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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Response to Commentaries by Carlo Semenza

(Trieste)
Carlo Semenza

Department of Psychology, University of Trieste, Via S. Anastasio, 12, 34100, Trieste,

Italy, e-mail:
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Carlo Semenza (2001) Response to Commentaries by Carlo Semenza (Trieste), Neuropsychoanalysis:
An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 3:1, 38-45, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2001.10773335
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2001.10773335

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38
- - - (1998b), Preliminaries for an integration of psychoanalysis and neuroscience. Brit. Psycho-Anal. Soc.
Bull., 34(9):23-38.
- - - (1999), Towards an integration of psychoanalysis
and the neurosciences. Part 2: Syndrome analysis of psychic functions. Forum der Psychoanalyse, 15:58-70.
(In German)
- - - (2000), Freud, Luria and the clinical method. Psychoanal. & Hist., 2:76-109.

Carlo Semenza
Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience
School of Psychology
University of Wales, Bangor, 383670
Gwynedd, Wales
LL57 2DG, U.K.
e-mail: o.turnbull@bangor.ac.uk

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Response to Commentaries by Carlo Semenza (Trieste)

General
While waiting for relevant case studies, neuropsychoanalysis, as I think this journal is trying to promote,
can only be an intellectual exercise. This exercise of
exploring the fields of psychoanalysis and neuroscience primarily consists of the search for concepts that,
while developed in one of the two disciplines, may
turn out to be useful if somehow incorporated into
the other.
The shared belief is obviously that psychoanalysis and neuroscience, while differing in aims and
methods, are ultimately about the same thing-the human mind. We know that the two disciplines have
been separated almost from the very beginning, and
that adepts of one field have generally gone their own
way without knowing too much about the other field.
In many respects this separation was desirable,
and dictated by theoretical necessity and lack of empirical findings bridging the two fields. In the past
decade, however, the opinion emerged that there was
no longer a reason for this state of affairs. It was intuited that the advanced knowledge in neuroscience
could now allow useful interaction with psychoanalysis. I am also convinced that the reverse is true: Psychoanalysis
can
indeed
inspire
interesting
interpretations of findings in neuroscience.
Within this framework I felt I could offer a few
suggestions. These were by no means prescriptions, as
some of my commentators, notably Green, understood
them to be. My aim was only to provide some food
for thought. In short, my main suggestions were the
following:
Carlo Semenza, M.D., is Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Trieste, Italy.

1. If psychoanalysis is to benefit from neuroscience,

this could better and more naturally happen with
the mediation of cognitive psychology.
2. Cognitivism is not a psychology entirely extraneous to Freud's thought. If Freud's scientific background and his work on aphasia in particular are
closely considered, his familiarity with ideas and
methods that would later be the basis of cognitive
psychology is revealed.
3. Cognitive neuropsychology and psychoanalysis
have methodological affinities. The supremacy of
single case methodology, valid in both disciplines,
stems from what cognitive neuropsychologists
have called the principle of transparency: Pathology, provoking an imbalance among working structures and processes, may highlight, in specific
cases, functions that are obscured by the harmonious flow of a relatively undisturbed mind.
4. Connectionist models should be adopted with the
utmost caution. Shallow analogies will not work
and would make any theorization more prone to
criticisms of Popper's type (while I believe that,
properly defended by the same sort of arguments
that cognitive neuropsychologists use, psychoanalysis could instead be virtually immune to such devastating objections).
5. Somehow, against immediate intuition, the modularity theory may be useful, especially in a less rigid
form than Fodor's. There are indeed theoretical
distinctions within memory functions that are neurologically implemented. These distinctions may be
useful when considered within psychoanalysis. A
key concept in Fodor's theory, that of "informational encapsulation," may perhaps be specula-

Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience

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tively played with in psychoanalysis in a useful

way.
This series of suggestions appears to have stimulated in my commentators, who sometimes curiously
contradict each other, a variety of criticisms. Some of
these, I am afraid, are entirely pointless, since they are
directed toward something I never said. I will willingly
answer the others, and, indeed, in some cases I will
incorporate them into my own arguments. Had I more
time and space, I would have indicated potential difficulties myself and later shown how they could be accommodated. Instead, I will comment on new
suggestions that, following on from my own, seem to
open space for some advancement, and I will take the
opportunity for further speculations.

