistence on the necessity of giving separate consideration to each aspect of language may show that what
he had in mind, in waiting for better neuroanatomy,
was a functionally modular system. Later developments in psychoanalysis seem to support this view.

Some Early Efforts Toward an Integration of

Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science
The claim that psychoanalysis is a cognitive science
has already been discussed by others to a degree. Erdelyi (1985) explained in some depth why psychoanalysis
is indeed "Freud's cognitive psychology." Erdelyi
was impressed by the fact that computational methods
generated a series of concepts and theoretical constructs that seem to find a match in Freudian metapsychology. For each of a number of psychoanalytic
concepts he lists parallel concepts in cognitive theory;
for example, he mentions' 'censorship" (buffer, selectivity), "ego" (control processes, central executive),
"conflict" (decisional node), "mental economy" (capacity), and "consciousness" (working memory). Erdelyi's work, however, ends there: He does not
consider the extent to which these matches are really
close ones (some are clearly not). He was mainly involved in the (creditable) task of trying to experimentally demonstrate psychoanalytic concepts. The reason
why these experimental efforts are not particularly
pursued at the present time is beyond the aims of the
present paper.
What does not seem to emerge clearly enough in
Erdelyi's book, is the inadequacy with which cognitive
scientists have faced psychoanalytic theory. A pivotal
example (I am glad that Andre Green [1997] has
picked it out as well) is the attempt to experimentally
demonstrate repression (cf. Baddeley, 1976) on the
pathetic assumption that it should be easier to remember positive than negative events (lack of evidence for
this makes it difficult for some cognitive psychologists
to accept the whole idea of repression)!
On the other hand, psychoanalysts have so far
done very little for cognitive science. Cognitive psychology notwithstanding, psychoanalytic theory,
which more than anything else may be viewed as a
theory of memory, has provided by far the best available theory of forgetting processes, and could provide

Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology

more. There are, moreover, some modern notions
about the structure of memory that could readily benefit psychoanalysis, and some of these will be mentioned later in this paper.

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Modularity in Neuropsychology, and Perhaps

in Psychoanalysis
The modularity theory is based on the idea that the
mind is organized, at certain levels at least, in functionally independent compartments. The most detailed
version of this theory was developed by Jerry Fodor,
in his popular Modularity of Mind (1983).
Neuropsychologists have utilized, explicitly or
(more often) implicitly, several views about modularity, which then determined the way they worked. A
complete description of the modularity theory and its
impact on neuropsychology is beyond the aims of this
paper. There are, however, two basic concepts linked
with modularity that may assume analogous roles in
psychoanalysis: "dissociability of functions" and
"informational encapsulation."
Modular organization leads to dissociability of
functions. The distribution between hemispheres of
mental functions provides the most trivial and uninteresting example. Any handbook of neuropsychology
contains much more interesting instances. Mental faculties and processes may thus work independently of
each other without one process "knowing" about the
other. Both neuropsychology and psychoanalysis uncover dissociations, and through observing them build
their models. 2
Informational encapsulation is one of the properties of Fodor's modules, possibly the most important
one. This term refers to the fact that information
flowing within the module is impervious to extrinsic
information. This description is all too familiar to the
psychoanalyst who knows how encapsulated some aspects of the patient's personality may be: Each patient,
as a consequence of the psychoanalytic treatment, is
made aware of remote memories and deep conflicts,
but the patient may nonetheless persist in disadvantageous behavior vis-a-vis reality. Dramatic improvements are relatively rare. Only when the whole
memory system is retranscribed (we will discuss retranscription-or nachtraglichkeit-Iater), through
painful and expensive work with the analyst in.~
2Associations of symptoms are also important observations. They
may be misleading but, as in the case of dissociations, their value ultimately depends on the strength of the theory they inspire.

transference, the patient acquires more degrees of

freedom and behavior may change. For some patients,
unfortunately, accessing encapsulated parts remains
an impossible enterprise and the therapeutic process
may fail.

The Assumption of Transparency.

