ABSTRACT
Clinical studies in neuro-psychoanalysis were the second of several foundational texts in the nascent field of neuropsychoanalysis. The most important thing that has happened to the field since then is the very fact that neuropsychoanalysis is a ‘thing’. It has an established presence in both psychoanalysis and the neurosciences. Neuropsychoanalysis has a respectable place in almost every major psychoanalytic centre, with the possible exception of Paris. The point is that the process of applying J. Panksepp’s findings to psychoanalysis will be a slow and complicated one, if it is going to be done properly. The greatest contribution that Panksepp made to science perhaps boils down to just this: he demonstrated, using the most rigorous of scientific methods that feelings mean something. The one aspect of consciousness that was a respectable scientific topic in the 1980s was the brain mechanism of wakefulness versus sleep.