The Issue of Cognitivism

I thought my position on cognitivism was clear. A
basic problem for neuropsychoanalysis is how to
bridge findings and theories in neuroscience with
findings and theories in psychoanalysis. I started by
stating that I did not believe there was much within
the indubitable progress made by neuroscience in the
century after Freud abandoned neurology to encourage
any new step by neuroscience toward psychoanalysis
and vice versa. Speaking of a profitable alliance or,
more remotely, reunification into a unitary discipline
(the latter may be an idealistic or even undesirable
outcome) is irrelevant to the present arguments.
Neuroscience, by its nature, can hardly influence
psychoanalysis directly. Modern images of the working brain, or impressive acquisitions in neurochemistry, do not reveal much about mental processes. There
are, however, interesting findings that lend themselves
to promising speculations. The data on the differential
maturation of the hippocampus and the amygdala,
which can explain infantile amnesia, are an example
of this. Another example is the data about the damage
a psychological trauma can cause to hippocampal
structures, via release of corticosteroids, which can
explain posttraumatic amnesia.
These examples are not mine: The value of these
findings for psychoanalysis has been pointed out by
the neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel
(1999). Kandel is not a cognitive neuroscientist, but
he has studied the difference between declarative and
procedural memory. Without knowing about such a
difference, we would not be able to appreciate the
implications of the above mentioned data. Most of

39
the benefit psychoanalysis can derive from "hard"
neuroscience therefore needs to be derived through the
mediation of cognitive science.
In the same way, I speculate that knowledge of
the phenomenon of "blindsight" may end up enlightening us about psychological mechanisms supporting
projective identification. But only through cognitively
oriented studies can we understand the extent of a
phenomenon that not only (unconsciously) acquires
information but is also primed by it.
The mediation of cognitive science is necessary
in all these cases to the benefit of psychoanalysis.
Those who think that basic neuroscience can directly
inspire psychoanalysis should provide examples. If reliably produced, these examples would not, however,
undermine the fact that in so many cases mediation
through cognitive science proves necessary. On the
other hand, I never argued that cognitive science can
do without biological data, as some commentators
seem to have understood. I would not otherwise waste
most of my time with neuropsychology. However, as
I argued with the Mendel example, one can sometimes
provide good theories and discover interesting facts
without knowledge of structure. Uncoupling brain and
cognition, exactly as Freud did, may not be a mortal
sin.
The way I described cognitivism, with the help
of Gardner's list, does not bind to particular subtheories, nor does it impinge on the uses one may want to
make of its basic tenets. The issue of the computer
metaphor, which literally nobody believes anymore,
may be nonetheless useful in providing ideas about
a sometimes desirable level of description of mental
processes. If the temporary neglect of affect, context,
and so on, was a useful way to start, nobody would
deny that now is the time to direct cognitive analysis
toward emotional aspects of our mind. Not doing this
would soon relegate cognitivism to the Stone Age.
The emotional domain definitely does not deserve a
lower epistemic status. There is nothing, in principle,
about keeping this attitude that corresponds to more
than a strategic choice. Moreover, psychoanalysis can
lead the way.

Freud
All I claimed about Freud is that he was not culturally
opposed to the ideas that later developed into cognitivism. And, perhaps, that some psychoanalytic concepts
may be harmlessly translated into, or find their correspondents in, cognitive terms. This is not an original

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40

Carlo Semenza

claim of mine. Erdelyi's book, which I mentioned not

without some criticisms, already made the idea popular a few years ago. I just added some evidence from
the history of neuropsychology that apparently escaped Erdelyi's attention. I insist that Freud's analysis
of aphasia in theoretically defendable linguistic terms
is what makes his essay very similar to the work of
modern cognitive neuropsychologists. John Marshall
adds even more to the same effect.
My mentioning the diagram makers, which disturbs Brown so much, did not ignore the fact that
Freud harshly criticized them. It was simply meant to
show that Freud was very familiar with their kind of
reasoning and that he beat them at their own game,
using the same logic (here I am again backed by Marshall), while indeed reaching very different conclusions.
It must be acknowledged that it has been through
using a similar logic that modern cognitive neuropsychologists, whatever their demerits, have, especially
in the realm of language, described cognitive processes at a level of detail that has so far been unsurpassed. Experiments with "normals" have generally
confirmed these observations. Indeed, I must concede
that there may be some truth in Kinsbourne's argument that, if neuropsychoanalysis were to succeed
where Freud had to abstain, it would be in terms of
models at a far more general level than that at which
cognitive neuropsychology currently operates. I suggest, however, that we wait and see. Surely finegrained concepts like the "episodic buffer," a newly
theorized component of short-term memory (Baddeley, 2000), may well find their utility in understanding
processes in the therapist-patient interaction (see response to Saling for more).