Methodological Affinities between Cognitive
Neuropsychology and Psychoanalysis
An important concept in cognitive neuropsychology
is the "principle of transparency." Pathology may
highlight processes that go unobserved in fluent normal functioning. This concept seems, prior to cognitive neuropsychology, to have been entirely
idiosyncratic to psychoanalysis. Indeed, mentioning
the issue of transparency naturally leads to the next
methodological issue, which is valid for both cognitive
neuropsychology and psychoanalysis: the supremacy
of single case observations over group studies, and the
reduced importance of classic syndromes.
Single case observations have constituted the basis of psychoanalysis from the very beginning and famous cases are the real stars of its history. Modern
cognitive neuropsychology has renewed the interest in
single cases that the diagram makers (later criticized
for this, but not by Freud) had brought to an art. What,
indeed, justifies this faith in single case observation?
Psychoanalysis has provided an answer, more or less
implicitly, for a century. Interesting cases are those
where one feature of normal behavior stands out more
clearly for observation and study. The underlying assumption is that pathology does not create new structures or processes; rather, it reveals an imbalance
between existing ones. Thus normal defense mechanisms are highlighted in the context of neuroses, just
as, with brain damage, the workings of cognitive functions-no longer obscured by the harmonious workings of others-emerge.
A consequence of this line of reasoning is found,
in a parallel fashion for psychoanalysis and neuropsychology, in the clinical field. The taxonomy of neuroses (no two psychiatry textbooks provide the same
one!) is much less interesting for the psychoanalyst
than the detailed profile of each individual patient's
personality structure. In the same way, for instance,
old aphasic syndromes like Broca's and Wernicke's
aphasias, still described in textbooks (there being no
full agreement among major research groups) are more
or less ignored by cognitive neuropsychologists who
want to distinguish the effects of damage to single,

8
theoretically defendable components of language processing, such as, for instance, phonological representations.

Carlo Semenza
with cognitive psychologists, not even among those
who are favorably disposed to connectionism. This
attitude seems reciprocal: In Edelman's work, indeed,
cognitive psychology is either neglected or grossly
misrepresented.

More on Modularity, Interactivity, and the

Psychoanalyst's Concern

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Some Useful Concepts about Memory

In 1983, the year Fodor's book was published, Semenza, Bisiacchi, and Rosenthal, at the first European
Workshop on Cognitive Neuropsychology, argued
that modularity might be considered an epistemological choice, rather than be taken literally as reflecting
the state of the brain and its cognitive systems (Semenza, Bisiacchi, and Rosenthal, 1988). The assumption of modularity, they stated, may be meant to reflect
a sort of "divide et impera" strategy in science, where
truth may be better captured bit by bit, isolating problems and trying to resolve them by focusing our interest
on the working of a few processes and representations
at a time. This strategy is independent of the fact that
the brain and its cognitive systems may ultimately turn
out to be fully interactive. Even Fodor limits modularity to what he calls "peripheral systems," admitting
full interactivity for' 'central" systems, which, he suggests, are impossible to study. This view is not, however, justified by neuropsychological observations
(Shallice, 1988). Neuropsychology has captured for
the modularity view a larger brain area than Fodor had
rather provocatively suggested. Whether reflecting a
tangible reality or not, the modularity assumption has,
therefore, contributed to bringing cognitive neuropsychology to its present state of sophistication. This is
not to ignore the fact that the concept of modularity,
probably taken literally and in Fodor's narrowest
sense, seems to disturb psychoanalysts (e.g., Green,
1997) who are concerned about the possible loss in
richness of Freud's theory. No problem of this kind,
however, attaches to the concept of modularity as intended here.
Surely the theories most dangerous to psychoanalysis are those that nowadays, quite surprisingly,
appear to have caught the imagination of psychoanalysts. I am referring to connectionism, or worse, but
even more popular, the version of connectionism diffused by Gerald Edelman. While superficially reflecting the desired degree of richness, wild
connectionism is far too unconstrained to be useful. I
am not saying that Edelman's connectionism (' 'neural
Darwinism") is wild; but I object to the way it is being
used, through unprincipled and shallow analogies.
Nevertheless, Edelman's theory finds little sympathy

