ABSTRACT
The endeavours of the mechanists also enable us to advance specific questions concerning the relation between psychological (psychodynamic) and neural mechanisms. From the psychoanalytic viewpoint, this is a highly interesting trend: since Freud, the nature and function of psychological mechanisms has been one of the core issues in psychoanalysis, and the relation between neural and psychological mechanisms is surely an important matter when considering the significance of neuropsychoanalysis. Memory can be approached on different neural levels, and the mechanists hold that mechanisms form a hierarchy: a neural mechanism on one level is part of a mechanism on the next level. The common distinction between the humanities and the natural sciences has helped keep psychological, neurophysiological, and biological aspects of psychoanalysis separate. William Bechtel and Carl Craver address the mechanical essence of the explanations of neuroscience by studying issues such as memory, visual processing, the release of neurotransmitters, action potential, and the long-term potentiation of the synapses.
