THE ARNOLD PFEFFER CENTER FOR NEUROPSYCHOANALYSIS
A Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective on Drives, Instincts, and Affects
Saturday, March 9, 2015

"A Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective on Drives, Instincts, and Affects" with Mark Solms, Ph.D.

This talk will address the knotty problem of drive theory, and the relationship between drives and affects. Freud took very seriously the fact that we are embodied creatures, a species of animal, and then he explored the implications of this self-evident fact for our psychology. But he had limited tools for doing so. Today we have many powerful new methods for studying the neural underpinnings of drives and affects. What have we found? And what are the implications for psychoanalysis, and for the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychiatry and medical science in general? As awkward and difficult as these questions may be, what could be more fundamental for understanding the human mind than the nature of the basic forces that drive it?