ABSTRACT
Can the Protomental System provide a new foundation for psychoanalytic theory?
Constructing a Mind draws on psychoanalytic theories of mind and recent developments in cognitive science to present the Protomental System, a new and original explanatory theory of the development of the human mind.
This book aims to move psychoanalytic theory away from its origins in Freud's theory, towards a model which gives priority to cognition and memory. This, Antonio Imbasciati argues, will make possible a successful and productive integration of psychoanalysis with other areas of psychology. Subjects covered include:
- The mind as an information-processing system
- Constructing the system: from fetus to baby, child, and finally adult
- The caregiver relationship as a decoding system for information processing
- The paranoid-schizoid metabolism of information
- Memory of functions and memory traces of affects
- Internal information generated by the system
- The depressive position and learning to know
- Reparation and thought.
This thoughtful and thorough account of cognitive development provides a conceptual framework that succeeds in making some of the more complex areas of psychoanalytic theory more intelligible.
Constructing a Mind will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and cognitive psychologists, especially those with an interest in neuropsychology and neonatal development.
