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Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)Howard Shevrin

a

aUniversity of Michigan Medical Center, Riverview Building, 900 Wall Street, Ann Arbor,

MI 48105-0722, e-mail:

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views

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Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)

Bridge building between psychoanalysis and neurosci

ence, disciplines that on their face appear to be worlds

apart, has been deemed by some foolhardy and by

others premature, yet as the Solms and Nersessian

summary Freud s affect theory and Panksepp s po

sition paper attest, the time may be ripe and the enter

prise fruitful. Most gratifying from a psychoanalyst s

standpoint is the call made by Panksepp for drawing,

not only on psychoanalytic insights, but for integrating

Howard Shevrin, Ph.D., is Professor

Psychology, Department

Psychiatry, University

Michigan, Ann Arbor.

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Allan

N

Schore

9817 Sylvia Avenue

Northridge

C

91324

e mail: [email protected]

the psychoanalytic method with psychological and

neuroscience research approaches. As someone who

has been committed to this integration in my own re

search (Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and Williams,

1996), I welcome these exciting efforts to advance

interchange between psychoanalysis and neuro

science.

In my commentary I will be limiting my observa

tions

to some the issues raised concerning the rela

tionship

affect to consciousness, motivation, and

action. Insofar as the Panksepp paper is in part a de

tailed response to the Solms and Nersessian summary

7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)

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S

of

Freud s views, in my comments I will necessarily

at times be referring to both papers.

I would like first to make one general observation

on the role

of

theory in psychoanalysis and neurosci

ence. As Panksepp observes and seems rather to la

ment, a purely empirical approach is deeply

entrenched in contemporary neuroscience (as in all the

life sciences) which is accompanied by a profound

suspicion

of comprehensive theories. He refers tren

chantly and vividly to the contrast between Freud s

wide-ranging hypotheses, often metaphorically ex

pressed, against the accumulating peppercorns of evi

dence from the basic and clinical neurosciences. The

time, he believes, is ripe to stop simply accumulating

these peppercorns and to bring them into some hi

erarchical relationship to each other so that complex

functional domains can be conceptualized. In this

task Freudian theory can be

of

great help

if

only as

an initial approximation which will undoubtedly be

modified in the light

of

new evidence.

Psychoanalysis can contribute to neuroscience in

two important ways by providing, (1) a theory on a

complex level

of

functional integration that takes indi

vidual subjectivity and personal context into account,

(2) a method of inquiry that investigates the intimate

subjective and behavioral expression of this functional

integration in a manner and depth no other psychologi

cal method approaches. On its part, neuroscience can

offer psychoanalysis an objective and detailed ac

counting

of

brain mechanisms and processes bearing

on its hypotheses, either providing support, raising

questions, or suggesting useful modifications of them.

Above all, neuroscience together with psychoanalysis

can create a comprehensive picture of the mind and

its neurophysiological and neuroanatomical instantia

tion in the brain. It is in that spirit that I now undertake

to examine the three issues concerning affect identi

fied previously.

The Relationship

ffect to Consciousness

According to Solms and Nersessian, Freud hypothe

sized that affects are perceived in a distinctive mod

ality of consciousness calibrated in degrees of

pleasure and unpleasure Consciousness is concep

tualized along the lines of a sense organ which trans

duces quantitative unconscious oscillations in the

tension of instinctual needs into qualitative experi

ences

of

pleasure and unpleasure. These qualitative

conscious experiences are mental and representa-

Howard Shevrin

tional; the quantitative unconscious processes are

mental and nonrepresentational.

How well does Panksepp s understanding

of

re

lated neuroscience findings it with this theory linking

affect to consciousness and the unconscious? In short,

what kind

of

bridge exists, or still needs to be built?

With respect to the central role

of

pleasure and unplea

sure Panksepp expresses some reservations, stating

that broad categories (like) positive and neg

ative affect (reminiscent of Freud s global plea

sure-unpleasure dimension)

may be obfuscating

our pursuit

of

the basic systems that actually exist in

the brain. Panksepp then refers to at least a

dozen

basic systems that actually exist in the brain associ

ated with different qualities of basic affect experience.

How might psychoanalytic theory s presented by

Solms and Nersessian accommodate these findings?

With respect to the indivisible relationship

of

af

fect to consciousness ascribed by Solms and Nerses

sian to Freud, Panksepp talks about how affect

regulators may

(descend) to preconscious lev

els of neural processing And elsewhere he cites Le

Doux s research on unconscious affect. If I follow

Solms and Nersessian in their understanding of Freud,

affects cannot be preconscious or unconscious, but are

quintessentially conscious. There is a potential discon

nect here that must be addressed, about which more

later.

