Psychoanalytic psychotherapies and the free energy principle
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience August 9, 2022 Thomas Rabeyron 15 citations
Psychoanalytic therapies require a specific setting, psychic state, and processes such as transference, free association, dreaming, play, reflexivity, and narrativity to induce psychic transformations. These transformations involve non-linear processes that take time and involve high entropy states, characterized by an interplay between extension and reduction of free energy. This interplay allows new orders of subjective experience to emerge after states of disorder, following an energetic threshold that modifies mental functioning. High entropy states also foster random functioning and psychic malleability, enabling exploration of subjective experience. The model supports dialogue between psychoanalysis and other fields, including the neurosciences of subjectivity.