Best Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis

Fifteen years ago we discussed these questions in a paper in the International Review of Psychoanalysis, analyzing three key scenes of a psychoanalysis . In these analyses we tried to start an interdisciplinary dialogue between “classical cognitive science” and psychoanalysis on questions relating to memory processes. In 1983 we had begun to refer to the recent approaches to memory–which were much discussed at the time and were expounded by Schank among others in his book Dynamic Memory –to explain memory processes during psychoanalyses and seemed to shed new light on core psychoanalytic concepts, such as repetition ncompulsion, the rule of abstinence, and the working through of central conflicts in transference. Among other things, we showed that the focus concept of psychoanalysis can be described very precisely by a memory structure that resembled Schank’s TOP, the “thematic organization point” .We showed that the psychoanalytical concept of a focus, as illustrated by the “triangle of insight”  connecting analogous structures of an current conflict with those discovered in the transference and biographical information, corresponds in detail to Schank’s TOP.We illustrated this hypothesis by analyzing some information from the psychoanalysis of a severely depressed woman.We found analogous components in the current conflict situation (feeling exploited by her husband), the transference (being convinced that her analyst would “only” be interested in pursuing her own goals, e.g., earning money), and a traumatic experience of early childhood (being exploited by her mother as “protection” against Russian soldiers during a frightening night-time escape during World War II). We discussed how in all these three “key scenes” we found the components of the TOP–a finding which seemed to deepen our clinical and theoretical understanding of the psychodynamics of the analysand and her memories evoked in psychoanalysis.

We could now apply this memory concept in an matter analogous to the above case. In the current conflict with his brother Mr. X. experienced a sudden, unexpected change: he lost his good relationship to him from

                                                                 Triangle of insight

one day to the next and felt enormous rage and furious impulses towards him. In the transference we observed similar reactions: after the summer break the analyst was no longer experienced as a “good object” but an unempathetic, cold one responsible for painful and unbearable feelings of rage, disappointment, and despair in the patient and refused to help him find a way out of his present unbearable inner and physical state. Inquiring of his mother, Mr. X obtained the biographical information about the allergic milk reaction in the seventh week of his life which exposed him for 3 months to unbearable bodily states, and the “refusal” to offer a solution, to get him out of the painful situation. In all the three topics we find the same (cognitive) components of the TOP.

According to Schank, a TOP includes the following components: a goal configuration, expectations of plans and outcomes, actual plans and outcomes, and explanations of discrepancies. TOPs are abstract memory structures that are stored and are usually unconsciously recalled by socalled demons.“Demons” are programs that are continuously on the alert for an event to take place; in this case the event is the occurrence of a situation that is structurally similar to an earlier one. Although Schank talks about “dynamic memory,” this concept presupposes a “static” notion of memory. The dynamic aspect of memory in Schank’s concept is the establishment of new references to other memory structures. For example, if there is a new failed expectation, a reference is established from the failure point to a representation of the situation from which the (failed) expectation was generated. However, this notion still implies a kind of storehouse in which memory structures–knowledge–are kept, like records stored on a disk in a computer. Long-term memory is understood by analogy to Aristotle’s famous notion of memory as a wax tablet on which experiences are written. If the demons recognize a certain pattern in current information as being similar to a memory structure stored in the long-term memory, this structure will be transferred to the short-term memory, where it then is accessible to conscious remembering.

Schank thus formulates a “classical” definition of memory which is still very popular, and a significant number of psychologists, psychoanalysts, memory researchers, and nonscientists also maintain this view. If one asked a layperson what memory was, more than likely his answer would be something like “a place in the brain where information is stored.” In everyday language, we often describe mental processes as objects in an actual physical space. For example, we speak about storing something in the memory, or searching through our memory, or of holding ideas in our minds; like physical objects, memories may be lost, hard to find, and so forth.Memory as a stored structure is also found in many textbooks today . Baddeley  uses the following definition: “Human memory is a system for storing and retrieving information, information that is, of course, acquired through our senses.” In essence memory is viewed as information that is stored and later retrieved.