Sigmund Freud Contributions in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: SIGMUND FREUD Sigmund Freud Contributions in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Sigmund Freud Contributions in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Introduction Progress in science is not always linear. Major concepts, constructed on practical or inferential knowledge, may be used for many years before the tools to prove or disprove them are available. Ideas that have utility will often survive the interim. Psychoanalysis is a major case in point. As new methods of study become available, the domains of physical science, cognitive science and metapsychology are coming together and strengthening our knowledge of how the human mind works. Scholarship is required to examine time-honored knowledge in the light of the advances of science. In 1895, Freud developed a number of hypotheses that derived from his understanding of neurology and his observations of behaviors of patients in his clinical practice of psychoanalysis (Friedman & Alexander, 1983). These hypotheses established a serviceable metapsychology that remains a cornerstone of clinical psychoanalysis today. Freud Contributions in Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Freud's Theory Freud held the belief that early childhood experience was the foundation of later affective learning and behavior. Freud's Project argued that genetically programmed infantile reactions to painful stimuli were prototypes for defensive actions throughout life. Until these automatic infantile behaviors could be consciously analyzed, they would remain as inappropriate responses to benign experiences in adulthood Freud (1950) noted that even the youngest infant would automatically withdraw from a painful stimulus. He believed that this immediate, involuntary withdrawal (p. 322) protected an infant from environmental harm. Freud also noted that infants demonstrated a strong attraction when introduced to anything that was biologically salient for them. They were attracted to both the provisions necessary for "the exigencies of life" (p. 297) and to their providers. Freud believed this early automatic repulsion and attraction were evidence of genetically programmed survival behaviors (p. 304). Freud (1950) further posited a biological system that prompted reactions to internal bodily changes (p. 297) such as hunger. As hunger became intense, internal tension became painful and the infant exhibited automatic, reflexive forms of behavior (e.g., agitation and crying) that communicated vital biological needs to others in the environment. These involuntary rudimentary forms of preverbal communication were also deemed critical to survival (pp. 318, 366). Noting that humans have a strong, lifelong propensity to avoid negative experience, Freud used the word defences to encompass any infantile reflexes that attempted to "ward off' (Freud, 1950, p. 322) external or internally generated threats to physical and/or psychological integrity. Freud (1950) called the emotional component of adverse experience pain or "unpleasure… released in the affect" (p. 321). This unpleasure was produced by chemical products released from glands in the presence of threat and subjectively experienced as negative emotion. These secretions created a sense of urgency and, when discomfort became intense, resulted in a compulsion to act (p. 317). This reaction could occur in response to any painful internal or external stimulus (pp. 321-22). Freud (1950) equaled internally generated painful affect with externally produced physical pain, hypothesizing that threats to both children and adults could arouse a negative affect that motivated compulsive avoidance behavior (p. 318). Pain was a biological sign that the infant was in danger. This pain could be psychological as well as physical. All contrivances of a biological nature have limits to their efficiency, beyond which they fail. This failure is manifested in phenomena which border on the pathological-which might be described as normal prototypes of the pathological… Is there a phenomenon which can be brought to coincide with the failure of these contrivances? Such, I think, is pain. (1950. pp. 306-307) Freud (1950) called behaviors precipitated by the immediate environment mechanical, and believed that the infant's mechanical withdrawal from negative experience was innate but could also be "biologically taught" (p. 304). Infants learned according to the basic "law of simultaneity" (p. 319) or "association by contiguity" (p. 319). Strong affective reactions to negative interactions with objects in the environment would be automatically associated with the concomitants and consequences of those negative events. Successful mitigation or avoidance of similar interactions would be stored in memory and repeated. A psychological theory deserving any consideration must furnish an explanation of memory. A main characteristic of nervous tissue is memory: that is, quite generally a capacity for being permanently altered by single occurrences. (Freud, 1950, p. 299) Infantile emotional reactions and the negative circumstances or objects that precipitated them were automatically associated and stored in memory. Once a stimulus was associated with a painful reaction, a reminder of that experience could precipitate subjective psychic pain and a reflexive defensive response. If a memory … generates unpleasure, that is in general due to the fact that the corresponding perception had generated unpleasure when it occurred--that is, it was part of an experience of pain. (Freud. 