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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for


Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences
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The Self and Its Vicissitudes: Commentary by Jaak


Panksepp
Jaak Panksepp

Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch, Northwestern University


Research Park, 1801 Maple Ave Evanston, IL 60201
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Jaak Panksepp (2002) The Self and Its Vicissitudes: Commentary by Jaak Panksepp,
Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 4:1, 41-57, DOI:
10.1080/15294145.2002.10773378
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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation

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The Self and ``Its'' Vicissitudes


Commentary by Jaak Panksepp
David Milrod's target paper and seven commentaries were shared with me for a more global
commentary from a neuroscience perspective. We
all realize that this important topic is also the
most untractable in both neuroscience and
psychoanalysis, but I do this in the open spirit
that is so well communicated in the target article.
Milrod's hope was that his eort ``might catch the
interest of neuroscientists'' so that together we
``could begin to build a fragile bridge of understanding between'' our ``two dierent elds.''
Once all the commentaries were in, I suggested to
the editors that it might be most informative if
Milrod and myself independently shared our
perspectives on the views that had been put
forward. That way readers might get a good avor
of how two dierent worldviews might address a
contentious problem of common interest.
Accordingly, I will largely direct my attention to the target paper through the prisms
oered by the seven commentators, all of whom
massaged the arguments and issues in rather
dierent ways. I will not focus much on the target
article itself, for Milrod's summary was a lucid
statement of what might at this point be called the
``classical psychoanalytic view''as Britton
praised ``an exceptionally clear account of the
psychoanalytic metapsychology and developmental schema''. Milrod's synopsis was a frank
statement of how the self and the ego have been
conceptualized in classical psychoanalysis, and
there is really no one that can say to what extent
that view is right or wrong. The issues being
discussed are theoretical ones that are largely
outside the realms of inquiry that can be
empirically addressed in unambiguously rigorous
scientic ways at the present time, and there are a
sucient number of interesting disagreements
within psychoanalysis that no single view can be
taken as representative (e.g., Kohut, 1977).
A study of the self clearly is not like the
sequencing of the human genome, which simply
required the massive application of the timetested methods of a highly objective science. Here
we are confronted by a topic where there are no
scientic guidelines, so both psychoanalysts and
neuroscientists are left to ounder on a level
playing eld where beliefs often speak louder than
fact. Our scientic aim should be to reverse that,
and to proceed in such a way that some lasting
consensual knowledge can emerge. Indeed, I
think a considerable amount already exists in

the ood of modern studies of child development,


little of which has impacted the present discussion.
I did experience some despair to hear from
several psychoanalytically oriented commentators
that there might not be much point to such
interdisciplinary eorts, since our communities
are probably speaking of dierent matters. All
bridges we may attempt to build may only go half
way across the dividestarting from dierent
locations and not meeting up in the middle,
leaving no realistic options but to turn around
toward one's own shore or to plunge unproductively into a chasm that cannot be crossed. But, of
course, even that is open to debate, and I was
pleased that Milrod's eorts were directed at
nding common ground for building constructions that may eventual meet. Even if we are left
with little more than an unstable rope-bridge, this
will be much better than communities with
common interests not pursuing useful commerce.
I trust that what I have to share here will not
simply be empty sentiments, but ones that help us
conceptualize some of the key issues in broader
and perhaps more workable ways. To help assure
the latter as opposed to the former, let me rst
share a synopsis of my own perspectives before I
move on to those of the other commentators.
Background Perspectives
One of the great intellectual challenges for 21st
century psychobiology and neuro-psychoanalysis
will be to relate psychological functions to brain
functions. Obviously, this type of ``docking''
would have been impossible without the recent
neuroscience revolution, but it's success will
depend critically on how we conceptualize the
natural functions of the human mind, especially
within the complex developmental-epigenetic
contexts in which they emerge. We can only nd
common ground if we are really talking about
entities that are ``natural kinds'' as opposed to
mere ``conceptual or pragmatic kinds'' that can be
created in such abundance through our linguistic/
analytic abilities. To the extent that our psychological theories are awed, our attempts at
substantive docking between these distant
domains are bound to be equally awed. To the
extent that we can reasonably correctly (and, at
this juncture by necessity, theoretically) envision
the natural brain processes elaborated by the

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42
``great intermediate net'' that intervenes between
the inputs and outputs of the brain, we have the
possibility of generating a lasting and substantive
understanding of mind-brain interrelations. The
only agreed-upon criterion we have in science for
deciding whether we have achieved that, resides in
our capacity to make predictions that can be
armed by consensually agreed upon observations. Those are the traditional rules of science,
according to which the emerging eld of neuropsychoanalysis also has to play out its aspirations
for a deeper scientic understanding of the human
mind. That is surely a worthy goal.
In our initial attempts to grapple with
complex psychological realities, all we can achieve
are the identication of some of the necessary
neural components that are essential for the
normal elaboration of certain psychological
processes, without any realistic possibility of
achieving any sucient, and comprehensive,
understanding for some time. This shortcoming
of science, often leads those positivists who have
very little tolerance for ambiguity to aspire to
knowledge with as little theory as possible. On the
other hand, the psychoanalytic tradition has had
more theory and fewer facts than most scientically minded investigators are willing to tolerate.
As I read the present target article and the various
commentaries, with their many interesting and
divergent perspectives, in my estimation, insucient attention was paid to the many compromises
and constraints that we need to respect in
searching for a lasting scientic understanding
of ``the self.''
As we aspire to elucidate certain subtle brain
processes, and the nature of ``the self'' is certainly
among them, most of our ideas are bound to be
woefully insucient. As many commentators
noted, often we will be talking past each other
because we are talking of dierent ``things'' and
sometime we will be looking at the same process
from very dierent perspectives. If we add to this
the natural political tendency of well-entrenched
intellectual traditions to protect their turf, we
have a ready recipe for abundant confusions. The
current round of discussions has not been
immune to that, but many useful ideas have been
shared that may help us consider some novel
approaches and integrative ideas that have not
been well developed in the past.
I make these prefatory remarks from the
following ontological position: Mind, and hence
the nature of the self, is ``just'' an evolved
emergent of brain-bodily dynamics, resolved into
innite detail by individual developmental experiences in the real world. I think we can presently
get a neuroscientic handle on the evolved aspects

Jaak Panksepp
(e.g., the core dimensions of ``the self''), while the
psycho-developmental aspects (or as Mildrod
puts it, ``the self representations'') are not yet as
amenable to an eective neuroscientic analysis.
This is simply because the mind functions during
development cannot be easily measured in animal
models from which the denitive neuroscientic
analysis must emerge. Only the core processes
that are evident in natural animal behaviors can
guide basic taxonomizing.
Of course, there are still many neuroscientists who are so neo-dualistic (i.e., resistant to all
mental concepts in brain science) that they believe
that all approaches to such topics are unworkable. It is regrettable that so many brain
investigators who could make major empirical
contributions to such issues have bad cases of
ontological immaturityfor instance, the many
behavioral neuroscientists who exhibit strong
symptoms of intellectual indigestion whenever
there is any kind of ``mind talk,'' especially in
reference to other animals. My personal bias is
that certain kinds of mind-talk helps us conceptualize key neuroscientic questions, namely
all those evolutionary givens of the brain/mind
that can never be dened adequately until a
substantial amount of neurobiological research
has been done (for instance, the basic attentional,
emotional and motivational systems of the brain).
I believe the perennial specter of dualism,
that haunts our discussion of mind issues, is a
spook that emerged from the evolution of our
linguistic abilities. It is also a mainstay of
mysterian opinion-leaders of intrinsically dubious
philosophical traditions such as all forms of
solipsism and deconstructive relativism. Our
language based cognitive abilities create great
mischief, especially in psychology, where it is
quite easy to create ``linguistic kinds'' and to then
coax others to believe that they are either natural
kinds or that no such entities actually exist in the
mind. For instance the popular concepts of
positive and negative aect, may be little more
than class-identiers for the many distinct ways
we can feel good and bad. Namely those concepts
help organize a large variety of natural aective
kinds that are actually constructed in brains
(perhaps with various generalized neurochemistries such as dopamine and opioids), and neuroscientists might be well advised to seek the neural
basis of those types of natural kinds than general
semantic ones such as global positive and negative
aects.
Also, in our discussions we should remember
that the evolution of language circuits was
probably enmeshed substantially with socialdesirability issues and the selective advantages