the care of patients, from whom they do not derive

their income. They "chase" interesting cases, however, out of a huge population and are only allowed
to study those in which they intuitively identify a potential theoretical interest, after a short period of contact and little testing. With respect to this position,
psychoanalysts have advantages and disadvantages.
They mostly work on their own and generally can
hardly afford to choose only prima facie scientifically
interesting patients. They may, however, eventually
discover the theoretical interest of patients in the
long run.
Indeed, cognitive neuropsychologists tend to report cases that are "unusual in the apparent selectivity
of their cognitive deficit," which is then' 'construed as
revealing impairment of a previously unknown mental
operation. ' , In contributing to the advancement of
their discipline, psychoanalysts do exactly the same.
They tend to study and report on patients in whom a
given symptom stands out as very prominent. This
symptom is then generally interpreted as reflecting an
imbalance in psychodynamic functions that may thus
be better identified. Little Hans was not drafted to be
described by Freud among his several patients. His
phobia made him interesting, and informed Freud
about mental mechanisms that we all share.
The danger of such a procedure is surely that of
post hoc explanations, but this danger is equally
shared by cognitive neuropsychology and psychoanalysis. The necessary countermeasures are exactly the
same (even if psychoanalysts seem to care less). Converging evidence should be sought in both instances.

Methodological Affinities

It should be clear that I did not criticize connectionist

models in themselves. They are very likely to directly
reflect the working of the mind at levels in which
psychoanalysis is indeed pivotally interested. My present concern is, however, that their heuristic value may
be limited. I cannot see how, in psychoanalysis at the
present moment, one can adjudicate among different
alternatives on the basis of connectionist modeling. It
seems to me that all that is left is the chance of making
a shallow analogy. This does not seem to be the wisest
way to deal with complexity. I might be wrong but,
as a scientist and not necessarily as a therapist, my
style of thinking needs to have some stricter control
over the concepts that I manipulate. Reading some
psychoanalytic literature, especially outside the main

Considering the above, it may not be just a coincidence

that cognitive neuropsychology and psychoanalysis
share some basic methodological assumptions. As
Modell correctly puts it, ' ,[Both] psychopathology and
neuropathology can be seen as a kind of deconstruction that teases apart functions that are transparent and
cannot easily be observed in health."
Contrary to what Kinsbourne thinks, however,
theoretically relevant single cases are not selected for
different reasons in the two disciplines. What Kinsbourne captures is a sociological-situational state of
affairs. Most cognitive neuropsychologists hold academic positions and are not directly responsible for

Connectionism

Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience

journals, makes me wish that my attitude was more
widely shared.

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Modularity
I have admittedly used modularity as a metaphor and,
in my own version (Semenza, Bisiacchi, and Rosenthal, 1988), underlying its epistemological value.
Again, my choice may be related to my own way of
reasoning, but I think there are good, independent reasons to seek inspiration from modularity theory. Psychoanalysis demonstrates that some information in
our minds may segregate itself from other information.
If one judges from papers appearing in major
psychoanalytic journals, from conferences and group
studies that are organized allover the world, the concept of independent types of memory, as theorized in
cognitive psychology and supported by neuroscience,
is now ethusiastically (though often naively) adopted
in psychoanalytic circles. I still think it may be a good
idea to employ the concept of informational encapsulation. I now realize, however, that I should have explained my thinking in greater detail and in a more
precise way. Some commentators have objected that
informational encapsulation does not account for the
dynamic process of repression. True: but, when speaking about encapsulated memories, I was mainly referring to what happens in the unconscious portion of
the ego that is not repressed. This portion would correspond to Hartmann's concept of an area of the ego
that is free of conflicts. Kandel (1999) has identified
the same area as a content of procedural memory. This
area includes functions that are present from birth:
motility, perception, association, and so on. These
functions mature in parallel with drives, and relatively
independently of conflicts. A subject makes the experiences leading to the formation of the self via these
systems. Absence of empathy or excessive intrusiveness, for example, could determine, as an adaptive
and initially "useful" response, isolation in procedural memory of these ill-represented (or nonrepresented, if one sticks to a narrower sense of
representation that seems to be preferred in psychoanalysis) memories. These memories, which may
never become verbal, would emerge mainly as somatic
sensations, resulting in suffering, nightmares, acting
out, and difficult relationships. Less primitive, yet
hardly accessible, procedural memories may establish
themselves as action patterns later in life, through the
process of identification. None of these memories,
which I would call encapsulated because of their auto-

