Program on Contemporary Problems in Psychoanalysis, Science and Cognitive Science

Approved by Superior Council Res. No. 1806/2011

Director: Prof. Jaime López
Academic and Institutional Coordinator: Lic. Prof. Mariano Sironi
Area Coordinators: Dr. Cecilia Satriano, Prof. María Susana Olcese, Sebastián Grimblat.
Collaborating Teachers: Dr. Ivonne Laus, Ps. Rafael Etchaire Curutchet, Ps Gustavo Diesi, Ps. Francisco Pampiglioni, Ps. Gaston Cuffia.

:: RATIONALE:  Putting next disciplinary fields as dissimilar as Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Sciences seems, at least in principle, risky since they are usually seen as separate worlds and without points of contact, but a careful look at the developments that the so-called Cognitive Sciences have shown and psychoanalysis, allows us to visualize interesting and promising exchanges and intersections.
Psychoanalysis focuses on the condition of the human being to have a sexual and erogenous body and to be speaking, being therefore immersed in a symbolic world. Each of these aspects lead in the direction towards what is called “social bond”, that is, the characteristic of being dependent on the other and that this dependence is crossed by that symbolic universe that founds the humanity of each person. The so-called “social bond” would be the structure of that social relationship that this dependency is building.
Both Sigmund Freud and his followers had to build a series of appropriate models to describe and understand the functioning of that “virtual apparatus that is between the organism and the world” in order to implement techniques that would allow them to operate on human suffering. The significant thing about this suffering is that it could not be reduced to the organic and was sustained by the historical ties that the patients had with their most primary emotional ties; links dimensioned – as stated above – from the perspective of considering human nature as sexual and speaking. This “virtual apparatus” for Europeans was called “psyche” (psyche) and for the Anglo-Saxon world it has been called mind (mind). Although for some they are two different concepts, what they both have in common - something that is highlighted in this work - is the need to find causal mechanisms that have a level of certain autonomy in relation to the outside world (difference with behaviorism) and to the organism, avoiding biological reduction.
The field that recovers and works with the concept of mind in the academic field is called Cognitive Science. It could be described as supported by the thesis that proposes that the essence of mental life is a set of principles that people and machines can share. Its hard core, Artificial Intelligence (AI), in the attempt to reproduce the human mind, produced an effect that has gone beyond the technical aspect: it provided the sciences of the mind with theoretical and empirical legitimation that they did not have before. This legitimation extends over the background of behaviorist thought, since it could study memorization, but not memory, it could study behaviors but not internal states. It was the very existence of the computer that provided legality to a radically different way of seeing the mind. They created an intellectual climate in which it was allowed to talk about mental processes, something proscribed by behaviorism. The so-called “internal states” could be studied and theorized without deviating from the demands of science, maintaining a global materialism. The methodological premise of this approach is that if you build a machine that can do something intelligent, the way it does it is also relevant to thinking about the way humans do it.
This idea of ​​AI creating minds in machines subverts the traditional notion of the autonomous subject in a way that resembles the approach of psychoanalysis itself. If the mind is a program (functionalism position) where is the subject? It questions not only the free subject, but whether there is a subject. The subject of humanism is dissolved in the idea of ​​program in traditional cognitive science.
Just as the machine, when programmed, can give an illusion of autonomy, it leads AI theorists to question whether human nature itself is not determined from the outside, creating that same illusion of autonomy. Psychoanalysis has developed intense work on these levels of determination. The concepts of unconscious, ghost and Other lead in that direction.
This crossover between cognitive science and psychoanalysis arises fundamentally because cognitive science researchers, when asking themselves about how the mind works, as they try to reconstruct it, are faced with issues and questions that psychoanalysis itself asked itself many years before. The interesting thing about the topic is that psychoanalysis emerges from the medical field, where a human being speaks to another about his or her suffering and demands from the therapist knowledge about himself that he does not possess. It is a theoretical field that develops from a bond typical of life: the encounter with the other.
When trying to reproduce the mind, AI researchers begin to rely on logical principles, using concepts such as information and processing, but it will not take long for these to be insufficient, since the model to be repeated - the human - demands the inclusion of his corporeal condition, his embodied and situated being. These aspects were taken into account for psychoanalysis from its origin. Therefore, the possible crossover with cognitive science aims to clarify the development paths of each discipline and how these can have significant intersections.
Each of these theoretical fields has generated influences and ways of professional approaches, such as Mental Health and its extension to educational, labor and legal fields.
The set of so-called Cognitive Sciences is a compound of six disciplines: neuroscience, cognitive psychology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, anthropology and artificial intelligence. These have created various theoretical models of the functioning of mental processes and present a varied range of interests that range from the pure theoretical to the specific technical application and construction of operational machines in spaces that are typical of living beings. In this development, although it is not a central aspect of their interests, they have been taken as references by sectors of Mental Health, giving birth to a combination of old behaviorism plus some aspects of the contemporary cognitive world to produce the so-called Cognitive Behavioral Techniques (CBT). . These techniques are taken in the field of professional practice to produce a double effect: on the one hand to discredit psychoanalytic strategies and on the other, to create the false illusion that CBT is the natural conclusion and scientific extension of Cognitive Sciences. This way of presenting the problem conceals what is fundamentally a battle, fundamentally economic, for the therapy market and professional practice in general, with the convenience for the entire private health system of the so-called brief techniques typical of CBT. This position produces consequences, generating an intellectual climate of rejection in the psychoanalytic field, which leads to exaggerated generalizations and fundamentally to a lack of knowledge of the developments and questions that Cognitive Sciences generate. The erroneous identification of CBT with the Cognitive Sciences leads to ignoring the interesting work they do, many of which, as said above, go in the direction of the proposals that the psychoanalysis clinic teaches.
Finally, this Program aims to deepen knowledge and research on these areas and their intersections, extending the findings and advances to colleagues and the university resource in general. It also aims to work on the difficulties for exchanges in order to contribute and facilitate solutions to the problems that restrict and distort professional practices in the clinical, educational, labor, legal fields, etc.

:: GOAL: To develop the Program on the Intersections between Psychoanalysis / Science / Cognitive Science within the scope of the Interdisciplinary Studies Center of the UNR.

:: GENERAL OBJECTIVES: To create an inter/transdisciplinary academic workspace for the study of the intersections between the disciplinary fields of Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science, within the framework of science. As well as to generate the appropriate conditions for producing research on the topic, including its influence on the professional field and on university education.

:: SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:

  • Form study and dissemination groups of the aforementioned disciplinary fields and disseminate their intersections.
  • Concrete training actions to achieve a better vision of the relationships between these fields, being able to highlight their convergences and divergences.
  • Form research teams in the areas of intersections, both theoretical and applied.
  • Promote the formation of exchange networks with institutions and university centers dedicated to these disciplinary fields.
  • Hold meetings with references and specialists on the topic, whether national or international, carrying out training, dissemination and exchange tasks.
  • Develop activities aimed at knowledge and dissemination of the proposed problem.
  • Promote conferences, talks, conferences, congresses and other related events to achieve better training, dissemination, and exchange of the achievements obtained.
  • Facilitate the members of the work teams to participate in conferences, conferences and meetings.
  • Prepare materials and productions of the Program for the communicability of the results. They can be of the type of publication of books, translations and magazines, the latter both on paper and virtual.

:: REPORTS : cei-progpsi@unr.edu.ar