What does Neuroscience Offer Psychoanalysis? Commentary on Solms’s “Revision of Drive Theory”

Abstract

What does NeuroscieNce offer PsychoaNalysis? commeNtary oN solms's "revisioN of drive theory"T his ambitious paper (Solms 2021) by one of the leading psychoanalytic researchers and most prominent modern-day neuropsychoanalysts offers a heuristic opportunity to consider the relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. Although focusing on the concept of drives, the paper is also a manifesto designed to demonstrate the broader psychoanalytic relevance of neuroscience. Given the vast amount of research data he brings to the task, as well as his prodigious knowledge of Freud, Solms provides a useful template to use in evaluating what neuroscience can and cannot offer psychoanalysis.Considering what I understand to be his two aims, I will address both his ideas about the concept of drive and the broader contribution of neuroscience to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Toward those ends, it is useful to review what psychoanalysis is. After all, one finds fierce polemics, both on the APsaA Listserv and in the literature, about whether it is simply a clinical technique, many techniques, a theory, many theories, or a body of knowledge with many applications (see, e.g., Eagle 2021; Jaffe 2021; Sugarman 2021, in press). Nonetheless, many of us of a certain generation were drawn to psychoanalysis because it seemed to offer the most elegant model of human mental functioning, one that could help us understand our patients and guide us in our efforts to treat them. In short, psychoanalysis, first and foremost, consists of a model of the mind. To be Training and Supervising Analyst and Supervising Child and Adolescent Analyst,