41
matic unconscious emergence, have ever been repressed.
In conclusion, before answering individual comments, let me return to the opening arguments of this
response. I said I consider neuropsychoanalysis an appealing (at least to me) intellectual exercise. I also
believe it is a useful one. I do not know where it will
lead us (that's part of the appeal). Psychoanalysis has
taught us that free imagination can lead us to unforeseeable truths. In a few years we will be able to measure the mileage we have run. If it is short, I for one
will be ready to give up. Considering the huge amount
of ideas that have been raised in the very recent years,
however, I am optimistic. All the more so, as I believe
this neuropsychoanalysis group is ahead of the game.
Welcome on board, you who dare!

Response to Brown
I cannot but share Brown's bitterness in witnessing
history being written by the winners. Acting not in
New York, but at the margin of Western geography,
and being subjected to Anglo-American linguistic imperialism (since misunderstanding seems around the
corner, I must rush to specify that I thank the same
linguistic group for being born a free man), I know
the feeling all too well. This notwithstanding, I feel,
in this case, more at ease than Brown.
I indeed gave credit to two very successful
schools of thought that Brown has opposed for a long
time (e.g., Brown, 1988): the diagram makers, especially in the modern version resurrected by Geschwind
(1965), and that of so-called cognitive neuropsychology. I easily admit to having been educated and
strongly influenced by both. I did not, however, accept
more than I wanted to. Wherever it felt appropriate I
went my own way and undertook serious opposition
against what did not convince me. This is not the right
place to enter into what could be a complicated discussion. I will therefore just provide some explanation.
I was very cautious in speaking about the diagram
makers: All I said was that Freud was very familiar
with their models and that these models could be considered to be early versions of cognitive neuropsychology models. This is what many would subscribe to
(see Marshall), and does not imply an uncritical acceptance of the diagram-maker school.
Brown's theory, I hope to report it correctly, is
that brain damage reveals normal stages in the moment-to-moment processing of cognition. The errors
produced by patients are the result of incomplete pro-

Carlo Semenza

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42

cessing at a certain stage. This is the way Brown intends what I called the "principle of transparency,"
and I would certainly side with him on this issue.
Cognitive neuropsychologists, he claims, only consider the final (conscious) content of a mental representation rather than the stages through which that
representation unfolds. I'll leave aside the question of
whether this is always entirely true. I can only say
that, in my own version of the transparency principle
(see Semenza [1996], for the latest version), I state
that what is revealing is what the patient does instead
of what the patient does not do. As a consequence,
the analysis of errors becomes more important. The
implications coincide exactly with Brown's views. I
believe, however, that many who still call themselves
cognitive neuropsychologists would no longer object
to these views.
Disagreements with individual positions do not
mean rejecting what could, theoretically, be put to
work profitably. I thus think that there is no danger in
borrowing some concepts from cognitive neuropsychology that may turn out to be useful in psychoanalysis.

Response to Green
I do not believe the moon is made of gorgonzola. It
may eventually be found that our satellite is indeed,
under the surface crust, mostly made of this special
kind of blue cheese, but that is not what I believe now.
Just in the same way, with the same degree of certainty, I do not believe the following:
1. Most psychoanalysts are unwitting perverts;
2. Freud's better work is in the aphasia book than in
the "Project";
3. There is nothing to learn from the observation of
pathology;
4. Analysis of behavior should be conducted "at the
neurological level"; and, last, but not least;
5. Sexuality is dirty, old-fashioned, and irrelevant to
present knowledge.
I wonder what led Green to understand otherwise? I also stated that I doubt that our knowledge of
neuroscience, with respect to what was available in
Freud's time, would allow (without the mediation of
cognitive science) a more fruitful interaction with psychoanalysis. This is indeed debatable, but it is nonetheless what I believe. Again Green seems to have
understood the contrary.

