Clinical Studies in Neuropsychoanalysis Revisited

Twenty years ago, Kaplan-Solms and Solms (K-S&S) published Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis. The subtitle must have surprised many: “Introduction to a depth neuropsychology.” In their book, a new way of looking at the effect of brain lesions was introduced; new for most readers except, perhaps, for those who had studied and followed the work of Alexander Luria, the Russian neurologist who had studied Freud. The book was seen as tackling the implicit challenge posed by Freud in 1895, when he abandoned his “Project.” It showed that the time for combining neurology and psychoanalysis had come (Reiser, 2002). This new book, a revisiting of the subject, no longer hyphenated, is an interesting blend of history and contemporary science. It consists of three parts: an intro and an outro, eight case histories, and three chapters that each show a road from different “schools” of psychoanalysis to neuropsychoanalysis. The meat, muscles, of the book are eight case-histories; the structure, or bones, of the book are the introduction and final thoughts; the sinews that bind these together are three “Neuropsychoanalyses.” The whole body shows where the depth neuropsychology, introduced by the authors (K-S&S) now stands as “Project Neuropsychoanalysis.” My scientific interest in psychoanalysis dates back to the seventies of the last century, the period in which articles indicating a brewing crisis within the world of psychoanalysis were published (see, for example, Freud, 1976; Green, 1975; Rangell, 1975; Shengold, 1976). There were many different schools, each sure that their interpretation of Freud was the right one. On top of that internal debate came a struggle for survival for psychoanalysis itself. The rise of CBT and medication, both cheaper and scientifically more acceptable, meant that psychoanalytic therapy was losing patients. And patients, the subjects of therapy, were the only source of psychoanalytic theory and of income for the therapists). Psychoanalysis retreated from the scientific world, from universities. This was the world into which Mark Solms entered when starting his neuropsychological studies in the eighties.