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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


of self-promotion. The resulting self-deceptions
and confabulation continue to be among those
charming left-hemisphere functions that cause so
many problems for the mind sciences. Thank
goodness for the blessing of empirically-testable
predictions. As with any basic scientic issue, we
will have to rst discover robust correlates of the
phenomenon in which we are interested, then we
will have to evaluate the causal ecacy of those
correlates through experimentation (most can
only be done on animals), and nally we need
to propose some type of mechanisms that can
instantiate what we have observed. Obviously, in
studies of the self, we are barely approaching the
rst level of analysis, with none of the second
variety, and some creative ideas about the third
being entertained, long before any of them has
been (or perhaps can be) adequately evaluated by
experimentation. Thus, let us be certain that
everyone who indulges in the third level of
``understanding'' before the time is ripe (as I
myself have done), are presumably doing it to
promote work at the rst two levels, and those
ideas should never be taken anything like a
denitive conclusion (even though popularizers
of science can all too easily do that for the
unwary).
I share these introductory remarks so we can
be condent of certain things at the outset
foremost among them being the recognition that
the level of understanding we can achieve right
now concerning the fundamental nature of ``the
self,'' both at psychological and neurological
levels is modest, and the docking between them
has to be premised on the types of concrete
research programs, and accompanying empirical
predictions, we can conceptualize. The rest is
simply ideas, and if my laboratory experience is
any guide, most will turn out to be wrong. At this
level, the psychoanalysts in the present discussion
contributed only theoretical perspectives and
opinions yielding few clear predictions while the
neuroscientists shared some ndings that can help
us think empirically about the issues. In order to
integrate perspectives in anything that resembles
traditional science, both sides will have to frame
their viewpoints in testable hypotheses.
With this said, let me also highlight that
there is no more an important topic to contemplate, and David Milrod has shared a vision that
encapsulates some of the best and some of the
more questionable aspects of the psychoanalytic
tradition. It struggles mightily with the psychological nature of the many facets of the self and its
developmental progression through the life-span.
However, as several commentators pointed out, it
did neglect the massive experimental literature

43

that has emerged since those classic views of


development emerged. The amount of relevant
information in the developmental psychology
literature is truly enormous (e.g., for some
relevant overviews, see the rst issue of the Infant
Mental Health Journal of 2001 edited by Allan
Schore). Someone really needs to comb through
this mountain of facts, from Bowlby (1984), Stern
(1985) and Field and Fox (1985) to the present
day, to see where we might already have a pile of
relevant data. None of the discussants, including
myself, has apparently done that as well as we
could. That is a pity.
Still it quite useful to have the classic
psychoanalytic view so clearly described, but
from the scientic point of view, the question
must be, will it help us to do the kind of research
that needs to be done in order to evaluate the
degree to which we have a description of reality or
that of a fantasy (recognizing that in the higher
reaches of the human mind the two blend
imperceptibly)? Although no one is in a position
to answer that question, it does not appear to be a
vision that has yet been linked to, or perhaps one
that can ever be readily linked to, a neural
systems analysis (except perhaps for some lowlevel brain-imaging endeavors, that can provide
some correlates for the processes in which we are
interested). Milrod recognizes this problem, as
well as the multiple meanings of the concept
among disciplines. He proceeds to share a
psychoanalytically informed vision of ``the self,''
in the hope that an open discussion may serve to
fertilize relevant neuroscientic work. I will
attempt to frame my remarks in that same spirit.
Milrod explicitly recognizes that the likelihood of empirical progress on the full complexity
of the problem is remote, and, of course, we must
all agree. He is probably correct that the way the
few neuroscientists who have either gingerly or
blatantly approached the topic, are coming from
a rather dierent trajectory than the one that
would be of special interest to psychoanalysts,
and commentators like Goldberg will, no doubt,
heartily echo that sentiment. It goes without
saying, when multiple phenomena are hidden
behind the same conceptual labels, the potential
for misunderstanding is great. A classic example
from psychological research is the postulation of
``negative aect'' and ``positive aect'' as fundamental emotional entities, while they may simply
be category labels (``conceptual kinds'') for a
large numbers of neurophysiologically and psychologically distinguishable aective states generated within the brain. Thus, my aim here, more
than anything, will be to try to minimize crossdisciplinary confusions, and to highlight what a

44
scientically sound approach to such issues may
look like.

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The Psychoanalytic View


Milrod essay provides a conceptually and
theoretically coherent psychoanalytic image,
that is far outside the realm of a traditional
scientic view, at least as it is understood in
neuroscience. Neuroscience has diculty with
most psychological constructs, because most
cannot be operationalized to the satisfaction of
most investigators. Without some type of adequate operationalization, there can be no clear
way for investigators to agree that they are
discussing the same process and making similar
observations, and without similar observations
and explicit rules of measurement, there can be no
scientic consensus. Without an observationally
based consensus, whatever agreement can be
achieved will be more in the realm of belief than
science. Of course, this does not mean that the
beliefs are either wrong or misguided, simply that
they have not been well-enough formulated to be
within the accepted epistemological domain of
science.
The vision that Milrod shares is largely
outside a neuroscientic framework (as he explicitly recognizes), but it may also largely be
outside a traditional scientic framework as well
(an issue which he does not address). This does
not mean that it cannot be brought into such a
framework, but at present, it has that distinct
avor of so much of psychoanalytic theory,
scientic prematurity. Namely, the aim is to
portray an image of a complex process, which
has some type of neural reality, but it is not cast in
a way that is clearly open to empirical adjudication. When one is confronted by such diculties,
the rst order of business must be a vigorous
discussion of how such issues could be conceptualized in ways that they might be scientically
evaluated, and in the present case, this discussion
should optimally emerge from both psychoanalytic and neuroscientic poles. For instance, Gallese
and Umilta, share some superb neurophysiological
work on visual space and self-agency, that could
have remarkable implications for the vision
shared by Milrod. In my own estimation, the
most likely way to operationalize the concept of
``the core self'' in animals is to relate it to bodyimage functions of the brain that can be electrophysiologically monitored from brain stem areas
(Sparks, 1988) to the cortex (Colby, 1998). In
humans, it will obviously have to be some type of
subjective self-report, perhaps related to internal

Jaak Panksepp
monitoring of aective states (Panksepp, 1999).
Thus, the scientic search for ``the self'' has
to be formulated as a systematically progressive
enterprise, starting with issues that can be
empiricized, and gradually aspiring to deal with
issues of greater complexity. Of course, this is a
common problem when we deal with complex
systemswhether they be genetic or psychic. We
simply do not have good empirical tools to make
a really solid start, thus we must largely indulge in
a discussion of conceptual issues that have the
potential to become empirical ones.
A Neuroscience View of this Inter-group
Tournament
Since our discussions here amounts to an eort to
build ``a collective learning machine'' to use
Howard Bloom's (2000) terminology, I will
proceed to employ one of his other didactic
devices for such group eorts. He suggests there
are a quintet of perspectives that commonly
appear when a contentious new issue emerges
on the intellectual landscape. There are 1)
conformity enforcers, 2) diversity generators, 3)
inner-judges, 4) resource shifters and 5) intergroup tournaments. I hope they are suciently
self-explanatory, but if not, do seek further
clarication from Bloom's breathtaking sketch
of life from its primordial origins through recent
human history (Global Brain). I also believe that
in order to make good sense of this incredibly
important topicthe nature of the self and
selveswe would all be wise to start with
evolutionary fundamentals that may be shared
by all mammals, and to ever so gradually work up
to the massive complexities of our own species. I
trust, that no one would be so crass, in this year
after preliminary completion of the human
genome project and the primal emotional trauma
of 9/11, to suggest that we share so little with the
other animals that such issues are of no relevance
for the neuro-psychoanalytic enterprise.
Certainly Freud would have resonated well
with the need for a solid organic foundation for
most of the many concepts that he enticed us to
consider. Thus, I nd it a great pity that the
present psychoanalytically oriented commentators were not more willing to entertain neuralhypotheses of their own construction, but this is
understandable. To some extent the sad state of
education in psychology continues, where a
confrontation with the brain (the organ of the
mind?) is assiduously avoided by practitioners of
the mind. This is one of the rst things that must
change in psychoanalysis for productive neuro-

Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


psychoanalytic thought to emerge. Conversely,
neuroscientists must become more comfortable
with mental constructs, for those are the higher
types of brain functions that help regulate and
guide the behaviors that they can objectively
measure.