I am fully aware of the diversity of psychoanalytic endeavors and of the variety of different schools.
I mentioned Fonagy (1999) only because he had recently published something about the sort of things
neuropsychoanalysis may be doing. I felt I could use
these works as an example to comment upon. I could
have chosen from a dozen other articles in major journals. I by no means believe that this is the only interesting and valuable stuff psychoanalysts could be busy
with. I actually believe that neuropsychoanalysis has
a long way to go before producing anything as valuable as, for instance, Green's own work on narcissism.
Amidst this cloud of misunderstanding, Green
raises some very interesting questions. One concerns
the different training needed for psychoanalysis and
neuroscience. Green seems to think that training in
one domain is incompatible with training in the other.
I do not expect everybody to agree with this position
entirely. While resisting the urge to engage in a debate
on the matter, I suggest that Neuro-Psychoanalysis
takes the challenge for an open discussion seriously.
The other question concerns the type of memory appearing in dreams. I believe that this is a very important question, although I do not think that I have
an answer. But I feel I can speculate on one aspect.
Recollection of dreams enters psychoanalysis with an
episodic character. Elements of dreams are often
loosely related to each other: This may be the reason
why they are difficult to remember. Once shared with
the analyst, dreams enter semantic memory (in both
the patient and the analyst). As such they can establish
new, meaningful connections with stored information
and thus provide the patient and the analyst with new,
potentially healthy, solutions.

Response to Issaharoff
I am grateful to Issaharoff for rephrasing what I said,
in words that would make it understandable to a wider
audience. He does so in a very scholarly and stimulating fashion.
Issaharoff correctly understands my use of computation and of modularity. I do use the former as a
metaphor and the latter as a strategy. He also understands how I use the idea of informational encapsulation. I do indeed refer to the difficulty in changing
procedural mechanisms and their motor circuits. But
there are other qualities, besides informational encapsulation, that I think may be pathologically segregated
pieces of procedural memory which resemble modular
features. Automatic activation is one important char-

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Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience

acteristic. Also, once action stems from these encapsulated memories, it runs all the way with little chance
of being inhibited.
Issaharoff, unlike Green, seems to be prepared to
understand the reasons why I criticize some psychoanalytic work. As he says, authors in this discipline,
more than elsewhere, have chosen theories and clinical
data according to their convenience. I would add that
sometimes they feel authorized to write, typically unlike Freud, in a very obscure way.
While I argued that one way of describing what
may happen in psychoanalysis is to say that nondeclarative aspects of a patient's memory are transformed
into declarative sentences, Issaharoff observes that this
is an interesting contribution which psychoanalysis
submits to cognitive science. This strikes me as a very
intelligent remark.

43

at their disposal?" (p. 26). All these are very fascinating questions and I hope they will soon be addressed
properly. Freud himself could have done this: There
is nothing modern neuroscience could have added. Has
Turnbull anything to say about this (see below)?
Finally Kinsbourne accuses me of sweeping
claims because, accompanied by words of caution
which he ignores, I argued that Freud came close to
discovering the basic tenets of cognitive neuroscience.
Toward the end of his comment he, instead, states: "If
Sigmund Freud were reincarnated in the 21st century,
I suggest he would choose to be a neuropsychologist. ' ,
I'll leave to the judgment of our readers as to which
of us provides the more sweeping claims to this forum.

Response to Marshall
Response to Kinsbourne
Most of what I have to tell Kinsbourne is contained in
my general response. I have already answered Brown
about the necessity of looking at the quality of errors.
I feel inclined to defend psychoanalysis against
one unjust criticism. Kinsbourne states that ' 'The
credibility of psychoanalysis as a science would benefit from studies which, based on how one patient's
disorder is construed, successfully predict similar
problems in another patient who appears to have undergone a sufficiently similar experience" (p. 26).
This may be acceptable, and indeed I believe that is
the way psychoanalysts actually think, unless, however, one is ready to accept the naive position that the
"sufficiently similar experience" should be an objectively similar one. Psychoanalytic theories would be
true in this case, for instance, if all individuals who
had undergone a given trauma showed the same symptoms. This is simply ridiculous. It may take years,
instead, to be a good enough analyst to gather evidence
that a given experience is lived, by a single patient, in
a way that is "emotionally equivalent" to that of another patient. This is the correct way, but I also believe
that it accommodates generalization.
The interesting part of Kinsbourne's comment is
in his final proposals. "Brain lesions can both exaggerate existing personality traits and engender new and
different ones. They can also create bodily states that
defy the patient's understanding.... How do patients
react dynamically to brain damage that not only restricts and distorts their experience, but also transforms their cognitive style and the coping mechanisms

