Neuro-Psychoanalysis Marches On

[Daniel Rancour-Laferriere]

19 April 2006

Dear Colleagues,
I forward this item, in case you are interested, from psychoanalyst and 
literary scholar Norman Holland.

Cheers,
Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

>
>     Sleeping giant
>
>
>       Sue Blackmore
>
> April 6, 2006 09:35 AM
>
> http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2006/04/voting_on_freud_1.html
>
> Freud just won't go away. A century old, his theory of dreams, which 
> ought to have slipped quietly into oblivion, still provokes even 
> serious scientists into heated debate.
>
> I am in Tucson, Arizona, for the biennial conference "Toward a Science 
> of Consciousness 
> <http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/tucson2006.htm>", a gathering of 
> neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers and numerous others who 
> love grappling with the "greatest mystery for science". This morning 
> we were treated to a debate on the motion "Freud's dream theory is 
> misguided and misleading. It should be abandoned." Quite so I would 
> say, but if it's that obvious why have a debate? Obviously not 
> everyone agreed with me.
>
> Proposing the notion was Allan Hobson 
> <http://www.skidmore.edu/%7Ey_saaved/proj2/hobson.html>, of Harvard 
> Medical School, who claimed that Freud was 50% right and 100% wrong; 
> right because he took dreams seriously and tried to build his theory 
> on brain science, wrong because the theory he came up with has been 
> completely discredited. Freud believed that dreams are driven by 
> unconscious wishes; they are bizarre because the wishes are disguised, 
> and the function of dreaming is to maintain sleep. All this is false, 
> claimed Hobson, whose own "AIM" theory explains dreaming in terms of 
> modern neurobiology and treats dreams themselves as epiphenomena of 
> REM sleep, whose function is thermoregulation - therefore nothing to 
> do with dreams per se.
>
> Opposing Hobson was South African psychoanalyst, Mark Solms, 
> <http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/psychology/staff/solms.html> who began by 
> explaining that he had originally hoped to debate Hobson's own theory, 
> or even better his own theory, but since he was forced to defend Freud 
> he would do so, not on the grounds that Freud was right about 
> everything - he was not - but on the grounds that Freud provided 
> useful ideas that can still be valuable as we move on to better 
> theories. Hobson, he said, has done an injustice to Freud and 
> misrepresented his theory. Freud believed that drives do not stop 
> during sleep but executive control is reduced - there is a shift from 
> the ego to the id. For example, if I want to teach Hobson a lesson I 
> may dream that I'm at school and Hobson is a boy in class. In this way 
> the dream preserves sleep by preventing me acting it out. With the 
> audience laughing along with him he claimed that Freud's theory had 
> more right about it than Hobson's.
>
> Hobson fought back, claiming that Solms misrepresented his theory, and 
> that he had only dealt with one third of Freud's theory, and that 
> "Freud is dead in the water". He even accused Solms of always 
> publishing his work in books rather than proper peer-reviewed science 
> journals. Not so, Solms calmly replied, claiming over 300 scholarly 
> articles and adding, "I'm afraid this is just bad manners" - and 
> clearly it was. You could almost feel the shift of sympathy away from 
> the accuser and towards the psychoanalyst.
>
> Before the vote there were lively questions. I explained that I am 
> frequently asked by journalists and radio producers to interpret 
> people's dreams - at the worst they will say: "We've invited a 
> celebrity in to tell us their dreams and we want you to interpret 
> them." I never know what to do. If I refuse then someone else will 
> only fill the role and provide some Freudian waffle. If I accept then 
> I have to say that interpretation only works for each individual and 
> the popular books are just gimmicks. Can you give me some advice? 
> Hobson replied: "Refuse more often," and Solms: "Give them my phone 
> number." So I am none the wiser.
>
> And what about that vote? I was amazed. By a rough show of hands the 
> motion - which seemed so obviously right to me - was rejected by about 
> two to one. And had people been swayed by the debate? Another vote 
> revealed that just two people had swung towards the motion and well 
> over 50 the other way, but I think the reason was clear. Freud's 
> defender had been polite and funny in the face of the onslaught and so 
> had won people over.
>
> As the chairman concluded, settling scientific truth by democracy is 
> not to be taken seriously. Happily, unlike politicians, scientists 
> don't take votes seriously - at least, I don't think they do.
>

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