1950, p. 380) Freud (1950) believed that biologically salient experiences formed memories that received priority over other environmental information. He called them facilitated memories (p. 299), and believed that “the picture of the external world is based on facilitations” (p.372). Repetition of a negative event would decrease reaction time and, over time, less and less of a stimulus would be required to provoke a response (p. 316). Freud believed that an affective response could be reduced to signal affect, a fleeting emotional reaction that could trigger a defensive behavior before there was conscious awareness of the stimulus (p. 359). Although this gave the infant the widest possible margin of safety in the presence of threat (p. 387), the rapidity of response rendered conscious association impossible. This was primary processing. Reactive behavior entered awareness but the memories precipitating it did not (p. 364). Primary processing was rudimentary. It provided for crude recognition of objects and produced extremes of emotional reactions, but it was enough to help an infant avoid the repetition of painful interactions. Stimulus and response were linked in memory by the temporal nature of their occurrence. This was preverbal learning – understanding without words. Infantile memories were kinesthetic memories (Freud, 1950, p. 331). Primary process memories lacked the clarity that could only be gained as the infant developed. Maturation of the visual system, precision of recognition, differentiation of similar environmental stimuli and, most importantly, the ability to moderate affect and delay reflexive action could only come with time and experience. Until these skills were developed, an infant would react to similarity because there was no time to perceive subtle differences (Freud, 1950, p. 327). In Freud's view, primary process behaviors required only simple reproductive sensory memory (Freud. 1950, p. 332). Primary associations were preverbal precursors to "cognitive" or "critical thought" (Freud, 1950, p. 379). Maturity made it possible for a toddler or child to inhibit primary processes. This inhibition of emotional reaction was the key to what Freud called secondary process functions. Delay of reflexive behaviors provided time for the infant to clearly visualize and 'cognize' a stimulus-to recognize that an attribute could be owned by more than one object (Freud, 1950. p. 383). Until this secondary processing was possible, a single detail could arouse the image and the emotion of a prior painful experience, and that single attribute would be perceived as a repetition of that entire traumatic event (Freud, 1950, p. 331). Freud (1950) believed that a strong negative association would always take precedence over ordinary observation (p. 377). The ability to delay reactions in order to consider a situation carefully and to react appropriately to subtle environmental differences occurred at about the same time the infant acquired language. Freud (1950) believed that with language "the process of association becomes conscious and capable of being reproduced" (p. 372). Speech, by virtue of its motor involvement, left behind facilitations that were easily made conscious- "sound-images and motor word-images" (Freud, 1950, p. 365) added a sense of reality to sensory images, and could "make memory of them possible" (Freud. 1950, p. 366). Freud also believed that talking or thinking in words about a painful event could lessen the emotional impact of traumatic memories. Each conscious "rethinking" (Freud, 1950, p. 334) of a memory required less energy expenditure (p. 335) and "weaken[ed] its capacity for affect" (Freud, 1950, p. 334). Thinking implied control of primary processes and made rational analysis of events possible. This control of affective reaction provided time for a consideration of differences between past and present situations. As a result, modification of inappropriate reactions to minor details reminiscent of prior trauma was possible. As a result of the experience of pain the mnemic image of the hostile object has acquired an excellent facilitation … unpleasure is now released in the affect … released from the interior of tile body and freshly conveyed up. (Freud, 1950, p. 320-321) Although talking about traumatic memories could lessen their emotional impact over time, Freud (1950) believed that some memories were so painful and/or so threatening that thought and speech were impossible in the presence of the strong emotions attached to them (p. 357). He described speech as a more advanced secondary process, believing it to be more mature and independent from primary process functioning (Freud, p. 308). He also hypothesized that in the presence of extreme emotion, primary process operations would predominate (p. 364, 380-81). It is quite an everyday experience that the generation of affect inhibits the normal passage of thought … many paths of thought are forgotten that would ordinarily come into account …. Thus, for instance, it happened to me during the agitation caused by a great anxiety that I forgot to make use of the telephone that had been introduced into my house a short time before. The recent pathway succumbed in the affective state: facilitation-that is, what is old-established--gained the upper hand. This forgetting involves the disappearance of [the power of] selection, of efficiency and of logic… the affective process approximates to the uninhibited primary process. (Freud, 1950, p. 357). Unless the emotional component of traumatic memories could be inhibited and the experience put into words, they remained what Freud (1950) labeled untamed mnemics. Whenever something in the environment aroused this type of memory, all of the emotion and agitation that accompanied the initial trauma could interrupt the ability to think in the present (p. 375). In such cases, hallucination of the original trauma could distort perception of immediate reality (p. 383). Until inhibition of the sensory component of that memory was 'tamed' or transformed by its conversion to thought through speech, reflexive withdrawal from the current situation would occur. The speed of the association, the signal affect and the reflexive avoidance could lead to unconscious, involuntary behaviors at any time: The common assertion that something happened in one so quickly that one did not 'notice it' is no doubt quite correct… it is universally recognized that affects can interfere with thought. (Freud, 1950, p. 375) Because the association remained unconscious and the avoidant behavior involuntary, an adult would find his or her actions inexplicable or irrational. The crudeness and speed of primary process reflex--the absence of higher-order analysis-resulted in stimulus generalization and a reaction that was grossly inappropriate to the current event. Primary process in a negative situation was a stimulus-response association; an object precipitating a negative emotional response would continue to trigger a negative response. Only the development of secondary processing would allow for the constant adding of changing circumstances; without it, the original negative reaction would remain reflexive (Freud. 