I am glad to have Marshall's support about my interpretation of Freud's background and of the logic he
used in his criticism of the diagram-makers' neuropsychology.
Marshall offers his own speculation as to why
Freud abandoned neuroscience. He focuses our attention on Freud's theoretical problems with hysteria. I
think that, from a historical point of view, he is right.
That is indeed how, so far as facts are concerned,
everything started. Marshall then quotes his own work
on hysterical paralysis as an example of what we may
aim at doing. I cannot but subscribe. Incidentally, that
study is one interesting example of the few honest
uses of the new neuroimaging techniques, in support
of neuropsychoanalysis.
Marshall expresses his perplexities about the
ability of modularity theory to deal with prima facie
"central" functions. I will also mention elsewhere
(see my response to Modell) that cognitive neuropsychologists have conquered from within the modularity
framewor k functions considered by Fodor to be nonmodular. Marshall takes the example of beliefs. Well,
beliefs may stem from different components of the
memory systems. Different parts of the brain may entertain different beliefs. Somatoparaphrenia, which
Marshall takes as an example, may consist of the delusional belief that one's own paralyzed limb belongs
to somebody else. I once observed this condition in a
neurologist, who insisted on his delusion despite a still
intact knowledge of his discipline, including the concept of somatoparaphrenia.

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Response to Modell
I have little to say here that I did not say already in
my general response above. Modell provides a series
of provisos that I have nothing against. I just must
insist that I do not feel bound to many of the literal
implications of Fodor's modularity theory, at least not
in this context. I also have to remark that, in the same
way that Freud did, cognitive neuropsychologists interpret the symptoms of aphasia psychologically rather
than physiologically. As some cognitive neuropsychologists would say (but I would not go so far), "Everything may well happen in the elbow rather than in
the brain."
I'll take the opportunity here to deal with the
issue of innateness. Modell quotes Karmiloff-Smith in
an attempt to argue against the idea of innate functions. Whatever the merits of Karmiloff-Smith's arguments, her criticism of Fodor's theory is not
particularly well taken (and, I believe, entirely unnecessary to her theories). It gives a biased description of
modularity theory. The typical argument (often repeated, I am afraid, in the early years of cognitive
neuropsychology by some of the British representatives) uses reading capacity as an example. This capacity, it is claimed, cannot be sustained by innate
modules because most of humanity has been illiterate
until a few decades ago. Evolution would not have
had the time. This is plain nonsense. Reading may
have recruited visual capacities which evolved for
other purposes-for example, the one distinguishing
single patterns (like single letters) in a whole, or alternatively, the one able to distinguish organized clusters
(like a whole word). I speculate that, since even emotional behavior has regularities that do not escape a
single neurologically intact human individual, there
must be some space to inherit behavioral patterns.
Ethology provides examples in animals.
I think it may not be improper or too unorthodox
to wonder whether some of the "functions" psychoanalysis has discovered are innate, activated unconsciously, run automatically, and cannot be wor ked
upon except at considerable cost, and so on. These
would be the characteristics of modules, evolved to
make mind functioning more efficient. Of course these
would not be functions that Fodor would have thought
of as modular. He would have relegated them to the
nonmodular, "central" systems. But I believe that
neuropsychology has effectively demonstrated that
functions like calculation, considered by Fodor as
nonmodular, are instead vis-a-vis pathological findings, better viewed as modularly organized. I do not

Carlo Semenza
see why, in principle, this could not be the case for
functions of psychoanalytic interest.

