Psychanalyse, neurosciences et subjectivités

Abstract: Today, bringing psychoanalysis and neurosciences together is necessary in order to expose neuroscience to an original and nonsimplistic perspective on the complexity of mental life; and necessary for psychoanalysis, which runs the risk of becoming the theory of a clinical practice, which could be cut off from contemporary scientific context. Three research perspectives therefore present themselves. First, the study by the neurosciences of the psychoanalytical process itself, as an exemplary model of empathy: psychic coactivity, mutual reactions and shared activity, at the cerebral and cognitive level. But also the study of the therapeutic process: the cerebral and psychic organisational changes induced in the brain by this coactivity. It is the neuroscience or neuropsychology of psychoanalysis. Second, the contribution of psychoanalytical theory (psychoanalytical psychology) to the understanding of the inter- and cosubjective processes in a scientific and multidisciplinary framework (including clinical theory, neurosciences and notably the developmental psychology). Finally, the study of the pathologies of empathy or of intersubjectivity, like autism and schizophrenia. In this way, intersubjectivity can bring together the two methodologies and the two sciences of mind – psychoanalysis and neurosciences, which it drove apart until the recent past. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]