Why Psychoanalysis/Psychotherapy Must be Grounded in Biology

What is true of the mind at the psychological level is true of the brain at the biological level. We are homo sapiens who biologically by evolutionary design are motivated to survive and reproduce. These motives of survival and reproductive success are distal motives that we are not aware of consciously, and we do not feel them. We have learned about them through our knowledge of evolutionary biology and the neurosciences, but we do not experience them subjectively. In order to aid in our survival and reproductive success our minds evolved other motives that are proximal. Proximal motives we do feel ( see the neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solm's paper "The Conscious Id".) We experience them subjectively. We experience pleasure whenever we do anything that enhances our survival and reproductive success, and we experience unpleasure (Freud's term ) when we do anything that does not enhance our survival or reproductive success. Take sex for example: We do not consciously have sex because we want to have reproductive success and make sure our genes are carried into the next generation. We engage in sex because it is feels pleasureable (the proximal/conscious motive.) But the reason evolution made sex pleasureable is to encourage us to engage in it in order to have reproductive success and make sure our species survives generation after generation. These experiences of pleasure and unpleasure occur at the psychological/feeling level of the mind. But feelings too are a function of the brain. It is as young children we first learn to do what is pleasureable and to avoid what is not. We have to adjust psychologically to our family environment and whatever in it feels good, gives us good thoughts, or rewards certain actions with postive survival and reproductive results--this is what we do. If it pleases Mommy then it feels good. If it displeases Mommy it feels bad. So we adapt (form unconscious, repressed predictions says neuroscience) in the psychological meaning of the term to our family situation and to our immediate cultural environment. These psychological adjustments (predictions) to our families and our culture, beyond what is innate, are what form our personalities and make us who we are. And most of this forming of our personalities takes place before we are seven years old. However, we are always being formed by what is innate and part of our biological nature ( drives or basic emotional needs in the Id ) combined with what is learned ( by our egos) and part of our nurture. This is why psychoanalysis must be grounded in evolutionary biology and the neurosciences. If not psychoanalysts will fail to attend adequately to our innate biological givens, which in psychoanalysis are called DRIVES ( ( Basic emotional needs in affective neuroscience, coming from the Id.) Having studied both evolutionary biology and neuroscience, I have come to see the importance of grounding psychoanalysis in it's parent discipline of biology ( this interdisciplinary approach today is called neuropsychoanalysis.) When we do this we obtain knowledge about the unconscious distal motives underneath the proximal felt motives of consciousness. In my own theory and technique of psychoanalytic therapy I am now integrating the contributions of biology. Unfortunately, in my view, some psychoanalysts do not believe in the necessity of such integration. To me this position refuses to accept that we are homo sapiens--a species of primates. We are mammals and we share much in common with all mammals, our closest cousin being the chimpanzees. As mammals we have biological drives ( basic emotional needs) that are mammalian, and if we do not take this aspect of a nature into account, we do not get a complete picture of ourselves as modern humans. Therefore, for me, in order to provide our patients with the best possible psychotherapeutic experience we need to know the biological sciences as well as the psychological sciences. And we must allow this knowledge of biology to contribute to our understanding of the mind that we have learned from psychoanalysis. Only then will we be offering our patients a complete understanding of themselves as whole persons, as body and mind entities, brain and mind together, nature and nurture combined. That is why I continue to advocate for all analytically oriented therapists to ground their psychoanalytic understanding and treatment in biology.