Embodied experience
Ian Thurston
Routledge eBooks July 3, 2018 DOI: 10.4324/9780429432101-3 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Commentary Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that neuroscience findings on embodied consciousness, ubiquitous unconscious processing, emotion in decision-making, and a conflicted psyche tend to lend support to psychoanalytic principles. Cites Solms and Turnbull's claim that a materialist neuroscientific view can complement an understanding-oriented approach to mind, and Damasio's claim that embodiment underlies "core consciousness" and background feelings of "good" or "bad." |
Abstract
The irony of the attacks on Freud and psychoanalysis is that they have been coming at a time when the findings emerging out of neuroscience are tending to lend support to psychoanalytic principles; the embodied nature of consciousness, the ubiquity of unconscious mental functioning, the importance of emotion in decision-making, and the complex and conflicted nature of the human psyche. Mark Solms and Oliver Turnbull have argued that a materialist neuroscientific view of the human mind, which links it to brain functioning from an objective perspective and allows scientific investigation and validation, can complement an approach that seeks to understand the human mind. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has argued that it is only because we are embodied creatures that we are able to have what he calls &s;core consciousness&s;, a sense of self, including a background sense of feeling &s;good&s; or &s;bad&s;, based on a &s;virtual&s; map of the current state of the internal milieu and viscera of the body.