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Britton's Commentary
Britton elaborates on a variety of psychoanalytic
nuances that presently have no clear relations to
neuroscientic ideas, and proceeds to agree with
Milrod that it may be premature to neurologize
most psychoanalytic concepts. As I will expand
on in my discussion of some of the more
contentious commentators, I believe there are
some approaches that may be more productive
than is commonly believed. For instance, the
evolved ``state controls'' of the brain (or the basic
``facts of life'' as Britton puts it, and the primal or
core ``self'' may be one of them) are quite open to
inquiry. Thus, a critical issue, as I will expand on
later, is the extent to which aspects of ``the self''
should be conceptualized as ``state control systems'' as opposed to the many cognitive ``channel
functions'' of the brain. I very much agree with
Britton's sentiment that a diversity of ideas is
essential for future progress, and at the very least,
``we should be getting ready'' for the task of ``reexamining the status of our discoveries and
theories.''
Goldberg's Commentary
In contrast to Britton's gentle acceptance of the
fact that future growth depends on the new seeds
we are willing to plant, Goldberg has chosen his
role as ``conformity enforcer''one who hopes to
pull the psychoanalytic tribe together in an evertightening circle that is not very sympathetic to
consilience with the brain sciences. Goldberg
seems to suggest that neuroscience and psychoanalysis are ``separate worlds'' which at an
ontological level must surely be nonsense. They
simply deal with the same world at very dierent
levels of analysis, and it seems pointless to
``insist'' that psychoanalysis should continue to
be a hermeneutic discipline that cannot really
connect up well neuroscience. How Milrod's
openness ``serves to rigidify a eld that should
remain vital and open'' is one of the minor
mysteries of his commentary. Milrod's essay
struck me as an example of an appropriately
cautious open-door policya statement that
encouraged connections without really attempting

45

(perhaps wisely) to lay out what those connections might look like.
After all, there really are no experts in this
eld yet, only provisional ideas on how to
proceed. For instance, even though Damasio
and I generally agree on the aective/motivational foundations of consciousness and self, we
have taken divergent approaches to how aect is
actually created in the brain. Damasio, with his
somatic marker hypothesis, believes the somatosensory monitoring is essential for the creation of
conscious feelings. I, with my conception of
various emotional ``state control'' systems concentrated in subcortical regions of the brain, favor
the view that the global experience of aect is a
distinct from of consciousness mediated directly
by those subcortical action systems that generate
the instinctual avor of emotional behaviors.
With such variability in working hypotheses, it
might be foolish for any psychoanalyst who has
not kept up with the cornucopia of details from
basic brain research and developmental psychology and the functional neurosciences to suggest
how mind-brain issues might be optimally
``docked.''
Goldberg implies that the connections are
best made to certain modern views such as nonlinear dynamics. It is timely and attractive to pay
lip-service to such views, but we should be under
no illusion that the empiricism needed to cash out
such new metaphors presently exists, or that the
available strategies are all that compelling (for a
critique, see Panksepp, 2000). Even the acquisition of adequate data sets to apply those
mathematical techniques is a challenge that few
have come close to meeting (e.g., Freeman, 2000).
We still need eective simplifying strategies to
make empirical progress. At the present time, it is
as likely that the docking will be most eective
with old classical views as with the more modern
integrative ideas that are really no better linked to
(or capable of being linked to) brain issues.
However, those that do link up with dynamic
view will eventually be amply rewarded.
Just to give a avor of one dynamic view that
may link up, let me share a striking image shared
with our electronic reading group recently by the
one person, Walter Freeman, who has been able
to implement psychologically relevant non-linear
dynamic approaches to brain activity: ``Neural
networks are particulate, discrete, and reductionist;
they do algebra, elegantly to be sure, but brainlessly. The key to understanding my view of brains
is to conceive an act of perception as based in a
cortical phase transition, in which a cloud of action
potentials from 10 to 100 million neurons condenses
like a vapor into a drop of liquid in the cortical

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46
mantle. The condensation disc forms in 35
milliseconds, lasts 80100 milliseconds, and covers
a circular area 1030 millimeters in diameter in
rabbits, probably 2 to 3 times larger in humans.
They form at rates of 2 to 7 times per second. They
are exceedingly large, but not immense (unmeasurable). They oer the doorway to cognition and
consciousness.''
I might only disagree with the last word of
the rst sentence, and suggest ``mindlessly''
instead, and I suspect that they also do much
more than ``algebra'' even at the single cell level,
with life-supporting neurotrophins, etc adding
tonic organic inuences that we can not envision
clearly yet. Mind is clearly the activity of massive
ensembles of neurons, and the ``neuron doctrine''
that dominated neuroscience throughout the 20th
century, now needs to be replaced by a ``network
doctrine'' that recognizes that the fabric of mind
cannot be understood simply by studying the
individual neuronal stitches. Freeman has measured the shadows of the ripples in the fabric better
than anyone else, and now we need to gure out
how one might proceed empirically forward into
that vast expanse of our ongoing ignorance that
Freeman's ``doorway'' gives us access to. This is
one way mind and brain will eventually be docked
(Panksepp, 2000b), and in my estimation the
other major way is through the search for
neurochemical codes for basic mind/brain processes (Panksepp, 1998a).
Although I do not favor the way Descartes
ontologically screwed up a reasonable search for
mind-brain docking during the past four centuries
(yielding life-denying monstrosities like radicalbehaviorism and an emotionless informationprocessing cognitivism), I think his third rule of
science (e.g., start with simplications that are
empirically workable and aspire to add additional
complexities into the analysis as opportunities
arise) is something we desperately need to
consider as we aspire to dock some depth
psychological issues of interest to psychoanalysts
with the environmentally modulated brain substrates from which they arise. We can be certain
that every simplication, every metaphor, that we
can presently generate can only be a shadow of
reality. However, in the caldron of reality-testing
(i.e., seeing the world through scientic methods
as opposed to just our theoretical belief systems)
we will all have to be willing to mold our
concepts to t as much of the relevant evidence
as is available out there. Thus, it would have
been good if more commentators had specied
more clearly what the relevant evidence might
look like at the present time, whether clinical or
experimental.

Jaak Panksepp
Goldberg suggest that most of the neuroscience evidence is not relevant to the cardinal
concerns of psychoanalysts. He may be right, but
led us not be too hasty to accept politicized
assumptions that may only impede progress. At
the threshold of molecular biology in the 1940s,
the experts marginalized Oswald Avery's empirically-based insight that DNA was the medium of
inheritance. The conformity enforcers of that age
saw his approach to be a ``futile eort'' to
penetrate mysteries whose true nature lay elsewhere. That was simply a shortsightedness that
emerged from human arrogance rather than an
intellectual openness and an honest confrontation
with the mysteries. The animal models in molecular biology have been absolutely essential for us
to understand our genetic nature. The human
genome project has now enriched all avenues of
thought about human nature enormously, revealing vast new layers of mystery to be penetrated
(e.g., Commoner, 2002). Animal models will be
just as important if we want to create a lasting
mind-brain science. Just as our understanding of
bacterial DNA did not trivialize our understanding of human inheritance, so our understanding
of natural brain functions of animals will not
trivialize depth psychological concepts that we
need to understand the mental apparatus of
humans. Modern behavioral brain research can
help psychoanalytic thought to grow and change
as our knowledge base expands. Psychoanalytic
research could inform neuroscience how the
neuro-mental apparatus is arranged.
In my estimation, what we must presently
aspire to is to identify the core principles of
evolved mental organization and to establish
supervenience relationships among seemingly different levels of analysis. If evolutionary theory is
correct, then we most certainly do have a solid
foundation of mind that we share with closely
related creatures of the world. Freud recognized
this when he said (1920/1959, p. 50) ``The present
development of human beings requires, as it seems
to me, no dierent explanation from that of
animals'' and followed it (pp. 7273) with the
suggestion that ``The deciencies in our description
would probably vanish if we were already in a
position to replace the psychological terms by
physiological or chemical ones.'' Surely ``replace''
is rather extreme by modern standards (``supplement'' might have been more judicious), but a
study of such supervenience relations between
brain systems and psychological issues will
certainly advance our understanding of mental
processes enormously. But rst we have to
identify not only what is fundamental to mind
and what are the ingrained functions of the brain.

