Arnold Modell

Freud’s Lamarckian beliefs contributed to his theory of instincts, as well as his concepts regarding the unconscious primary process. Freud’s theory of the primary and secondary process is fundamentally biological, as he placed it within an evolutionary context and hypothesized that the two systems were distinguished by free and bound psychic energ...

Freud's insight that mental processes are fundamentally unconscious is now an unquestioned assumption of neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Psychoanalysts are now faced with the question, What differentiated the psychoanalytic unconscious from that of other disciplines? Behind this question lies a more profound issue, the mind-body or mind-brai...

Neuroscience has confirmed Freud's assertion of the primacy of unconscious process in relation to conscious experience. However, unconscious process, for many neuroscientists, is viewed as something that is devoid of meaning. This paper suggests that there are different levels of unconscious process. This conceptualization of unconscious process ma...

Metaphor and metonymy are the primary and crucial cognitive tools of unconscious thought. Acknowledging this function of metaphor and metonymy might provide a unifying bridge between the disparate schools and factions of contemporary psychoanalysis. I suggest that we are more likely to find common ground, both within psychoanalysis and neighboring...

Metaphor can be thought of as the currency of the emotional mind. It is now generally accepted that metaphor is fundamentally embodied and is not simply a figure of speech. We now know that metaphor is the expression of a yet to be determined neurophysiological process that has been secondarily coopted by language. I suggested that metaphor unconsc...

Transference is a key concept in psychoanalysis, distinguishing the analytic treatment from other forms of psychotherapy. In this essay, the authors place transference into the context of a general psychology of human functioning and link it to the neurobiology of perception. The authors briefly review the literature within and outside of psychoana...

Advances in neuroscience make it possible to view the construction of meaning as a biological property. Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology in which emotion and memory form a seamless unified system is seen as an attempt to establish psychoanalysis as a neurobiology of meaning. In the unconscious construction of meaning, metaphor plays a sa...

In the context of Sander's contribution to developmental theory, the author examines a variety of subjects, including intentionality, the concept of representation, and consciousness. Also discussed are the limitations of applying a developmental analogy to psychoanalytic treatment.

The non-communication of affects is the most evident form of defence in a certain group of narcissistic patients. This non-communication of affects may take the direct form of a state of non-relatedness or may be disguised as the communication of false affects or affects that serve the function of inducing corresponding feelings in the object. We h...

A narcissistic defence against affects, unlike isolation, is a defence against an object relationship. Object relations are strengthened by the sharing of genuine affects so that the failure to share feelings or the presentation of false feelings creates distance between the self and other objects. The defence is similar to that of denial in that i...