Psychoanalytic psychotherapies and the free energy principle
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience August 9, 2022 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.929940 via OpenAlex
Summary
Psychoanalytic therapies rely on a structured setting, specific psychic states, and processes such as transference, free association, dreaming, play, reflexivity, and narrativity to induce psychic change. These processes are non-linear, unfold over time, and involve high entropy states that alternate between extension and reduction of free energy. Such states promote psychic malleability and exploration of subjective experience, enabling the emergence of new orders of experience when a certain energetic threshold is crossed. The model bridges psychoanalysis with the Free Energy Principle and Bayesian brain theories, highlighting psychoanalysis's relevance to neuroscientific study of subjectivity.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Psychoanalytic therapy processes can be modeled using the Free Energy Principle, where high entropy states and interplay between free energy extension and reduction enable psychic transformation. |
Abstract
In this paper I propose a model of the fundamental components of psychoanalytic psychotherapies that I try to explicate with contemporary theories of the Bayesian brain and the Free Energy Principle (FEP). I first show that psychoanalytic therapies require a setting (made up of several envelopes), a particular psychic state and specific processes (transference, free association, dreaming, play, reflexivity and narrativity) in order to induce psychic transformations. I then analyze how these processes of transformations operate and how they can be enlightened by the FEP. I first underline the fact that psychoanalytic therapies imply non-linear processes taking time to unfold and require a setting containing high entropy processes. More precisely, these processes are characterized by an interplay between extension and reduction of free energy. This interplay also favors the emergence of new orders of subjective experience, which occur following states of disorder, according to a certain energetic threshold allowing the modification and improvement of mental functioning. These high entropy states are also characterized by random functioning and psychic malleability which favors the exploration of subjective experience in an original manner. Overall, the approach proposed in this paper support the dialogue between psychoanalysis and other fields of research while underlining how psychoanalytical theoretical and conceptual constructs can also be useful to other disciplines, in particular the neurosciences of subjectivity.