19S0, p. 329). Freud's ideas Modern Science Many of Freud's ideas about the impact of a genetically programmed system that associates painful or unpleasant affect with external objects and his idea that, thereafter, exposure to these objects can elicit a reflexive avoidant response seem to be alive and well in neuroscience today. Although Freud took many of his ideas from the models and ideas of others (e.g., see Peper & Markowitscb, 2001), it was his ability to weave these ideas into a coherent theory of psychological development that made Freud the more universally recognized name. Modern definitions of implicit adverse learning and involuntary reactions are strikingly similar to Freud's descriptions of primary process reactions to hostile experience. The role of the amygdala in unconscious awareness of, and physiological reactions to, threatening stimuli might help explain infantile amnesia. Without the hippocampus, no explicit or conscious memory of tile event can exist. Freud's belief that only secondary process (language skills and translating emotions into words) can moderate unconscious traumatic associations of childhood might be explained by the fact that the conscious, explicit memory system involving the hippocampus is not mature until the age of two (Zola, 1998). Traumatic memories can generalize into serious anxiety disorders when unconscious cues continue to elicit fear to similar external stimuli long after the initial insult. Without rational cortical analysis and input, overwhelming affect that accompanies traumatic remembrance can preclude accurate perception of immediate reality (van der Kolk, 1994). Freud's ideas that defensive reactions can be genetically programmed and his belief that these are survival behaviors are given support by the works of Lang (1995), Damasio (1995), and Joseph (1999). Their belief in the existence of experience dependent neurons and the impact that strong emotion can have on emerging neural systems lend weight to Freud's belief that early childhood experience can be the foundation of later perceptions. Freud's idea that major traumata can be followed by hallucinations triggered by environmental reminders of that trauma is widely supported in the PTSD literature (Beyea, 2005). Many of Freud's descriptions of endogenous reactions to external stimulation are another major focus of modern neuroscientists (Ninan, 1999). Freud's ideas about the release of chemical products that precipitate physiological responses in the presence of traumatic threat is also recent (Thakkar et al., 2003). The work of Whalen, Rauch, Etcoff et al. (1998) is an example of why it may take more than an external perception for unconscious aversive memories to be made conscious. Schacter (1999), like Freud, holds the belief that it may require the recurrence of traumatic affect (Freud's untamed mnemics) to reactivate the conscious association of details that accompanied the original insult. Until these traumatic memories are tamed--­until they are transformed into speech----continued pathological infantile reactions to benign adult experiences can occur, If one of the first interventions for trauma victims is the explicit examination and resolution of the strong feelings they have surrounding the event (Friedman, 1996), perhaps Freud's talking cure is a reasoned approach to traumatized patients in the 21st century. Conclusion Freud's influence on the intellectual history of the 20th century is undisputed. It is only in the last 35 years that we have been able to offer significant medical diagnoses and treatments for mental disorders. Until the mid-1970s, there was no way to examine a living brain and psychiatrists still scoffed at the idea that understanding the brain was key to understanding human behavior (Restak, 1991). Freud's basic assumption that the structure and function of the brain were the keys to understanding the development of both normal and abnormal behavior provides a unique context for the application of current neuroscientific methods. Support, refutation, modification, and extrapolation may now be possible with modern neuroimaging techniques together with our understanding of how the brain develops and bow emotion and cognition work together. References Beyea, S. C. (2005). Addressing the trauma of anesthesia awareness. Association of Operating Room Nurses Journal 81(3), 603–606 Damasio, A. R. (1995). Toward a neurobiology of emotion and feeling: Operational concepts and hypotheses. The Neuroscientist. 1(1), 19-25. Freud, S. (1895/1950). Project for a scientific psychology. In Strachey. J. (trans.). Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (vol. I). London: Hogarth Press. Friedman, J., & Alexander, J. (1983). Psychoanalysis and natural science: Freud's 1895 "Project" revisited'. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal.,10:303-318. Friedman, M. J. (1996). PTSD diagnosis and treatment for mental health clinicians. Community Mental Health Journal, 32(2),173-189. Joseph R. (1999). Environmental influences on neural plasticity, the limbic system, emotional development and attachment: a review. Child Psychiatry and human Development, 29(3), 189-208. Lang. P. J. (1995). The emotion probe. American Psychologist. 50(5),372-385. Ninan, P. T. (1999). The functional anatomy, neurochemistry and pharmacology of anxiety. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 60(22), 12-17. Peper, M. &: Markowitsch, H. J. (2001). Pioneers of affective neuroscience and early concepts of the emotional brain. Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 10(1). 58-66. Restak, R (1991). The Brain, NY: Bantam Books. Schacter, D. L. (1999). The seven sins of memory. Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist. 54(3), 182-203. Thakkar, M. , Winston, S. , and McCarley, R. (2003). A1 receptor and adenosinergic homeostatic regulation of sleep-wakefulness: Effects of antisense to the A1 receptor in the cholinergic basal forebrain. The Journal of Neuroscience 23(10), 4278–4287. Van der Kolk B. A. (1994). The body keeps die score: Memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1(5). 253-265. Whalen, P. J., Rauch, S. L., Etcoff: N. L., Mclnerney, S. C., Lee, M. B., & Jenike, M. A. (1998). Masked presentations of emotional facial expressions modulate amygdala activity without explicit Knowledge. Journal of Neuroscience, 18(1), 411-418. Zola. S. M. (1998). Memory, amnesia, and the issue of recovered memory: Neurobiological Aspects. Clinical Psychology Review, 18(8), 915-932. Read More