Response to Saling
Saling seems to elaborate on my view that there is not
much to learn from localization for the purposes of
neuropsychoanalysis, not even that which is performed via the new techniques. The interesting phenomenon to observe is indeed dissociation. As I said,
for psychoanalysis the prima facie interesting dissociations are those concerning different long-term memory systems. Since Saling mentions short-term
memory, I'll take the opportunity to expand upon what
I argued in the general response.
A newly described component of the short-term
(working) memory system is, alongside the three already described components (the central executive, the
visuospatial sketch-pad, and the articulatory loop), the
"episodic buffer." This system is a limited capacity
temporary storage system, presumably located in the
frontal lobe, and, unlike episodic long-term memory,
it is preserved in amnesia. It is capable of integrating
information from a variety of sources, and serves the
purpose of reflecting on that information, manipulating and modifying it. The episodic buffer acts under
the control of the central executive, whose guidance
is necessary to retrieve single episodes in the form of
conscious awareness. According to Baddeley (2000),
this system provides a mechanism for creating new
cognitive representations and may play a special role
in separating accurate from false memories. This system may be interesting to consider vis-a-vis several
processes in psychoanalysis. In the patient-analyst interaction, for example, the content of the two episodic
buffers is shared and ultimately allows construction
of semantic memory. They may influence each other
in interesting ways, to be theorized in neuropsychoanalysis.

Response to Turnbull
Again, I must repeat that I did not contend that Freud
founded cognitive neuropsychology. And I am entirely
neutral about what Freud would have done if he continued to be a neuropsychologist.
Solms's theory (quoted by Turnbull) that Freud
lacked the concept of the "functional system," in the
sense popularized by Luria, has some loose similarity
with my theory that he lacked the concepts of cogni-

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Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Neuroscience

tive psychology. Both of us believe that he lacked,
rather than neurophysiological notions, some theoretical means. I think, however, that with only Luria's
concept, of which I believe he had some intuition, he
would not have gone so far.
Turnbull is not afraid of speculation, and takes
the chance of wondering why Freud did not investigate the biological basis of the psychological topics
that were of interest to him. This is an interesting
question. I would not be that quick to take for granted
the fact that Freud was interested more in the neuropsychology of emotion than in the neuropsychology
of cognition. Especially since phenomena like those
mentioned by Kinsbourne (and by Marshall) were
more or less under the observation of his contemporaries. And, as Solms and Saling (1986) have aptly reminded us, he was familiar with the work of Hughlings
Jackson. He chose instead to work on aphasia.
Turnbull nicely displays his argument in the style
of a detective story. He carefully examines means,
motive, and opportunity. This does not lead him to
firm or particularly interesting conclusions. Just to
play along, I may add another, perhaps trivial, consideration. I suspect that since he got involved in developing psychoanalysis, Freud was happy enough with
that; it was his own creature. He wanted to provide a
more solid possible basis for it. Expanding his theorization to what we call neuropsychoanalysis, which he
may have perceived (at that time) as marginal, would
have taken too much energy (and perhaps unwise
doses of cocaine), even for the immensely energetic
person that he was. Luckily, he left that task for us.

45

References
Baddeley, A. (2000), The episodic buffer. A new component of working memory? Trends in Cognit. Sci.,
4(11):417-423.
Brown, J. W. (1988), The Life of the Mind. Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fonagy, P. (1999), Memory and therapeutic action. Internat. J. Psycho-Anal., 80:215-223.
Freud, S. (1919), On the teaching of psychoanalysis in universities. Standard Edition, 17:169-173. London: Hogarth Press, 1985.
Geschwind, N. (1965), Disconnection syndromes in animals
and man. Brain, 88:585-644.
Kandel, E. (1999), Biology and the future of psychoanalysis. A new intellectual framework for psychiatry revisited. Amer. J. Psychiatry, 156(4):505-524.
Semenza, C. (1996), Methodological issues. In: The Blackwell Dictionary of Neuropsychology, ed. G. Beaumont,
P. M. Kenealy, & M. J. C. Rogers. Oxford: Blackwell,
pp. 215-225.
- - - Bisiacchi, P. S., & Rosenthal, V. (1988), A function
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S. Bisiacchi. Howe, U.K.: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 10-42.
Solms, M., & Saling, M. (1986), On psychoanalysis and
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Department of Psychology
University of Trieste
Via S. Anastasio, 12
34100, Trieste, Italy
e-mail: semenza@univ.triest.it