Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis: Lecture Four "How the Mind Develops" Introduction

INTRODUCTION AND THE ORAL STAGE ........... In this lecture I am going to talk about my understanding of developmental psychopathology, and especially the influence neuropsychoanalysis has had on my understanding. And when I write about neuropsychoanalysis, I mean Mark Solms, it's creator. Before learning neuropsychoanalysis I had of course been influenced by the major authors of psychoanalytic developmental psychopathology. These included: Sigmund Freud, Karl Abraham, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Margaret Mahler, Clifford Yorke, Otto Kernberg, Peter Fonagy, Tyson and Tyson, Daniel Stern, Nancy McWilliams, Steven Ellman, Greenson and Shanker, and others. I could not, in these four posts, begin to share the major contributions from this list of psychoanalysts nor the neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solms. What I have written here is my own brief integration of their major contributions....... I am going to write about the traditional Freudian Psychosexual stages ( oral, anal, and phallic), but keep in mind that Freud wrote not only about these psychosexual stages. He also wrote about ego/self development, object relations development, and the resultant psychopathology that may result througout the developmental stages. My writing here explores Freud's views and those that followed him....... When Freud began writing about the psychosexual stages of development, he believed that all pleasure, broadly speaking, was sexual. He did not know in the early 1900's that there are other pleasure centers in the brain. Neuropsychoanalysis has discovered these additional brain pleasure centers. (I will write more about those below.) Freud further thought back then that the oral sexual pleasures of the first stage , the anal and phallic pleasures of the next two stages and the final genital stage of adolescence, led to mature heterosexual intercourse culminating in reproduction. We now know that homosexuality may be an equally mature psychosexual outcome. So, sex was the first drive Freud observed and wrote about. He later (1920), in his second drive theory, combined the sex drive and the self preservative drive into the Life Drive. At that time he also came to see a Death Drive ( often referred to as the aggressive/destructive drive) as well.......Psychopathology, for Freud, developed when one or both of the these two drives/needs came into conflict the ego and a pathological compromise formation resulted. (The same is true today except that neuropsychoanalysis has added five additional drives/needs that I write about below.) Neuropsychoanalysis further teaches that the young child's compromises consist of inadequate solutions/predictions to these psychic conflicts. The problem with these early childhood predictions is that they are not very realistic. As a result they do not work to adequately resolve the psychic conflicts. The immature ego creates the best possible prediction it can. This less than workable prediction is then repressed into nondeclarative/unconscious memory. But because the repressed prediction does not work the young child continues to feel the unpleasant feelings/affects that remain( due to prediction error.) These unpleasant feelings are psychopathology. The suffering child must then utilize defenses against these unpleasant feelings. This dynamic of the young child's ego trying unsuccesfully to fully meet its basic emotional needs, and not being able to adequately do so, will be seen throughout these posts on childhood developmental psychopathology... ..... So now let's look again at Freud's first psychosexual stage which he named the Oral Stage. The oral stage takes place in the first year or so of the infant's life. Freud believed the focus of this stage was the mouth ( the first erogenous zone ), and the oral pleasures that came from sucking to obtain milk from the Mother's breast or its equivalency the bottle. As mentioned above, Freud understood this sucking pleasure to be sexual in nature. He further recognized that the pleasures and unpleasures of the mouth and their being met or not met by the Mother/Father, led to psychic conflict......But more is going on inside the infant at this stage than the pleasure and unpleasure of the mouth and the resultant symptoms ( unpleasant feelings) mentioned above. In the early months the infant ( through its beginning ego) is also beginning to learn how to exist in the world, and is developing feelngs and thoughts. Freud speaks of auto eroticism at this stage, when the infant recieves most of it pleasures from its own body. But the infant is also beginning experience life beyond itself in its beginning relationships to others, especially the Mother/Parent........ According to neuropsychoanalysis there are five additional drives/emotional needs beyond Freud's two. These needs are felt as feelings ( more about this later.) And they all work by the same pleasure principle mentioned above. The additional drives/needs beyond Sex ( which neuropsychoanalysis renames LUST), and Aggression (which neuropsychoanalysis renames RAGE) are: PANIC/GRIEF (the Attachment drive/need) FEAR, CARE, SEEKING, and PLAY. The ego is trying to meet all seven of these basic needs throughout the stages of childhood development. And this neccessarily leads to conflicts among them. Though all seven needs are striving to be met, one dominant need in particular most demands to be met in each stage ( Solms 2021.) The Attachment need (PANIC/GRIEF) most demands to be met in the first year of life. The need for attachment also correlates with Freud's notion that the two greatest fears of this stage are: The loss of the object and the loss of the object's love. I will speak more about the attachment need in the next section, but I will begin that section with early ego/self development in the first year of life.