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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


It is within those core principles, and I believe my
mesencephalically centered ``primal SELF'' concept
is one of them, that we will nd the most fruitful
cross-disciplinary dockings, which will gradually
allow us to conceptualize how more complex
issues, such as transference relationships that
emerge from the unique experiences of individual
living within complex social environments.
In his wonderful book, Freud Reappraised,
Holt (1989) says: ``there is an impenetrable
mystery in the fact that subjective experience
exists in a physiochemical world''. I personally
believe that we have nally reached a point in
time where the mystery is no longer impenetrable.
However, there are an abundance of conformity
enforcers among psychoanalysts as well as
behavioral neuroscientists, who would say such
attempts at mind-brain docking are bound to
remain without substance. Let us again turn to
Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920,
p. 60): ``Biology is truly a land of unlimited
possibilities. We may expect it to give us the most
surprising information, and we cannot guess what
answers it will return in a few dozen years . . .
They may be of a kind which will blow away the
whole of our articial structure of hypotheses.''
Ahumada's Commentary
As Ahumada gracefully accepts, all mental
concepts are ``Janus-like'' partaking ``of the
``mechanistic'' and the individual personal'' yielding two ways ``of thinking, mechanical and
anthropomorphical.'' Even as he acknowledges
how we are all ``exquisitely context-dependent
and individual-history dependent'' he toys with
the importance and possibility of neuroscience
connections, recognizing that ``our original beliefs
. . . were of the general nature of instincts.'' This, I
agree, is the foundational level where eective
brain-mind docking can presently yield remarkable insights, perhaps even for those issues that
seem quintessentially ``context-dependent,'' especially if many of the instinctual operating
systems of the brain are (or interface with) special
purpose learning systems, as the emotional ones
seem to be.
Ahumada shares the remarkable observation
that ``once past the ames of passion, it is not
uncommon for couples that the heterosexual
situation switches and the man is adjoined more
and more the role of caring mother to his wife.'' If
we are willing to look at the animal neuroscience,
we can now see that this emergent principle of
lovingness among humans is paralleled by a deep
evolutionary principle evident in other animals:

47

Sexuality emerged very early in evolution, while


maternal nurturance is a comparatively recent
``invention'' that is full of subtleties, psychological tensions, and paradoxes that only a few have
discussed (Hrdy, 1999). However, underneath this
complexity, we nd that the neurochemical
emergence of maternal nurturance is linked
closely to the molecules of female sexuality.
Certain brain oxytocinergic systems are big
players in generating female sexual feelings and
desires, and related ones emerged to solidify
feelings of bonding and good-will between
mothers and infants (Panksepp, 1998a). Would
it not be a wonderful neuro-psychoanalytic
research project to evaluate the tidal shifts in
human feelings, both male and female, when this
system is jostled with the neurochemical tools that
are becoming available?
Clearly, we will eventually have increasingly
interesting discussions when psychoanalysts
become more conversant with neuroscience
details, and neuroscientists begin to appreciate
depth-psychological concepts. In this gradual
melding of views, it will be important for neuropsychoanalysts to develop their own testable
views of how brains operates. Otherwise the
interdisciplinary discussions will not have as
much substance as they deserve, and we will have
endless disagreements as to what processes are
``natural kinds,'' which are ``conceptual kinds,''
and which merely ``practical kinds.''
Sheets-Johnstone Commentary
A small number of scholars have been ghting a
rear-guard action against the ``brain-in-a-computer'' crowd who, to put it sardonically, assume the
mind-brain reects nothing more than computational ``information processing'' algorithms. Of
course, sensible people should know better; the
human mind could not exist without the body and
the embodied functions of the brain. There has to
be a virtual body representation in the brain
which interacts with a virtual world representation that presents executive processes of the brain
with relevant information upon which to base
response selection. Sheets-Johnstone has been
waging a good ght for some time and waxing
philosophic-poetic for the body as vigorously as
anyone. I am almost in complete sympathy with
her views, especially her recognition that bodily
agency is essential for understanding how mind
functions. I just wish there were a bit more
emphasis on empirical issues, and ideas that
would guide new and critical kinds of experimentation on which the future success of mind-

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48
brain-body docking is so critically dependent.
I believe she is correct in giving young
infants a much more resolved mental life than
was evident in Milrod's essay (also see Panksepp,
2001). Surely, infants begin to exhibit aective
indications of a ``theory of mind'' long before
they can exhibit propositional indications of such
capacities through their utterances. For instance,
Stern (1985) and Trevarthen (1984) have given us
powerful conceptions of how ready infants are
ready to share their feelings with receptive others.
However, in her enthusiasm to bring the bodysenses back into consciousness studies, I continue
to be perplexed by her desire to marginalize the
brain. I think she is creating unneeded problems
in de-emphasizing (perhaps even demonizing) the
``neuroscience of the brain'' in preference to a
``neuroscience of bodies.'' Although both are
necessary for a complete picture, her extreme
focus on the real body versus the virtual body
schema in the brain seems to neglect the fact that
the neurodynamics of the evolved operating
systems of the brain seem to be the common
denominator for the aective expressions of the
``real'' body (Panksepp, 1998a,b). Quadriplegics
still have a rich emotional life even though the
vast majority of the inputs from the body have
been castrated. Of course, that kind of damage
does not eliminate feedback from the face, and
more importantly feedback from the viscera.
However, despite such qualications, the brain
loop remains essential for the conscious life of
deeply experienced bodily feelings around which
more recent perceptual developments emerged in
the evolution of exteroceptive consciousness.
Thus, our perceptual apparatus is prepared to
code for environmental events that would hurt
the body (presumably coded by the virtual
body(s) of the brain), and the most useful new
knowledge will surely come from our willingness
to cultivate brain views that do not neglect any of
the body representations that actually exist in the
matrix of individual being.
Thus, Sheets-Johnstone provides that essential ``inner-judge'' inuence to keep us on the
right track. Perhaps in this role she goes a tad too
far in her reication of the somatic body, and
should contemplate the virtual reality spaces that
the consciousness mechanisms of the brain create
for aectively motivated body representations
behaving in highly abstracted neurosymbolic
representations of the world. The fact that the
body was so marginalized in 20th century
psychology and philosophy is a travesty that has
put both elds into a protracted remedial mode,
that is progressing more slowly than it should
because of the many ``talking head'' comformity-

Jaak Panksepp
enforcers out there, especially those that see
consciousness only in linguistic, sensory and
information-processing terms. That anyone can
still pretend that consciousness is linked critically
to our language processing capacities is one of the
great mysteries of consciousness studies (e.g.,
MacPhail, 2000; Rolls, 1999). That type of
conclusion is fundamentally anti-evolutionary
and raises an enormous barrier to neuroscientic
progress on the topic. The capacity for agency is
critical to the core selfneither linguistic nor
sensory processes are enough to create consciousness, and the assumption that they can leads to an
ungrounded neo-dualism. Surely the foundations
of consciousness have to be mapped out in solid
motor coordinates, especially in those that can
generate instinctual action tendencies, at least that
is my reading of the evidence (Panksepp, 1998a,b).
This instinctual motor system is not simply
an ``output'' device that is irrelevant for consciousness. It has natural dynamics of its own
which are probably the neurodynamic signatures
of the basic emotions, and when our minds
become ensnared in these dynamics, globally
projected through the brain and neurosymbolic
systems of bodily self-representation, then we
experience dierent aective states. At least that
is the way I currently view the matter. Like
Goldberg, I would like to believe that this type of
global brain interaction will eventually be best
understood in terms of chaotic attractor patterns
set up by emotional states ensnaring somatic
sensory-motor elds (leading to the cathexis of
perceptions), but no one has been clever enough,
yet, to convert the dross of such attractive verbal
insights into the gold of empirical ndings.
However, for progress to occur, many investigators need to have the proper guiding images and
metaphors in mind. Thanks to visionaries like
Sheets-Johnstone, with her inimitably contentious
style, we may eventually get the body returned
correctly into the overall equation. In my estimation, that should largely be a neurosymbolic
(virtual) body that is not only in close touch with
somatic and visceral feedbacks from the peripheral body but also the various basic emotional
operating systems that can inundate the ancient
action apparatus upon which, I believe, a primal
sense of self must be premised. I think this motor
foundation is still evident within the very best
dance and music that we as a species can create.
Feinberg's Commentary
One of the most powerful linkages between brain
functions and depth psychological theories will

