In the pages of Neuropsychoanalysis, we often address deep, complicated questions about the nature of affect. A related theme is the centrality of attachment and relationships in the human psyche. In this issue, these questions are manifested quite directly: we acknowledge the loss of our dear friend and colleague Jaak Panksepp, who died in April of this year.
For all who heard his many keynotes at conferences all around the world, or immersed themselves in his abundant writings, the loss is truly profound. His significant experimental findings illuminated the distinct primary emotion systems. He persistently advocated for a perspective on the brain which prioritized an active subject with needs, rather than a behaviorist automaton responding to cues. In this, and many other ways, his ideas resonated deeply with people who are steeped in the psychoanalytic models of the mind.
Those of us who knew him – from long-time collaborators, to laypeople asking him questions after a lecture, to students who benefited from his generous and enthusiastic support – were each privileged to have contact with one of the giants in the progress of neuroscience. Those of us who knew him also appreciated how approachable and funny he was, and how modest he was, given his stature. (It may also have been that, as a community, we were some of the people who most recognized his stature – it may take the rest of the scientific world a while longer to recognize his true import.) Because of his intellectual contributions, and because of his sweet manner, we mourn his loss. We also extend our condolences to his wife Anesa Miller, his son Jules Panksepp, his step-daughters Antonia Pogacar and Ruth Pogacar-Kouril, his extended family, and his many colleagues and former students. We also celebrate the contributions he made, the humor and warmth he brought, and the many ways in which his ideas have taken deep root in the very fabric of our worldview.
Jaak’s contributions and life are memorialized in two pieces in the “Society Proceedings” section of this issue. First, Doug Watt, one of his closest friends and collaborators, has given us a masterful overview of some of the central elements in Jaak’s thinking in his piece entitled “Reflections on the Neuroscientific Legacy of Jaak Panksepp (1943–2017).” He discusses the intrinsic relationship between consciousness and emotion that emerged from Jaak’s work; several key implications of the centrality of the SEEKING system in the brain and mind; the importance of play in the construction of the social brain; and the huge potential that affective neuroscience offers to developments in psychiatry and the other mental health sciences. Watt’s essay is highly recommend reading, both for readers well-versed in affective neuroscience, as well as those relatively new to the body of Jaak Panksepp’s work.
Secondly, we offer a collection of personal remembrances, based on a memorial session that took place at our most recent Congress of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, in London in July 2017. A moving picture of Jaak emerges from the pieces by Bonny Astor, Ken Davis, David Pincus, Mark Solms, Oliver Turnbull, Doug Watt, Yoram Yovell, and most poignantly, a beautiful poem by Anesa Miller. We are grateful for their contributions.
As Jaak was a key catalyst of neuropsychoanalytic research, it is fitting that his remembrances are followed by two pieces about the Congress itself, which featured dozens of fascinating research talks and a number of remarkable keynote talks and symposia. First, Daniela Flores Mosri provides a heroic accounting of the main talks and plenary sessions in this wide ranging and intellectually stimulating Congress, which centered around ideas of predictive coding and Bayesian computation. Attendees were given the treat of several talks by Karl Friston and a number of researchers and clinicians who either have collaborated closely with him, or have been strongly influenced by his work. (It is thus not an understatement to call the report “heroic,” as Flores Mosri has done a remarkable job in summarizing so many rich and complex talks so succinctly.)
Secondly, we offer the “Research and Symposia Abstracts” for readers who did not have a chance to attend our Congress, so they can see for themselves all of the research presentations and symposia that were not covered in detail in the preceding Congress report. We hope this piece may also be helpful for attendees of the Congress who wish to be in touch with the clinicians and researchers who presented. The range of topics and methods, as well as the international representation, with colleagues from every continent on the planet except for Antarctica, is a testament to the continued growth of our interdisciplinary endeavors.
