A note on Mark Solms’s paper

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE
Author/s Otto F. Kernberg
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/3 Language Italian
Pages 2 P. 429-430 File size 21 KB
DOI 10.3280/PU2022-003003
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

In the paper "Revision of drive theory" (Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane, 2022, 56, 3: 363-422) Mark Solms (2021a) correctly argues that the basic motivational forces are affect systems, acti-vated following the general homeostatic principles that govern biological processes that assure survival and reproduction. However, psychoanalytic object relation theory points to a specifically human, supraordinate integrative motivational system that condenses component affect systems into the affiliative and counteraffiliative motivations described by Freud with the concepts of libi-do and aggression. They are not "drives" in the psychobiological sense, but profoundly define unconscious intrapsychic conflict and are relevant in clinical psychoanalysis.

Keywords: Drives; Affects; Neuropsychoanalysis; Psychoanalytic object relation theory; Libido and aggression

  1. Friston K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11, 2: 127-138.
  2. Kernberg O.F. (2012). The Seeking System and Freud’s dual-drive theory today. Neuropsychoanalysis, 14, 1: 50-52. DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2012.10773687
  3. Kernberg O.F. (2015). Neurobiological correlates of object relations theory: The relationship between neurobiological and psychodynamic development. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 24, 1: 38-46. DOI: 10.1080/0803706X.2014.912352
  4. Kernberg O.F. (2021). Comments on the “New Project for a Scientific Psychology: General scheme” by Mark Solms. Neuropsychoanalysis, 23, 2: 111-114. DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2021.1983453
  5. Panksepp J. (1998). Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press.
  6. Panksepp J. & Biven L. (2012). The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. New York: Norton (trad. it.: Archeologia della mente: origini neuroevolutive delle emozioni umane. A cura di Andrea Clarici. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2014).
  7. Solms M. (2013). The conscious id. Neuropsychoanalysis, 15, 1: 5-85.
  8. Solms M. (2018). La coscienza dell’Es: psicoanalisi e neuroscienze. Cura e prefazione di Andrea Clarici. Milano: Raffaello Cortina.
  9. Solms M. (2021a). Revision of drive theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69, 6: 1033-1091.
  10. Solms M. (2021b). Response to the commentaries. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 28, 11: 222-248.

Otto F. Kernberg, Una nota sull’articolo di Mark Solms. in "PSICOTERAPIA E SCIENZE UMANE" 3/2022, pp 429-430, DOI: 10.3280/PU2022-003003