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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


emerge from the accidents of nature where brain
impairments can inform us of the organization of
the human mind. Feinberg (2001) along with
Kaplan-Solms and Solms (2000) have recently
given us an enormous amount to think about. Of
course, one of the limitations is that most of the
interesting case-materials deal largely with the
higher levels of awareness and self-representation
(dare we call them the perceptual tools of
consciousness), rather than the core principles
(the central states) that provide a grounding for
the self. When those core states for self-representation and consciousness are damaged, then
impairments can be so great that there is really
not much of human interest left in the mental
apparatus (Schi and Plum, 1999). Probably for
this reason, there is an enormous denial of the
functional specicities that are built into the lower
functions in neuropsychology and the cognitive
neurosciences. From the bottom-up vantage,
most syndromes arising from cortical damage
seems to reect little more than how the ``tools''
of perceptual consciousness have changed, without any change in the core processes of mind.
Conversely, from the top-down vantage, the
devastating and often global consequences of
subcortical damage simply look as if someone has
thrown the power switch on the theatre of
consciousness.
Still, the neuro-psychoanalytic lessons to be
learned from cortical impairments are vast. The
neglect syndrome following damage to the right
parietal convexity, highlights how powerfully the
body-image networksthe broad attentional
controls and aective-sensitivities of the right
hemispherecontrol the deeper currents of the
mental apparatus. When these right hemisphere
abilities are compromised, the intact left hemisphere assumes a free wheeling egocentric psychological style, almost like a little baby's, of insisting
upon its verbally self-centered view of the world.
Disconnected from the right hemisphere, the left
hemisphere simply cannot position mental life
into a more global aective perspective that is
socially well contextualized.
For a few weeks after the damage, an
individual will not cognitively deal realistically
with the paralyzed side of the body. They deny
ownership of paralyzed limbs which are most
obviously their own. The denial of paralysis seen
in these individuals is discordant with the widely
held assumption that the speaking left hemisphere
is fundamentally a rational entity that can see the
world in the cold light of logical reason. Such
symptoms appear to make a mockery of the
rationalistic assumption that pervades psychology
and philosophy that our linguistic abilities are the

49

source of our veridical analytic abilitiesin fact,


the non-speaking right-hemisphere may be in
closer touch with existential realities than the left.
It is almost as if the left hemisphere is the master
of syntax and supercial world-views, while the
right provides deeper semantic and prosodic
meaning to life. Maybe this is why the freeassociation of psychoanalysis takes such a long
timeit has to ght the grip of the left hemisphere over the expressive apparatus. Is it any
wonder then that when the two hemisphere's are
disconnected, the left hand (governed by the nonspeaking right hemisphere) begins to exhibit a
mind of its own (the left hemisphere dares call it
``the alien hand syndrome'')? Is it too surprising
that the right hemisphere would occasionally lash
out and aspire to crush the aspirations of the left
hemisphere? Perhaps this non-speaking hemisphere, with a mind of its own, simply comes to
abhor the supercialities of the left hemisphere to
which it is continually and inescapably subjected.
Feinberg's case studies highlight the multiplicity of selves that can exist in the higher regions
of the brain-mind, yielding the denitive conclusion that ``many areas of the brain make a
contribution to the self'' while raising the issue of
where does the feeling of mental unity arise from?
Is it an illusion? Feinberg suggests that the unity
reects the possibility that ``the proper model of
the self is as a nested hierarchy of meaning and
purpose'' created by the brain, highlighting how
``the lower levels of the motor hierarchy are
nested within the higher levels of the hierarchy.''
To some extent this is distinctly the case, for we
can command actions without ever worrying
about individual movements. Most of our motor
outputs proceed well under automatic pilot, with
consciousness only triggering the desired outcome. The same goes for our sensory-perceptual
processes. These are created automatically by the
brain, and our conscious abilities consist of a selfrelated executive processes being able to make
life-supporting choices within the virtual world
that our sensory apparatus, largely unconsciously
and automatically, creates for us.
However, I have deep doubts as to whether
these are the types of motor and perceptual
processes we should focus on when we discuss the
nature of the core self. It would seem that the core
self is built upon the instinctual emotional/action
apparatus, which has a remarkable integrity at
very deep levels of the neuroaxis such as the
periaqueductal gray (PAG) of the midbrain
(Panksepp, 1998a,b; 2000a,b,c; Watt, 2000).
Maybe the core self is built upon those types of
motor coordinations (fully blended somato-visceral
action schema), which have a self-sucient

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50
integrity that is very much independent of the
neocortical somatic motor apparatus which seems
to be the focus of Feinberg's analysis. These are
the deep brain areas that have primacy during
early infancy, when as Milrod and SheetsJohnstone describe, the basic psychological abilities are beginning to ex their ``muscles''their
ability to spontaneously generate those spontaneous ``intentions in action'' that later captivate
the emerging sensory-perceptual apparatus of
higher cerebral spaces.
Like Sheets-Johnstone, and many others
(e.g., Sterns, 1985; Thelen, Schoner, Scheier and
Smith, 2001), I believe the infant is capable of
fairly complex mental operations soon after birth
although they cannot communicate their competence in language. For them, gesture is everything.
If so, might we not be able to conceptualize the
unity of the self as arising from the intrinsic
unities of the instinctual action (Agency?) apparatus that serve as basic survival kits for each and
every organism? The grounding of the core self
may reside in a virtual neurosymbolic representation of key bodily processes that converge within
midbrain areas such as the PAG and nearby
reticular zones. Although I take this remark out
of context, I fully agree with Feinberg's ``view
that the self emerges hierarchically at the ``summit'' of the nervous system is mistaken.''
Unfortunately, there is little intellectual or
research activity that aspires to clarify this
ancestral ground of being for the future mental
life of developing infants (Colin Trevarthen's
work is an noteworthy exception). Perhaps we
are being attracted by the glitter of more recent
developments in the same manner as tourists to
The Big Apple are attracted to the lights of Times
Square? Perhaps we can only see the real Ground
Zero of the soul when the massive corticoconstructed self (the autobiographical self, in
Damasio's terms) is taken away from the scene?
We should not forget that the smallest amount of
brain damage that can quite simply devastate all
of those constructions are rather small infractions
localized to centromedial regions of the midbrain.
The primal nest of the self, which continues
to provide the unity for later developments, may
be concentrated in this centroencephalon, the very
core of the brainstem. We can understand why
Milrod is attracted to such neuroscientic suggestions. We can also understand his mixed feelings
with such ideas, for there is no easy way for
psychoanalysts to study (to come to terms) with
such ancient brain functions except through
neuroscientic approaches. But such ideas remain
a major challenge for neuroscientists also. If such
ancient mind functions do exist in the brains of

Jaak Panksepp
infants, we must also take the conscious abilities
of the other animals very seriously, and not
dismiss them as is so common among behavioral
neuroscientists. In short, there are levels of
control within the neuroaxis that hardly anyone
has conceptualized with any sense of empirically
based conviction.
Beside the case histories shared by Feinberg,
there are other incredible neuropsychological
observations of brain-impaired individuals (for
some others, see Gallese and Umilta's contribution). Such psychological changes demand a
reformulation of the foundations of mind in
terms that may be closer to some globalexistential psychoanalytic concepts than detailed
information-processing ones that are popular in
the cognitive/computational neurosciences. Let us
again briey consider the deep psychological
repressions that seem to exist when only the left
hemisphere is operating (i.e., in individuals with
right parietal neglect). For a while after their
brain damage, such individuals operate strictly in
the glare of what I would call a ``cognitive
consciousness'' disconnected from the deeper
egocentric aective processes of their brains.
They simply deny the existence of the dramatic
changes that have beset their lives. They make jest
of serious emotional dilemmas of their lives.
Although aspects of the syndrome are explained
well by unilateral inattention to aspects of the
world, the neglect seems to also arise from deeper
mental currents. As described by Kaplan-Solms
and Solms (2000), in the midst of psychoanalytic
sessions, these individuals shift, for short periods
of time, into a deeper existential states where they
exhibit ``proper'' aective responses to the severity of their impairment. These individuals may be
actively suppressing a sustained cognitive perception of their plight. This deeper core of ``aective
consciousness'' seems to be repressed by the
narrow-minded linguistic capacities in which the
left-hemisphere excels. I believe, those emotional/
aective neural processes, with which the right
hemisphere is in better touch, are the ones we
must understand if we are to fathom the
foundations of the primal self.
In sum, what Feinberg's analysis provides
for us is a wonderful example of some of the best
that neuroscientists can oer psychoanalysis, new
ways of looking at thingsa service that ``diversity generators'' always provide for our growing
storehouse of ideas. This was done to an even
greater extent in the next, and perhaps most
spellbinding, commentary, which also did not
aspire to go beyond the many spectacular tools of
consciousness that exist in higher regions of the
mind. Both of these neuroscience views provide

Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


powerful evidence and insights about the higher
brain/mind processes that contribute to the
``extended self'' or ``the self representation'' as
Milrod puts it. Unfortunately, because it is so
hidden from empirical inspection, most of neuroscience remains silent about ``the primal self''
which lies at the root of existence. For comparable reasons, most people have trouble agreeing
upon an accurate psychological view of the
emergence of mental life in infants, and as a
result, for the longest time were willing to crush
foreskins of infant boys with no soothing
anesthetics.

