ABSTRACT
The dialectic between contemporary neuroscience and either classical or even contemporary models of the mind is an enduring one—far older than psychoanalysis—and, as many analysts point out, a dialectic at the core of psychoanalysis. Contemporary methods, such as functional neuroimaging, do offer the promise of visualizing the brain in relative real time in response to various stimulus conditions, including some of interest to psychoanalysts, such as images and sounds from a newborn infant. The amount of activation is relative to a comparison condition, and some of the greatest creativity in neuroimaging studies is involved in the development of the comparison conditions. The mind–body duality has been increasingly discussed in the guise of the relevance of neuroscience—or the brain and cognitive sciences—for psychoanalysis. Conversely, some neuroscientists have expressed the hope that the new brain sciences may offer ways to reinvigorate the scholarship on the interface of mind and brain that was so central to the beginnings of psychoanalysis.