What I think psychoanalysts are looking for, and believe they have found in Edelman's work (cf. Modell,
1990; Green, 1997, 1999), is a model of memory that
allows constant retranscription. Indeed, the Freudian
concept of nachtraglichkeit is crucial to psychoanalysis. Recollection is not registered only once: Retranscription is thus not isomorphic with experience.
During psychoanalysis, moreover, memory is retranscribed again, in the interaction with the analyst. It
is perhaps this very process, more than others, that
furnishes the desirable therapeutic effects. It is therefore important to point out that no cognitive model of
long-term memory is incompatible with these views.
In particular, none of the current views claims that
recollection (excluding immediate recall) is isomorphic with experience. There is therefore no reason for
psychoanalysts to shun cognitive models of memory.
A positive reason for psychoanalysts to seriously consider the models of long-term memory developed in
cognitive psychology lies in the distinctions they have
been able to discern and locate in different points of
the brain. Indeed, the most convincing evidence for
the distinctions comes from lesion studies.
One of these distinctions, that between declarative or explicit memory and procedural or implicit
memory (for the sake of simplicity the question
whether "declarative" entirely overlaps with "explicit" and "procedural" overlaps with "implicit"
may be ignored), has indeed been recently recognized
as useful for psychoanalysis (e.g., Fonagy, 1999). Declarative memory, in current descriptions, deals with
conscious material, is under conscious control, and
involves the use of language. Procedural memory
works automatically, without intentional or conscious
recollection, is concerned with the acquisition and enacting of skills, but may also concern conditioning
habits, biases, and features intrinsic to character.
Fonagy (1999) proposes that some networks of
unconscious expectation or mental models of
self-other relationship may be encoded in procedural
memory. These models may be, and surely are, defensively distorted by wishes and fantasies. In no sense
do they bear safe testament to the historical truth and

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Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuropsychology

they can be highly dysfunctional. Psychoanalysis may
work by modifying these procedures more that anything else (obstacles to such modification are certainly
worthy of study).
What is only implicit in Fonagy's theory, but coincides with his intuitions, is the idea that procedural
memory has another fundamental characteristic besides that of being unconscious. What cognitive psychologists have long known is that material stored in
procedural information is hard (and slow) to learn,
hard to forget, and hard to render explicit. Indeed, it
is not easy to learn how to ski, but once the ability is
acquired, it remains-and can be reused the following
season (or even after several decades) without much
deterioration in the basic skill. However, as those like
me, who learned the Austrian style in the sixties, know
all too well, once a skiing style is acquired, it becomes
very difficult (and expensive) to modify it to a more
efficient one (to say nothing of correcting defects). As
with psychoanalytic endeavors (and other things in
life) the likelihood of success depends also on age and
devoted sources. And it may (why not?) depend also
on the relationship with one's own instructor-whose
words (often spoken with a heavy Austrian accent)
have only partial access to the pupil's stored procedural knowledge.
The problem of dynamic forces preventing modification remains, though there are some indications as
to how it may be overcome. Indeed, Fonagy (1999)
has worked out some of the implications of using the
declarative-procedural distinction in psychoanalysis.
When this enterprise is carried further, psychoanalysts
will have contributed a considerable degree of knowledge to cognitive science. I suggest that benefit could
come through psychoanalytic explorations of other
distinctions too, such as that between episodic (autobiographic) and semantic memory (the two components
of declarative memory whose borders are not that
clear-cut) and that between autobiographic and procedural memory. (Most childhood experience of psychoanalytic interest may well pertain, as Fonagy suggests,
to the latter rather than the former.)

Conclusion
Psychoanalysis does not need unconstrained theorizing. Indeed most of its tenets can be baldly defended
against criticism of Popper's kind by appealing to
methodological assumptions of the type I have described for cognitive neuropsychology. I think that
similar assumptions may easily be adopted by psycho-

analysis. Indeed they were not completely absent from

the mind of its founder, who, with his stark decision
to leave neurology aside, may have unwittingly set the
scene for a kind of perversion. Too often psychoanalytic writings seem to miss the main object of psychoanalysis, namely, a theory of the human mind. Too
many wild speculations (and far less rigor than desirable) often distinguish psychoanalytic publications.
To be sure, psychoanalysts have traditionally
tended to accept the deep truths revealed to them in
the analytic setting, without worrying too much about
methodological questions. One cannot but hope that
this source of knowledge will remain the main one in
psychoanalysis, letting nothing disturb the flow of free
associations. One cannot but be in favor of psychoanalysts engaging in poetry. However, when addressing a
theory of mental functioning, a dialogue with other
branches of science becomes desirable. I hope every
psychoanalyst engaged in the enterprise will remain
close to the lucidity of thought and sheer readability
of Sigmund Freud. If they are unable to maintain such
standards in scientific work, and also unable to express
the same in poetry, let me suggest a course of action
for their work, which Freud himself took with the most
obscure of his own endeavors, with what we (not he!)
called "A Project for a Scientific Psychology"-throw it away.

