That such a program was born and built on rationalist and scientific grounds is reiterated in Freud\u2019s works countless times; yet still today we are far from understanding the importance of the epistemological consequences this implies. For \u2013 perhaps it is good to make this clear from the start \u2013 Freud has nothing to do with the figure of the na\u00efve thinker from the 1800s with which he is often caricatured. A complete understanding of metapsychology will still take a great deal of work, primarily because some intuitions are too forward-thinking for other fields to be able to incorporate them yet. Let\u2019s consider Darwin\u2019s theories and how long it took for molecular biology to assimilate his naturalistic observations. And let\u2019s also consider how, over the last 70 years, theories of hereditary transmission have evolved from a mechanistic character to one much more open to epigenetic and cultural influences, and how Darwin\u2019s ideas have been understood increasingly more accurately, from the first \u201cultra-darwinist\u201d paradigm to date.<\/p>\n
The scent of much criticism to Freud has the stale odor of who judges from a partial stance, which is doom to be soon outdone. From the old behaviorist\u2019s point of view, much of today\u2019s research on consciousness would not have had any scientific relevance, it being mere \u201cspeculation\u201d; yet many scientific taboos have slowly fallen, and this happened for a very simple reason: consciousness exists and is a natural phenomenon, and there is nothing wrong with studying it. In order to be fully grasped, metapsychology demands much more complex advances than the discovery of some molecules or of new neuroimaging techniques. Some of these advances can certainly come from other fields, but most involve formalizing the theory and studying it more in depth.<\/p>\n
The only possible approach is the one employed for any other area of scientific research, for any other scholar, even though this strangely seems difficult in the case of Freud and psychoanalysis. We are of course not the only ones to note such resistances: we would like to quote the neuroscientist Karl h. Pribram, who recounts an interesting personal anecdote about how Freud is perceived in science:[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_section full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1563794513694{background-color: #000000 !important;}”][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/6″][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”4\/6″][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_column_text el_id=”quote” el_class=”bianco”]\u201cWhy then [\u2026] did Freud become so controversial? \u201cFreud is right! Freud is wrong!\u201d Why don\u2019t scientist say the same about Pavlov? Pavlov is a venerated neuroscientist, despite none of his experiments on the brain\u2019s function succeeded. [\u2026] No one says: \u201cPavlov? Ugh! Pavlov is wrong! Pavlov is right!\u201d [\u2026] Why isn\u2019t Freud considered as the neuroscientist he was? In the beginning of 1960, while I was moving from Yale to Stamford, I had no working laboratory yet, and I read the Project as if it were my own model of neural functioning. My readings were well received. Both faculties and students in psychology and neurophysiology felt I was on the right way. After debriefing at the end of every session, while we were about to greet, I used to say: \u201cOh, by the way, this is not my model, it\u2019s the one that Sigmund Freud elaborated in 1895.\u201d Nobody ever wanted to believe me, nor did many psychoanalysts years after [\u2026] Why is there such reluctance to believe? Why is Freud treated so differently from Pavlov or Hebb?<\/em><\/p>\n Pribram, K. H. (1998). A century of progress?<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/6″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_column_text]If we were to define this journal\u2019s approach in a few words, we would say it wishes to treat Freud like any other scientist indeed, and metapsychology like a theory on one of the most complex objects that has ever been studied: the psyche.<\/p>\n After almost twenty years of silence devoted to studying Freud\u2019s thought in depth, the School of Freudian Psychoanalysis resumed its publishing activity to open up space for interdisciplinary discussion. If cognitive science has sought to integrate many disciplines into the common denominator of cognitive processes, the metapsychological perspective can become the common element of a larger array of research fields, because it aims for the naturalization of the overall driving forces of the living.<\/p>\n Since the beginning of his speculation, according to Freud living beings have not merely been machines that compute, but most of all entities that construct their own world, that evolve, that have goals, that manage complex dynamics of forces according to multifaceted ends and not always reducible to stimulus-response patterns.<\/p>\n The astonishing modernity of his approach is even more to appreciate for its distinctive fundamental harmony, able not only to unify different fields in an interdisciplinary manner, but most of all to reduce all to the same basic notions, thus demonstrating their interconnections.<\/p>\n Yet this introduction would not be complete if we did not underscore the novel aspects that this approach brings within psychoanalysis itself: firstly, in its methodology, which allowed for a global rethinking of clinical practice on the grounds of a radical divergence from psychotherapies and of new criteria of objectivity; secondly, in the complete restructuring of metapsychology, through its collocation in an adequate neotrascendental epistemological horizon, able to appreciate its conceptual richness and to give rise to new developments via formal elaborations of it.[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [vc_section full_width=”stretch_row” css=”.vc_custom_1593438402170{background-color: #000000 !important;}” el_id=”meta_logo”][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”2293″ img_size=”full” css=”.vc_custom_1593438425288{padding-top: 20px !important;}”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section][vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”50px”][vc_custom_heading text=”Presentation” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:left|color:%23020202″ google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:700%20bold%20regular%3A700%3Anormal” el_class=”noLine”][vc_empty_space height=”10px”][vc_column_text]Naming the journal after metapsychology may seem provocative, given that [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1076","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n