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The Gallese and Umilta Commentary


Some of the neural details of the spontaneous
analytical capacities of the higher mind that have
recently been revealed are breathtaking. Among
the foremost are those that have been discovered
by Gallese and colleagues, and they provide the
raw material for new conceptions of the extended
self that were unimaginable just a few years ago.
The power of exteroceptive processing is strongly
tied to self-referential coordinates of various
types. Gallese and Umilta provide an intriguing
summary of those lines of evidence, and on the
basis of the ``multiple neural ``representations'' of
space'' they posit the existence of multiple selves
reecting ``the many possible modeling ways than
an organism may instantiate to achieve a better
control of its dynamic interplay with the environment.'' But rapidly, they acknowledge that all of
this diversity needs a ``glue'' to maintain some
type of singularity of focus, and I think wisely,
and in agreement with approaches such as that
advocated by Sheets-Johnstone, they suggest the
glue might be found in the neural construction of
``agency, in its double aspects of action generation
and action representation.'' This, I believe, is very
much on the right track, and it fullls the
psychoanalytic need to conceptualize the emerging infant's mind as being fundamentally built
upon organic action processes which allow them
to impose their will upon the world, so as to
gradually create ever more complex structures of
contextualized meanings, as outlined by Milrod.
The Gallese and Umilta commentary and the
empirical contributions summarized are so compelling that I am happy to let them speak for
themselves, as some of the nest emerging
perspective on how higher mental processes really
operate. These ndings have remarkable implications for the higher self-structures that emerge as
infants become embedded in their social and
spatial worlds of subjects and objects (i.e., the

51

vast and rich perceptual and mental imagery


types of consciousness that are typically foremost
in our minds). Because of such spectacular
breakthroughs, the responsible investigators are
superb ``diversity generators,'' who, with their
successes, gradually become ``resource shifters''
(again, see Bloom, 2000, p. 43 for this conceptualization). Powerful scientic breakthroughs often
have long coat-tails that shift thinking and
investigative resources dramaticallyscientists
like to look where the light is brightest (i.e.,
where models become ``immediately appealing''
when they provide ``a functional architecture that
can be investigated by neuroscience at the neural
level.'').
Because of the robustness of their data and
visions, we must wonder whether their approaches also have the potential to break through
to the very core of ``the self'' or whether they will
simply be looking at brain/mind processes that
are aspects of ``the self representation,'' to use
Milrod's distinction once more. My own bias is
that it will tend to be more of the latter than the
former, which, of course, is a superlative contribution. However, it would be a pity if resources
in the research community were shifted so
dramatically that there would be little left over
(as has been traditional) for even deeper perspectives on the matter. These deeper perspectives can
be summarized nicely in terms of the useful
framework advanced by Metzinger which Gallese
and Umilta use to frame their discussion.
Metzinger's ``Phenomenal Self Model'' postulates
three essential properties of ``I'ness''mineness,
selfhood and perspectivalness. In my estimation,
this fundamental trinity of consciousness could
also be called, the primal aective self, the bodily
action self, and the mental imagery/perceptual self.
The impact of Gallese and Umilta's spectacular
analysis, as they frankly admit, is largely devoted
to the last of these attributes, namely how
``phenomenal space is organized around a center,
a supramodal point of view'').
This, of course, is the evolutionarily most
sophisticated of the three functions, and what is
desperately needed is research that is also relevant
for the rst two. I suspect that this will require a
radical shift in perspective from ``information
processing'' views of the brain (which are
incredibly well supported in neuroscience) to
equally important organic ``state control'' functions of the brain (which receive very little
support). In my estimation, it is these state control
functions, that are based on very dierent
principles than mere ``neuronal codes,'' at least
as traditionally understood. The state functions
resemble global pressures and dynamics of the

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52
system that are experienced as aects and which
directly control the living presence of the instinctual-emotional action (Agency) apparatus of the
brain. The core principles for such primal self
functions were laid down in much deeper recesses
of the brain than are open to routine neuroscience
investigation in humans (Panksepp, 1998b).
Instead of ``information processing'' these
more ancient endogenous functions of the mind
become manifest through massive ensembles of
neuronal networks that were evolutionarily designed to operate in certain ways (they are best
reected in the natural animal behaviors and the
corresponding natural non-perceptual mental
currents in humans). This is were the essential
need for theoretically driven animal models
becomes so essential for future progress, but
animal brain researchers are remarkably resistant
to heading in such conceptual directions, partially
because practically no resources have been shifted
in the temples of scientic support for the pursuit
of such questions. This, I believe, is a continuing
tragedy of 20th century behaviorism and its
modern osprings, behavioral neuroscience and
an emotionless information-processing cognitivism,
neither of which has much tolerance for talk about
human or animal consciousness or the aective
qualities such ancient processes help generate.
Resource Shifting Into a Deeper Conception of
``The Self''
At this juncture, I would shift gears, and to
present an alternative, albeit complementary
view, that will attempt to expand on perspectives
that may have initially enticed Milrod to be
attracted to the views of the self that have been
enunciated by Damasio (1999) and myself
(1998a,b, 1999, 2000a,b,c). I personally believe
that this line of work has the greatest ability to
clarify what Milrod calls ``the self'' but this is such
a deep and hidden brain process, that conformityenforcers, which exist in abundance in any
society, can easily challenge all views by highlighting the vast intricacies of the mature individuals that most psychoanalysts see in practice.
This extended self is so vast and complex that one
can easily remain skeptical of all simplifying
suggestions for a long time to come. But as
Descartes said in his third rule of science, simplify
we must in order to make any scientic progress
at all.
I will not attempt to detail the similarities
and dierences between my own views and those
of Damasio, but to merely emphasize that at this
point the similarities outweigh the dierences.

Jaak Panksepp
For instance, we both situate the primal selfprocesses in centromedial areas of the brainstem,
with perhaps some dierences as to which precise
structures may be the most important ones to
delve into empirically. In my estimation, our main
three dierences, perhaps arising from the dierent species we have focused on, are as follows:
First, Damasio's view of the core self is more
of a sensory/perceptual centric view while mine is
more of a motor/action centric view. Of course,
both are important and this dierence is largely, I
believe, a matter of emphasis as to how issues can
be best approached at an empirical level.
Second, Damasio discusses emotions more
globally than I do. My view is based on the
empirically based postulation of a variety of basic
emotional operating systems that can dierentiate
the various core states of the self into a variety of
distinct natural types. Damasio sees the essence of
emotionality to be in a somatic-readout of
peripheral bodily processes into the somatosensory areas of the cortex.
Third, in line with his cortico-centric view of
emotional processing (Damasio, 1994) and my
fundamentally subcortical view of emotional
processing (Panksepp, 1982), we tend to emphasize dierent regions of the brain as being the
epicenters for the generation of aective experiences. Damasio is prone to situate aective
experience in somatosensory representations
(i.e., somatic markers) of the neocortex. I am
prone to situate epicenters for aective experience
within the limbic circuits for specic emotions
that converge dramatically in the midbrain PAG
and other periventricular convergence zones.
Although these areas of brain are generally
deemed to be much too primitive to have any
type of awareness, it is noteworthy that with the
recent brain imaging work from the Damasios'
lab (Damasio et al., 2000), a convergence of views
may be emerging concerning the essential (albeit
perhaps not sucient) nature of the subcortical
systems that have been identied through animal
brain research.
So, why would I assert that dierent principles of neural organization need to be considered
when we consider the types of ``cognitive consciousness'' that Gallese and Umilta and Feinberg
focus on to describe ``the self representation'', and
``the feeling of what happens'' or ``aective
consciousness'' that Damasio and I would argue
is the foundation of ``the core self/SELF.'' I note
that I have traditionally used capitalizations for
the concept (which, for heuristic purposes can be
translated as Simple Ego-type Life Form) to
highlight the fact that I am talking about
necessary neural components without asserting

