Commentary on Otto Kernberg’s “Some Implications of New Developments in Neurobiology for Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory”

ABSTRACT

Otto Kernberg reaffirms the central motivational role of affects in his object relations theory by incorporating the seminal work of Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience. At the same time, he retains a dual drive model that posits libido and aggression as both a supraordinate level of development and etiologic of all unconscious conflict. The neuroscience he relies upon suggests alternative perspectives. Kernberg’s dynamic unconscious postulates the essential role of declarative memory regarding the neurotic use of repression and the more primitive dissociative defenses in sicker patients. This view is compared to that of Mucci, who sees dissociation as procedural memory. I suggest a broader conceptualization of the dynamic unconscious that takes into account, as Kernberg states, its infantile origins and incorporates the nonverbal symbolic realm of experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuropsychoanalysis
• drive theory
• affect theory
• repression
• procedural memory
• affective neuroscience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Karl Friston’s work on free energy and entropy has catalyzed interesting integrative efforts within psychoanalysis that draws renewed attention to the death drive (Rabeyron, 2021) and Lacanian perspectives on drive and jouissance (Dall’Aglio, 2021).

2 Solms distinguishes non-declarative emotional memory from procedural memory where the latter applies to motor tasks. Most analysts have not made this distinction (Clyman, 1991).

3 It is unclear to me why Kernberg uses dissociation – a term often used by relational analysts and traumatologists – rather than splitting.

4 Boag (2020), suggests that Solms’ distinction between repression and all other defenses seems parallel to Freud’s primal repression and repression proper.