A Theoretical Ground of Neuropsychoanalysis I: Visiting the Concepts of Drive with Freud, Lacan, Damasio, Panksepp, and Solms

Psychoanalysis and neuroscience are the same in that both study the mind, although their methodologies are different. Neuropsychoanalysis, which makes integrative approaches to them, is needed for the mind studies. The paper attempts to explore the neuropsychoanalytic concept of drive by examining the drive-related theories of Freud, Lacan, Damasio, Panksepp, and Solms. According to Freud, drive arises from somatic sources and operates at the unconscious level. Affects, emotions, and feelings are based on drives, but they are felt and realized at the conscious levels. He focuses only on the psychological due to the intellectual limitations of his times but makes it clear that the sources of drive are somatic. Lacan refuses to attend to the physical source of drive. For Damasio, feelings arise primarily from the physical sources, and the feelings include background/primitive feelings, primary emotion feelings, and secondary emotion feelings. Feelings are fundamental to the mind and accompany emotions. Freud’s drive and Damasio’s feeling concepts are similar in that they indicate the basic energy of the mind arising from the somatic. Panksepp presents four major emotional systems on the ground of the sources of feelings within intrinsic brain functions. Solms follows Panksepp’s ideas. For both Damasio and Panksepp, feelings/emotional systems emerge from somatic sources, and the sources are a variety of neural circuits and neurochemicals. If we can fill with Damasio’s and Panksepp’s similar ideas of neural circuits and neurochemicals the somatic sources that Freud left blank, we can think of the neuropsychoanalytic concept of drive.