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Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


any claims of suciency. This strategy, as highlighted by Gallese and Umilta, provides ``a
functional architecture that can be investigated
by neuroscience at the neural level'' even though
it requires rather more theoretical courage (or
foolhardiness, depending on one's academic tribal
commitments) to conceptually envision those
ancient neural substrates than the more recently
evolved, and experimentally more accessible,
cortico-cognitive ones.
The distinction between cognitive consciousness leading epigenetically to ``the self representation'' as compared to a genetically-prescribed
aective consciousness leading to ``the core self''
may be approximately as follows. Using Marcel
Mesulam's (2000) distinction between ``channel
functions'' of the brain and the ``state functions''
of the brain. Although there is bound to be much
overlap among the underlying neural processes,
the distinction is between tightly controlled
synaptic ow of patterns of action potentials
which generate our sensations and perceptions of
the world as well as discrete somatic actions on
the one hand, and on the other, the global and
diuse process of the brain (often modulated by
widely acting neuropeptides and biogenic
amines). In other words, it is a matter of emphasis
between ancient slowly acting state functions
(heavily visceral) that govern the instinctual/
action presence of the organism (concentrated in
centromedial areas of the brainstem) and the
more recent channel control functions that control the break-neck speed of information processing in the somatic sensory-motor processes of the
brain (of thalamus and neo-cortex). These inuences converge massively in limbic and basal
ganglia areas of the brain. For a more detailed
discussion of potential dierences in aective and
cognitive consciousness, see Panksepp (2002).
Why is this distinction so important for
understanding the type of basic ``self'' that
Mildrod discusses. I think the aective-bodily
issues provide the ``ground'' upon which the more
detailed cognitive features can grow be resolved.
The baby is born into the world with a few basic
instinctual action tools that are linked strongly to
organismic states, but not yet to external information processes. However, the connections
between uctuating organismic states and happenings in the world proceed remarkably rapidly.
Learning processes permeate the system (including thoroughly organic forms such as experiencedependent sensitization of the various emotional
systems), allowing organisms to project their
behaviors into the future using advantageous
information from the past experiences of the
individual as opposed to simply the more coarsely

53

resolved ancestral experiences of the species.


Thus, the complaint of Sheets-Johnstone, that
Milrod does not adequately recognize the cognitive complexity of the infant, can be accommodated easily in this scheme. Yes, many of a baby's
sophisticated learning abilities move along much
more rapidly than seems to have been envisioned
by classic psychoanalytic views, but the baby may
not be born with as many intrinsic abilities as
Sheets-Johnstone seems to imply.
However, it is certain that each baby has a
body that is ready for action, ready to feel the
world in certain ways, and especially ready during
emotional states to link up its perceptual apparatus and maturing motor skills in ways that will
allow it to master its environment and to very
gradually become a self-sucient master of its
inner terrain (Stern, 1985). However, throughout
life, this inner aective terrain of feeling the world
in a certain waythe very core of the selfis not
all that dierent, at least in overall kind, among
individuals (allowing, of course, for variations
among people that reect genetically based
constitutional temperamental dierences, and
sensitizations and desensitizations of the systems
as a function of major life experiences). I believe
that it is in our capacity to come to terms with
ancestral source of our being, shared remarkably
homologously with evolutionarily closely-related
animals, that our understanding of Metzinger's
mineness and selfhood must emerge. Of course,
this is an equally dicult concept for neuroscience, psychoanalysis, psychology and the
philosophy of mind to accommodate. We simply
have no adequate mind-scope to peer into the
dark functional jungle of the great intermediate
net of the nervous system.
At this point in the development of the mindsciences, many may say that the type of conclusion I just espoused, as many of the conclusions
of classical psychoanalysis, can only be taken on
faith. I disagree, I believe they can be derived
from a careful reading of all of the relevant
neuroscientic and psychoanalytic evidence that
already exists, and which, with some intellectual
conviction could guide many novel future inquiries. Probably the most instructive ones will be
those that modify specic neurochemical systems
of the brain, and characterize mental changes at a
depth psychological level (Panksepp, 1999). I
trust that the emerging discipline of neuropsychoanalysis will be at the forefront of such
important intellectual passageto credibly dock
between the functions of the mind and brain.
Such issues will not simply disappear, and at some
point empiricist have to confront the fundamental
nature of the ancestral sources of our experienced

54
existence. That will not happen unless our
institutions are willing to shift abundant resources
in ways that the many of the radical-positivists
who are currently beneting from governmental
largesse will strenuously resist.

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Carestri's Commentary and the ``inner-judges''


So let me close with a few remarks about the
remaining commentary, as well as those sociocultural and the ``inner-judge'' dynamics that
continually take the measure of our progress
toward substantive understanding``rewarding
us when our contribution seems to be of value
and punishing us when our guesswork proves
unwelcome or way o the mark'' (Bloom, 2000,
p. 43). Carestri's analysis is largely devoted to the
psychoanalytic view, expressed in a way that has
left me somewhat baed, no doubt in the way
that neuroscience views (perhaps what I described
above) may bae many psychoanalysts as well as
positivistic neuroscientists. But his main point is
the key to much of our discussion: Are we really
talking about the same thing? Do psychoanalysts
agree with each other? Are neuroscientists any
closer to being on the same wave-length? Probably not, is the main conclusion Carrestri shares,
and he cautions us once more to be wary about
the ``reication of functional concepts that should
be inserted into a developmental scheme.'' ``This
way of confronting the intersection between
neurosciences and psychoanalysis'' he suggests,
``may not be doing a service to either of the
disciplines involved and could unfortunately
contribute to producing terminological and conceptual confusion.''
This last issue is one that I will expand on
briey: The mental world is a tangled skein of
``natural kinds'' that evolution gave us as fundamental tools to engage the world, and through
these engagements, and perceptual-fantasy processes elaborated by general purpose corticocognitive neuro-mental spaces, we develop layers
upon layers of ``conceptual kinds'' that emerge
from our vast abilities for analysis, belief,
linguistic re-representations and self-delusion. It
would be a major problem for our analyzes if
these emerging ``conceptual kinds'' actually modify
the ``natural kinds'' that existed as birthrights. I
personally do not believe that happens (unless all
our bodily and emotional needs are taken care
of). Of course the emerging layers of idiosyncratic
learning lead to many of the issues psychoanalysts
live with on a daily basisrepressions, projections,
transferences and various other symbolic beasts
of the mind. A scientic neuro-psychoanalysis

Jaak Panksepp
will proceed most eectively if its studies are
devoted to clarifying the natural kinds (closely
related to intrinsic ``knowledge by acquaintance''
processes) as much as is possible, because the
conceptual kinds (more aligned with extrinsic
``knowledge by description'' processes) can have
as much variety as individual learning, unique
emotional and cognitive wishes, and cultural
biases permit.
The more one focuses on the full circuscarnival of human fancy and cultural biases, the
less lasting species-general knowledge one is likely
to obtain. Again, this sentiment is shared only to
emphasize that research on the foundational
principles is more likely to yield consistent and
replicable ndings than research on the acquired
manifestations of mind. Just as an example,
scientic psychology is actually quite a weak
discipline from the natural science perspective,
largely because it has so massively marginalized
even talk about the ``natural kinds'' that surely
exist in the brain/mind. It has invested more in
studying the diversity of individual experiences,
which is better left as the province for the
humanities. It is likely that those natural aspects
of brain functions, rather than the massive layers
of individual learning, provide the deep coherence
to each and every individual.
Carestri also asks ``how does the individual
know that he is himself; how is this identity
preserved in time through the changes that take
place''? These are stupendously important questions, and I would suggest they depend heavily on
the foundation of agency and bodily/aective
selfhood that is established at a very deep level of
the neuroaxis. Equally important questions related to this are: Where do our thoughts arise
from? How does a sensation become a feeling?
What does it mean to have emotional experiences? Hopefully the above has helped somewhat
to clarify how we might proceed on these
important questions.
Carestri also suggests that our ideas ``should
be inserted in a non-linear developmental
scheme'' and I expect that everyone that has been
paying attention will agree. Indeed, we believe
that the basic emotional systems can serve as
``attractors'' for dierent developmental landscapes (Panksepp, 1998a, 2000b), but no one
has really demonstrated (except perhaps for
Walter Freeman, 2000a,b, and also vide supra)
how we might cash this out experimentally. At
present, I continue to ponder how the critical
perspective of the type oered by Canestri might
help us make substantive empirical progress,
recognizing how easily mere words can help
polarize attitudes and encourage a tribalism that

Commentary on The Concept of the Self and the Self Representation


is one of the damaging hallmarks of our species
(and I am sure my own ``isms'' have come
through in this extended discussion). There are
no simple answers to such concerns, and our
ability to make progress will hinge mightily on
how we choose to respond to the types of issue
that Carestri highlighted. It will also be dependent
on our willingness to entertain new ideas and to
conduct some research to judge their quality.

