ABSTRACT

Attempts to relate social behaviour and psychopathology to neuroscience, and on a more fundamental level to unify the social and psychological sciences with the physical sciences, are plagued by seemingly insurmountable conceptual problems attributable, in part, to the continuing dominance of cognitivist views. Psychoanalysis, along with philosophical phenomenology, may help us to construct an evolutionarily sound understanding of social phenomena onto which the accumulating body of evidence from neurophysiology, behavioural neuroscience, and biological psychiatry can be mapped parsimoniously. Behavioural responding to some but not other cues or objects is adaptive within a particular motivational and situational context. Situations, which can refer to spatial locations or recurring social constellations, are encoded within spatial and temporal frames of reference. Social networks within which we actively, if not aggressively, move towards, or seek to maintain, a secure and resourceful position dynamically self-organize, producing a wealth of social and cultural phenomena.