It is also instructive to examine how Panksepp

views the id and its unconscious functioning in neuro

science terms. Here we find a potentially serious prob

lem. When Panksepp talks about the qualitative and

quantitative aspects of affective life, he does not ap

pear to be talking about the same coordinates as Solms

and Nersessian for whom the qualitative characterizes

conscious affect experience and the quantitative char

acterizes unconscious processes which are transduced

into conscious affect experience. Instead Panksepp is

referring to the quantitative aspects

of conscious

quali

tative affect experience. Thus a conscious unpleasant

feeling may be weaker or stronger than another un

pleasant feeling. In fact, Panksepp expressly rejects

the notion

of

what he refers to as a vague, hydraulic

concept like

drive .

In its place Panksepp would

prefer specific regulatory motivational functions

such

s

hunger, thirst, and thermoregulation, where

specific interoreceptive detector elements have been

identified in medial strata

of

the diencephalon. One

would of course wish to add sex to the list of specific

regulatory motivational functions.

Is there a problem here, or would Solms and

Nersessian reply that rising or lessening tension in any

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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views

motivational system would be perceived consciously

s

unpleasurable

or

pleasurable? But this reply would

create another problem: f the conscious perception is

limited to pleasure or unpleasure how would we know

which motivational system was activated? Since we

do know, at least after a certain age, what it

is

we

want or need, there must also be some conscious

awareness of the motivational state itself quite apart

from the consciousness of pleasure and unpleasure. I

would assume that Solms and Nersessian would

counter in Freud s behalfthat we arrive at such knowl

edge by inference from the specific motoric systems

that are activated (e.g., our genitals in the case of sex

ual motivation), rather than by direct experience (but

more about this in the next section on affect and moti

vation).

The other important characteristic of unconscious

processes as attributed to Freud by Solms and Nerses

sian is its nonrepresentational nature. Only conscious

ness is representational; only in consciousness do we

know what our minds are about. Unconsciously quan

titative nonrepresentational processes prevail that

seem quite similar to the computational accounts fa

vored by cognitive psychology and some in the neuro

sciences. Yet Panksepp in various places uses the

accepted terminology

of

neuroscience when he talks

about signal detectors at all levels

of

the nervous

system as in the previous quote in which he talks about

, specific interoceptive detector elements s intrinsic

to motivational systems that presumably are in psy

choanalytic terms part

of

the

ide

A detector is in the

same class as a sense organ; it responds to a signal

which may be an increase in a quantity of some sort

(e.g., heat), or a different qualitative input s might be

carried by a particular hormone (e.g., sexualarousal).

f

I understand Panksepp correctly, from a neuro

science standpoint it would be better to talk about hier

archical levels of organization, each with its own

pattern of qualitative and quantitative processes,

rather than restrict the qualitative to one level of the

hierarchy (consciousness) and the quantitative to an

other (the unconscious). As pointed out by Grossman

(1992), in his interesting analysis

of

the implications

for our understanding of Freud that can be drawn from

his early monograph

n phasia

(1953), Freud s fun

damental conception of the mind is of a complex hier

archy

of

levels of organization in which the important

processes happen at the boundaries where qualitative

transformations take place. Each higher level

de-

tects and in this sense represents what is going

on at a lower level. There are thus sense organs

throughout this hierarchy detecting and represent-

ing

qualitative and quantitative processes to be

passed on to the next level in the hierarchy. This view

leaves open the question s to where consciousness

and the unconscious

fit

into this hierarchical organi

zation.

The Relationship of Affect to Motivation

In his discussion of affect and motivation, Panksepp

makes an interesting distinction between a behav

ioral state of anticipatory eagerness and a simple

and unitary sensation of positive affect. He calls the

former a SEEKING system that can serve a wide

range

of

motivational urges. Panksepp relates this con

cept to research by Berridge and Robinson (1995) on

investigations of addiction in rats and humans in

which they demonstrated that affect and craving oper

ated independently

of

each other. Different neural sys

tems were involved. A craving can intensify without

any increase in unpleasure, and it can be gratified

without any increase in pleasure. Panksepp hypothe

sizes that the Berridge and Robinson wanting sys

tem of the brain mediates feelings of an obsessively

energized sense of desire and power rather than any

simple pleasurable sensation that we normally experi

ence when we fulfill our needs. It becomes moot

whether one should refer to experiences of desire or

power s affective or motivational experiences. Para

doxically one can say that they l motivational and

can either be pleasurable or unpleasurable, supporting

the Berridge and Robinson findings. Of course, one

can, s proposed by Panksepp, talk about two kinds

of affects, the basic emotional affects linked to

basic instinctual action readiness systems, and the

motivational affects

linked to sensory systems.