References
Baddeley, A. D. (1976), The Psychology of Memory. New
York: Basic Books.
Erdelyi, M. (1985), Freud's Cognitive Psychology. New
York: W. H. Freeman.
Fodor, J. (1983), Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Fonagy, P. (1999), Memory and therapeutic action. Internat. J. Psycho-Anal., 80:215-223.
Freud, S. (1891), On Aphasia. New York: International
Universities Press, 1953.
- - - (1919), On the teaching of psycho-analysis in universities. Standard Edition, 17:169-173. London: Hogarth Press, 1955.
Gardner, H. (1985), The Mind's New Science. New York:
Basic Books.
Green, A. (1997), Cognitivismo, neuroscienze, psicanalisi:
Un dialogo difficile. Psiche, 5(2):65-67.
- - - (1999), Consilience and rigour. This Journal,
1(1):40-44.
Masson, J. M., Ed. (1985), The Complete Letters ofSigmund
Freud to Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap/Harvard University Press.
Modell, A. H. (1990), Other Times, Other Realities. Toward
a Theory of Psychoanalytic Treatment. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.

10
Semenza, C., Bisiacchi, P. S., & Rosenthal, V. (1988), A
function for cognitive neuropsychology. In: Perspectives
on Cognitive Neuropsychology, ed. G. Denes, C. Semenza, & P. S. Bisiacchi. Hove, U.K.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Shallice, T. (1988), From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Jason Brown
Carlo Semenza
Department of Psychology
University of Trieste
Via S. Anastasio, 12
34100, Trieste, Italy
e-mail: semenza@univ.trieste.it

Downloaded by [Adelphi University] at 00:07 23 August 2014

"Divide and Conquer" or "Murder to Dissect"?:

Commentary by Jason Brown (New York)

My commentary on Semenza's paper labors under the

burden of having to refute almost every line of its
content. I only hesitate because prior critiques have
passed unnoticed (Schweiger and Brown, 1989).
Surely, the diagram school that Semenza so admires
survives in cognitive neuropsychology not by virtue
of the emptiness of past criticism but because an alternative agenda was not promoted with sufficient vigor,
clarity, or popular appeal. The old models were based
on the telegraph (Eggert, 1977), the new ones on circuit boards, and both have nothing to do with brains.
Indeed, it is a striking conceit that a separate level of
analysis of mental representation, consisting of little
more than a compilation of local, often inconsistent,
models that uncouple brain and cognition, can drive
research at the neurological level.
Semenza assumes one can momentarily "clean
the field of investigation" and ignore the' 'noise/friction" of affect, context, culture, and history, returning
to these topics once the results of a scientific study are
clear. The problem is that after the mental components
have been identified, the "noise" that was ignored at
the start cannot then be reinserted in the object, where
it belongs, but is attached artificially by way of external relations. An example is the ad hoc postulation
of a "binding mechanism" to unify a multiplicity of
neurocognitive modules that should never have been
isolated in the first place. Another example concerns
the relegation of affect to a "furnace in the basement, " extrinsic to mental content. This is one area
of overlap with psychoanalytic concepts. In the metapsychology, Freud attempted to reconcile a static connectionism with the flux of process in the idea that
Jason Brown, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Neurology at New York
University Medical Center, and Director of the Institute for Research in
Behavioral Neuroscience.

the substantive or self-identical traces inherited from

association psychology were modulated by libidinal
drive energy (cathexis) which, on the model of the
synapse, was conceived as an extrinsic factor.
I have no idea whether Semenza understands the
implications of this theory of mind, but I would like
to remind the reader what is at stake in this discussion.
I believe that a coherent psychology must provide an
account not only of the major domains of cognition,
language, memory, action, and perception, but of authenticity, individuality, feeling, and character as well.
And this requires a psychology founded on precisely
those precepts that are the objects of cognitivist derision, namely, a theory of change, process, and temporality, and their relevance to the nature of subjectivity,
value, and moral responsibility.

Identity and Authenticity

Cognitivism is but one example of a mode of thought
that over the latter half of this past century has had a
profound impact on contemporary life. The assumption of timeless, repeatable, or self-identical objectsexemplified by the concept of representations-has
had a powerful influence on the way we think about
the import of intrinsic relationality and the subjectivity
of mental states. What is the nature of a thing that
makes it what it is, or what is the quality of difference
that is decisive for the individuation of things that
are ostensibly identical? We see this influence in the
tension in this culture between a relative homogeneity
of thought and a striking diversity of lifestyle, as if
tattoos and nose rings could authenticate an individuality that has been threatened with absorption and loss.
We see it in the triumph of immediate pleasure over
sustained engagement, or in a cult of celebrity against