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In Conclusion: Beyond Inter-group Tournaments?


Humans are a contentious species that thrive
upon the belief systems that are created by our
vast neo-cortical systems that can support deductive logic, inductive fantasies/realities, and the
ability to generate propositional communications.
I do believe that our language emerged as much
as any others, for reasons of sustaining social
solidarity and productive group activities by
being able to manipulate the neural circuits of
others. Probably the capacity to think emerged
long before our syntactic capacity to communicate our thoughts. During the long course of
evolution, certain mental structures and abilities
had to emerge before talk could serve any
function. Obviously, language did not evolve for
the conduct of science, and it is poor tool for clear
communication (explaining the love of mathematical metaphors in science). We simply have to
look around us in the modern world to see the
physical and intellectual travesties that are still
being imposed by groups of humans on other
groups simply on the basis of their linguistically
based beliefsfrom Positivism to Talibanism, so
to speak. Scholars typically aspire to do a little
better than the teeming masses, but the history of
science does indicate that even their enterprises
are driven more by desires to prevail than to seek
the deepest understanding of which we are
capable.
There is a continual battle in behalf of beliefs
on the larger tournament-eld of human societies,
and a comparable battle in behalf of comparably
biased perspectives on our smaller chess-boards
of scholarly inquiry. How often do the insistent
sounds of self-centered opinions drown out
simple human truths within the academyfor
instance, the diculty scholars have in accepting
that all humans do have a fundamentally similar
animal nature that can be massaged into many
forms by our more variable cultural surrounds.
Ultimately, little babies are contentious, selfcentered but uniquely loveable organisms (especially if we are their parents, even though economic
and power issues can prevail there also (Hrdy,

55

1999)). Mother nature does not prevail for long


when children are whipped into shape in behalf of
cultural expectations. Often children are compliant because they wish to sustain the love and
respect of others, for they know how dependent
they really are on others for survival and future
opportunities. It is remarkable that any learn to
be non-contentious and to remain more open to
many alternative perspectives that are available
outside one's own culture.
Classical psychoanalysis did not thrive during
the last third of the 20th century, largely because
it did not participate in the scientic activities of
the emerging mind sciences that were based on
experimentation and fairly standardized rules of
scientic evidence. Most good research cannot
proceed without having good model systems, and
for that reason the genetics of E. coli has been
more important for understanding how human
genes operate than the study of human genes.
Animal models can serve a similar function in
understanding the foundations of human mind.
Because of advances at the animal neuroscience
level, we can now entertain doing some very
interesting research in depth psychology. And
fortunately the door to such work is now wide
open. A considerable amount of admiration for
psychoanalysis was left among those mindscientists who sustained a respect for the deeper
current of mind. Now the question is whether a
research tradition can emerge in the arena of
``depth psychology'' that can be linked eectively
to the other relevant sciencesespecially the
aective, behavioral and cognitive neurosciences.
Many say the time is ripe. But it can only start if
enough dedicated people partake of a actionproducing discourse.
Fortunately, the discussion has begun, but it
is in on our ability and willingness to translate
thoughts into action that the fertility of the
enterprise will ultimately be judged. If I am in a
slightly better position than some others to assert
what will be the most productive road to take
empirically, it is only because I have spent my
career plowing one empirical furrow after another. At this point, my experience informs my
belief that the more solid translations will be
made if we focus on the ancient aective state
functions of the brain that we share with other
animals than if we focus on the more recent
individual life-experience generating channel functions that we probably do not share with them in
evolutionarily homologous ways. I believe a focus
on the former can reveal the natural kinds that
emerged in the evolutionary caldron (e.g., the
aective states that move our higher minds to
dwell obsessively in various ways), while a mere

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56
focus on higher mental processes will only yield
conceptual kinds that certainly exist in great
abundance but which will not give us insight into
our deeper nature.
There are obviously an enormous number of
ways to channel information about the world into
the vast memorial/cognitive spaces of our mental
imagery/perceptual apparatus, and it will be most
interesting to speculate about what type of
``aect-logic'' types of processes exist in those
higher, neocortical regions of the mind. Many of
the processes in which psychoanalysts are most
interested, are elaborated in those higher neuromental spaces. A while ago I was of the mind that
it would be unlikely that we would ever be able to
tackle those issues at a deep neuroscience level
before we claried the ancestral neural platforms
upon which the more recent brain systems are
built. Now, work such as that of Gallese and
Umilta suggest my bias was wrong. Perhaps the
most important ndings for psychology should be
coming from the discipline of Evolutionary
Psychology.
It will be very interesting when such mindscientists begin to study the evolutionary engraving of cognitive functions that actually exist in
heteromodal regions of the human neocortex, as
opposed to assuming ``modularities'' that many
simply assume must exist up there (for critique,
see Panksepp and Panksepp, 2000). How neuropsychoanalysts will aspire to scientically demonstrate the functions of the mind promises to be an
equally interesting chapter of intellectual history.
If we can work from the bottom up, with an
understanding of the core self and the basic
emotions that inform the emergence of autobiographical selves, we may grow toward a fruitful
maturity like well-reared infants that utilize their
evolutionarily provided skills to navigate the ever
increasing complexities of their worlds.
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Jaak Panksepp
Chicago Institute for Neurosurgery and
Neuroresearch
Northwestern University Research Park
1801 Maple Ave
Evanston, IL 60201
Correspondence to author at:
April 1June 2, 2002 (and after Sept. 3, 2002)
Dept. of Psychology
Bowling Green State Univ.
Bowling Green, OH 43403
jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu
June 3, 2002September 3, 2002
Dept. of Psychology
University of Portsmouth (UK)
Exact address will be provided to Ed Nersessian

Taking Freud's ``Bodily Ego'' Seriously


Commentary by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Introduction
In ``The Concept of the Self and the Self
Representation,'' Dr. David Milrod attempts to
clarify the psychoanalytic nature of two seemingly
obvious but dicult concepts, specically with a
view to nding links between psychoanalysis
perhaps particularly psychoanalytic theoryand
present-day neuroscience. His eorts result in a
probing and provocative paper. What I would
like to oer in this commentary is less a critical
review of what is there in the paper than a critical
review of what is not there in the paper and what
might protably be there to the benet of both
psychoanalysis and present-day neuroscience.
In The Ego and the Id, Freud wrote, ``The
ego is rst and foremost a bodily ego'' (Freud,
1955, p. 26). He immediately claried this
statement, pointing out that the ego ``is not
merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection

of a surface.'' He furthermore claried this


clarication in a footnote, which reads: ``I.e.,
the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiey from those springing from the
surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as
a mental projection of the surface of the body,
besides, . . . representing the supercies of the
mental apparatus'' (ibid.).
If we follow Freud's initial pithy and
theoretically momentous observation on the
bodily nature of the primordial ego at the same
time that we follow Milrod's thesis that the self
representation is a substructure within the ego
(pp. 810), then we should expect that, in an
originary sense, the self representation is generated from the body, that is, from bodily
experiences. We should, in other words, and
following Milrod's careful beginning distinction
between the self and the self representation (pp. 8
11), expect that actual bodily experiencesliving

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