It is hard to see how experiences

of

desire and power,

which appear to be motivational affects, are more

closely linked to sensory rather than action readiness

systems.

All in all it might be clearer conceptually and

closer to empirical findings (Berridge and Robinson,

1995), to identify a class

of

experiences as motiva

tional which is independent of another class of experi

ences called affective..Each such class would have its

unconscious

s well s conscious aspects so that we

could speak

of

unconscious motives becoming con

scious, and conscious affects becoming unconscious.

This alternative allows for a more flexible and varied

relationship between affect and motivation, conscious

and unconscious, than the view attributed to Freud by

Solms and Nersessian. It also makes possible a further

7/25/2019 8 Commentary by Howard Shevrin (Ann Arbor)

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58

distinction in experience that is also consonant with

the Berridge and Robinson findings. Increasing and

decreasing motivational tension, instead

of

being

linked to conscious experiences of unpleasure and

pleasure, would be linked to experiences of frustration

and gratification. It would thus become possible for a

state of frustration of an urge to be experienced as

pleasurable, and a state

of

gratification

as

unpleasur

able. There are many clinical instances

of

such combi

nations.

One significant problem encountered by this al

ternate view is how to account for the function affect

serves. In Freud s system as described by Solms and

Nersessian, and as accepted by Panksepp, affects as

cribe value to need states and thus function important

ly in adaptation. Value is defined as an affective repre

sentation of the internal state of the individual. Affect

informs us

of

what s doing in our minds and bodies.

But why do we need to be so informed? One can

imagine an organism in which internal need states are

acted on or inhibited without any detour into affect

experience; it is conceivable that the lower phyla live

in this way.

If

this is the case, what evolutionary event

made the development of affect adaptationally advan

tageous? Clearly it would be a mistake to argue that

affects are epiphenomenal, as Panksepp reminds us is

the view

of

some neuroscientists.

A possible answer is to be found in an interesting

hypothesis advanced by Panksepp as he tries to grap

ple with the question raised by Solms and Nersessian

concerning

what

are affects a perception

of?

He

urges investigators to devote research to regions

of

the brain where emotional values and external events

are first coordinated with a coherent map of the

body. He goes on to speculate that it is in these

brain zones

where

id and ego processes begin their

massively entangled battle for primacy that reverber

ates through all subsequent levels of neural develop

ment of each individual and species. Consistent with

these thoughts is Panksepp s later consideration

of

what he refers to as the great dilemma of the subjec

tive phenomenological

view

that seemingly purely

internal events, from one standpoint, are actually ex

perienced as related to the world. Although the

en-

tangled battle for primacy between id and ego takes

place internally, and perhaps in a specific brain local

ity as proposed by Panksepp, the battle is about what

is going on externally and what to do about it. It should

not be surprising that a high-functioning autistic self

centered and emotionally aloof 7-year-old, once put

on naltrexone became more sensitive to her parents,

but ascribed the change not to something inside her-

Howard Shevrin

self, but to differences in how her parents were re

sponding to her. And Panksepp adds perhaps they

were, through subtle interactions, that arose from her

increased intimacy with their lives. The point is that

we should not confuse the locus of action inside

with the function

of

that action which is always out

wardly directed. Adaptation at the individual level is

always about adaptation to a particular surround.

Or

to put it differently, we do not act to feel better, we feel

better when we act successfully in the world, which

in psychoanalytic terms means engaging in an action

resulting from some compromise between the id and

ego forces battling, as proposed by Panksepp, in the

centromedial areas

of

the mesencephalon and the re

ticular nuclei of the thalamus. From this standpoint

affect functions, not as a mere p r ption of internal

events, but as a messenger or signal for needed action

arising from the needful requirements

of

the individual

which must be met in a particular environment. This

function

of

affect is acknowledged by Solms and Ners

essian in the form of signal affect which is correctly

accorded a place at a high level of ego maturity. In

psychoanalytic theory signal affect functions uncon

sciously and signals an impending danger

if

the indi

vidual were to act on certain unacceptable wishes, or

even to become aware of them. I am suggesting that all

affects have that function. They are signals, sometimes

subtle and unconscious, sometimes gross and con

scious, which indicate the import of the internal battle

for what

we

must or must not do next. We know from

animal studies that even states

of

utter helplessness,

as in abandoned or lost baby monkeys, can result in

an adaptational posture given the extreme circum

stances the infant finds itselfin. After a period of futile

unanswered distress calls the baby monkey becomes

mute and assumes what appears to be a fetal position

which renders the monkey less noticeable to a preda

tor. The affect of helplessness is not simply the percep

tion of an internal state, but functions integrally as a

part of an action system.