Also in the “Society Proceedings” section is a paper that was invited following our 2017 Congress in Chicago, in which Dietmar Dietrich and Samer Schaat presented an intriguing project whose aim is to specify the functional elements in a psychodynamic model of the mind, as a strategy for developing a more robust artificial intelligence. In their paper “On the way to bridging the gap between the mental apparatus and the neurobiological layer,” Dietmar Dietrich, Gerhard Zucker, and Klaus Doblhammer introduce our readers to a new scientific realm, with engineering and information theory vocabulary that may be foreign to some readers; it is worth grappling with, as they are doing some serious and detailed thinking about the dynamic ways that different aspects of the brain and mind interact with each other. I think Jaak would have found their approach to be an improvement over previous developments in artificial intelligence that have overvalued cognition and undervalued (or ignored) emotion, as their project seeks to construct a functional model of the mind in which affect and drive are central components.
To round out our “Society Proceedings” section, we have the current bulletin from the regional groups of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, curated by Maria Sonia Goergen. The bulletin demonstrates the vitality of our extended international community. Reports from Germany, the U.S., Brazil, Belgium, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Russia, Puerto Rico, and Turkey detail the study groups, conferences, publications, and other activities of our colleagues around the world. If you have a regional group and would like to be listed on our website, or report on your activities in the journal, please visit the website of the Neuropsychoanalysis Association at www.npsa-association.org and navigate to the “Society and Groups” section.
Moving on to our “Original Articles” section, two rich and nuanced papers link specific clinical hypotheses or techniques to emerging evidence in neuroscience. First, Jacqueline Kinley and Sandra Reyno describe their phase-based model of psychotherapy in their paper “Advancing Freud’s dream: A dynamic-relational neurobiologically informed approach to psychotherapy.” Readers will find their detailed delineation of clinical phenomena intriguing, with suggestions for certain interventions or stances at particular times. Their suggestions are illustrated by some rich clinical process material, and are informed by hypotheses of neural functioning at different phases of the work. As always, we are reminded that such hypotheses are exactly that – formulations about neural mechanisms and dynamics are still tentative within neuroscience, and even more so in their application to the clinical context. Instead of definitive recommendations, we should take these kinds of hypotheses as food for thought as we sit with our patients or engage in our own emotional development. Kinley and Reyno are appropriately tentative in their formulations, even though their scope of coverage is ambitious; their paper is a great way for newcomers to neuroscience to have a purchase on which brain circuits can be linked to which familiar clinical or subjective experiences, and thus serves an educational purpose beyond their specific clinical proposals.
Similarly, Dianne Trumbull correlates psychodynamic formulations and neuroscience hypotheses in her paper entitled “Seeing through the eyes of the perpetrator: A goal-directed function of introjection.” Illustrated by poignant process material, Trumbull lays out a model of one specific component of introjection. In her model, introjection can arise as a protective mechanism for dealing with an intrusive or abusive person who overly recruits the child’s focus on predicting their difficult or damaging behavior. In this scenario, the person’s intrapsychic development is distorted, and the adolescent or adult is forced to spend mental energy relating to an internal mechanism that is also experienced as an external object that is always watching the self, making the person vulnerable to dissociation. She details the progress of a patient who begins to work on the feeling of being watched “from out there” so she can move towards living from her own perspective.
Last but not least, at the same time that we acknowledge a huge loss for our field with the passing of Jaak Panksepp, we also are celebrating a welcome addition. On a joyful note, I am delighted to report that Richard J. Kessler, D.O., is joining Neuropsychoanalysis as co-editor. He and I are sharing the duties of managing the journal; he will be facilitating the peer review process, and I will be overseeing production. I think Jaak would have approved.
Richard is one of the early “pioneers” of neuropsychoanalysis – one of a handful of people who, often independently of each other, began to explore the connections between neuroscience and psychoanalysis in the 1980s and 90s, during a time when few people were interested in communicating between those disciplines. He has been thinking deeply about Freudian metapsychology, and how it much it resonates with the emerging models of brain function, for several decades, and has been an active member of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society since its earliest years. We invited him to join the editorial team because of his demonstrated engagement, both intellectually and socially, with the neuropsychoanalytic literature and community. He has served as an excellent peer reviewer for this journal for years, and has been instrumental (together with Chuck Fisher) in creating a wonderful and visible space for neuropsychoanalysis at the annual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Anyone who has heard his energetic and thoughtful contributions to the discussions at the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, as well as our annual Congresses of the Society, will make the same prediction we do – that he will be a wonderful editor. I already know he is a fantastic colleague, and David Olds and I, as well as the editorial policy committee and many others connected with the journal, look forward working with him.