Introduction

Psychoanalysis and neuroscience take different views of the psyche. Psychology and neuroscience view the psyche as well as its neural correlates in the brain in more or less a static way that in its essence is not changing over time. This goes along with the localization of psychic functions in specific regions and frequencies entailing a modular view. Finally, brain and psyche supposedly operate within the outer time and space of the environment. This contrasts with the way psychoanalysis conceives the psyche, namely as dynamic, topographic, and spatiotemporal rather than as static, modular, and non-spatiotemporal. Such view of the psyche in psychoanalysis stands in discrepancy to the view of the brain in current neuroscience. In order to properly combine the view of the psyche in psychoanalysis with neuroscience, we require a view of the brain that is dynamic, topographic, and spatiotemporal. In that case, dynamic and topography are shared by brain and psyche, providing their connection or “common currency”. The introduction sketches this novel view of the brain, including how it provides the ground for a spatiotemporal model of neuropsychoanalysis. This will be applied to specific psychodynamic phenomena like defense mechanisms, self, consciousness, and others in the subsequent chapters.