The Relationship

of

Affect to Action

As

already noted, affect, to be understood, must be

conceptualized as part of the individual s action ori

ented pursuit of need gratification and survival in a

particular surround. It is the first harbinger of intended

action. As such it provides some breathing space, or

delay, between motivational urgency and action. In so

doing it makes it possible to entrain a variety of cogni

tive capacities, most importantly memory, so that an

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Commentary on Emotions: Neuro-Psychoanalytic Views 59

intended action can take into account previous experi

ence as well as current perceptions. Freud cogently

identified a series

of

danger situations which the indi

vidual must act to avoid. The mute monkey in the fetal

position is avoiding attracting a predator. But prior to

that point the monkey emitting its distress calls was

experiencing what Freud referred to

as

the loss of the

caretaking object, the single most survival threatening

danger any mammalian infant can face. The other dan

gers Freud identified loss of love, threat to bodily

integrity (castration anxiety), loss

of

self-regard-are

again all intimately tied to acting in a real world, even

when there are misperceptions of that world, as in

neurosis, which are at stark variance with any consen

sus as to what that reality is.

The intent

of

my comment on the relationship of

affect to action is to counteract the tendency in Freud

to base an understanding

of

affect on what appears to

be a purely utilitarian, Benthamlike conception: We

act in order to maximize pleasure and minimize un

pleasure; our motives are hostage

to

a calculus of plea

sure and pain, whereas, as Freud also recognized in

underscoring the importance of the four danger situa

tions, our actions are not indissolubly tied to pleasure

and pain, but are intimately related to our perceptions

and anticipations as to what will happen in the world

if

and when we act. Here one is reminded ofPanksepp's

system of SEEKING, which is essentially action ori

ented, having to do with desire and power, both of

which are faced outward toward the world.

A Few Final Thoughts

I mentioned earlier that I would return to the role

of

consciousness and the unconscious in a theory positing

a complex hierarchy

of

levels of organization in which

quantitative and qualitative factors interact at each

level. In his psychoanalytic monograph on topogra

phy, Gill (1963) concluded that a careful reading of

Freud suggested that id, ego, and superego functions

operated at a number

of

different levels. Instead of

conceptualizing the id as the repository solely

of

the

more primitive motives (drives), the id might be better

thought of as the motivational component in any act,

with the ego and superego functioning as moderating

and regulatory agencies at any level. Similarly, con

sciousness as subjective awareness can occur at any

level of the hierarchy, performing its primary function,

which is to make it possible for the individual to distin

guish between perception and memory

so

that action

in the real world can be ordered by a modification

of

past experience in the light of current experience (see

Shevrin [1998] for a fuller account). In neurosis the

past triumphs over the present by subverting the role

of

consciousness and can do so at any level.

The psychoanalytic dynamic unconscious is cre

ated by acts

of repression in which distinctions be

tween past and present, fantasy and reality are erased.

From this standpoint the dynamic unconscious can be

qualitative (e.g., containing representations

of past ex

perience), and quantitative (motivational strength).

What distinguishes it from consciousness are the prin

ciples according to which its representations are orga

nized, which Freud referred to as the primary process.

It is the operation

of

the primary process on such men

tal representations as memory and perception which

creates confusions of past and present and ignores

the vital distinction between current perception and

memory. The dominant force on any level

of

uncon

scious mentation is the wish with its insistence on

recreating past experiences

of gratification no matter

what the actual current real possibilities. The dynamic

unconscious is a poor learner.

In my reading of Panksepp I

find

repeated refer

ences to different levels of neural organization. In his

conclusion, for example, he states,

the

levels

of

com

plexity already revealed at the neuroscience lev

el are so vast that no one can have confidence in

relating them to human psychodynamics that arise

from the immeasurably complex interactions

of

many

neural systems. But it is this discovered complexity

at the neuroscience level that is the best harbinger of

future success in building bridges between the neuro

sciences and psychoanalysis.

References

Berridge,

K

C., Robinson, T. (1995), The mind of an

addicted brain: Neural sensitization

of

wanting versus

liking.

urr

Direct. in Psycholog. Sci. 4:71 76.

Freud,

S

(1953), On Aphasia: A Critical Study. New York:

International Universities Press.

Gill, M M. (1963), Topography and Systems in Psychoana

lytic Theory. Psychological Issues Monogr.

1

New

Yor

k:

International Universities Press.

Grossman,W. I (1992), Hierarchies, boundaries, and repre

sentations in a Freudian model of mental organization.

Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 40:27 26.

Shevrin,

H (1998), Why do we need to be so conscious?

A psychoanalytic answer. In: Advanced Personality ed.

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D F. Barone, M. Hersen, V B. Van Hasselt. New

York: Plenum Press.

Bond, J., Brakel, L.

A

W., Hertel,

R

K.,

Williams, W. J (1996), Conscious and Unconscious Pro

cesses: Psychodynamic, Cognitive, and Neurophysiolog

ical Convergences. New York: Guilford Press.

Howard Shevrin

University

Michigan Medical Center

Riverview Building, 900 Wall Street

Ann Arbor, MI48105-0722

e-mail: shevrinumich.edu

Clifford Yorke

Affects, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience

Commentary by Clifford Yorke (South Moreton, England)

I

When I was still a student, I had the temerity to speak

during a discussion, at the British Psycho-Analytic So

ciety,

of

a paper that touched on the subject

of

affects.

Although I had read a good deal of Freud I was, per

haps, unduly influenced by Rapaport (1953) and oth

ers when I asserted that the understanding of affects

was perhaps the weakest part

of

the psychoanalytic

theory of the way the mind worked. No one contra

dicted me, and no psychoanalytic elder pointed out

that a firm foundation for a psychological theory of

affect already existed in Freud's writings. As my ac

quaintance with Freud deepened, and I began to know

better, I looked back on the episode with some as

tonishment.

It might be thought that the uncritical reaction to

my ill-judged assertion was due to a reluctance, on

the part

of

the enlightened, to contradict a student,

however callow, who had dared to take part in open

debate. That is unlikely: It would surely have been

more helpful to set to rights such a wrong-headed dec

laration. It began to dawn on me that the plain fact of

the matter was that no one knew I was wrong. How

can this be explained?

Solms and Nersessian are surely right when they

say that Freud's theory of affects is scattered through

out an extensive literature covering some 40 years of

experience and reflection, and that no single work is

devoted to a full exposition

of

its fundamental judg

ments and concepts. That would certainly account for

some of the misunderstandings, though not perhaps all

the misrepresentations. Some of the latter have come

from willful distortions of Freud's thinking by those

who come from outside the profession and who, for a

Clifford Yorke, F.R.C.Psych., D.P.M., is a Training and Supervising

Analyst, British Psychoanalytic Society.

number of reasons, wish to blacken his character or

transmogrify his ideas. Detractors of this kind need not

concern us here. More important are the uninformed

criticisms that come from inside the discipline; and in

this connection we have to ask ourselves whether there

are reasons for the misrepresentations other than those

put forward by the authors of the outstanding, summa

rizing paper with which we have been presented. I

believe there are.

The fact that affects, and the anticipation of them,

so often function as motivators has led many analysts

to believe that their link with those activating forces

that Freud called

drives

can bejettisoned. Freud's con

cept of drive

Trieb

has been under fire, for very many

years, for reasons that call for closer consideration

than this occasion permits (Strachey translated

Trieb

as

instinct,

but

drive

is preferred today). Many psy

choanalysts have no difficulty in recognizing manifes

tations of aggression and sexuality, but seem not to

understand the concept of drives by which Freud

sought to explain their motivating power. It is widely

believed today that affects can replace drives rather

than be linked with them. f Freud's theory of affects

is misunderstood, so is his theory of drives. So I want

to underline, in the course of what follows, his defini

tion of drives

as

emphasized by Solms and Nersessian

in their paper, adding one or two points. However,

a few remarks seem in order that apply, within the

profession, to a good deal

of

Freud criticism in general

and not simply to the more specific issues of drives

and affects.

1

Many practicing clinicians are satisfied with a clinical theory that

appears to help them to understand their patients better without recourse

to the theory of mind that lies behind it. Freud's theory of mind is known as

metapsychology because it goes beyond the consideration

of

consciousness

alone the exclusive concern of many preanalytic psychologists. It is a

theory at a higher level

of

abstraction than a clinical theory (Freeman,

1992, 1995; Yorke, 1995, 1996).