Abstract
The mind-body problem is a topic of great significance which have long been explored by human beings. The enduring interest of this topic sprouts from a concern for the life origin , as well as from the thinking of the duality of consciousness and matter. Experts in varied disciplines present different points of view on the topic. It is worth mentioning that both the mind and the body are the subjects of psychoanalysis. Thus psychoanalysis is a good perspective to study the mind-body problem. Actually, psychoanalysts have many unique insights about the mind-body relation, among which there are three main viewpoints for specific performance: body as the base of mind, body as the symbol of mind and body interwoven with mind. According to Freud, body was the base of mind, because body played a critical role in psychoanalytic concept construction and mental development. However, the ego psychologists and the Kleinian regarded body as the symbol of mind. The ego psychoanalysts thought mind was influenced by the body symptom, while the keinian thought body influenced mind with the symbol of its function. In addition, Wilfred Bion and Donald Winnicott put it forward that body and mind were intertwined, and considered body and mind as two sides of a coin. They stressed the emotion based on the body, returning to Freud in a different way.
The three viewpoints not only reflect the different psychoanalysts’ differentiation on the methodology, the epistemology and the ontology, but also contain the collision of the natural science and the humanities in psychoanalysis. On the methodology, Freud, Hartmann and Klein all accepted the reductionism.,all of who want to find a ultimate cause for the relation of mind and body. Bion thought that the development of the mind-body was obscure, it didn’t follow the law of cause and effect. So, it could not be simply reduced. On the epistemology, Freud was a monist while Hartmann and Klein seemed more likely to agree with dualism. On the ontology, Freud, Hartmann and Klein never considered the mind-body relation as the foundation of the psychoanalysis directly; Bion and Winnicott described the original state of the mind-body relation boldly, with which they further study the topic on the foundation of the interwoven state of mind and body. Furthermore, the different views on psychoanalysis reveal the influence of the humanities and the natural science on the psychoanalysis, and provide a good example for resolving the dualism between the humanities and the natural science. Therefore, the mind-body viewpoints from the perspective of psychoanalysis are very important. It can not only make a contribution for the realization of the theoretical core of the mind-body problem in the psychoanalysis, but also make for a conclusion of the differentiation of the different theory schools in psychoanalysis. It also provide novel perspectives for other branches of psychology and other fields. Furthermore, in order to improve the theory of mind-body in psychoanalysis, future research should also pay close attention to the development of different disciplines such as phenomenology of body, neurobiology, cognitive psychology and so on.
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Lei Zhang WANG Lijun.
The View of Mind-Body Relation From the Perspective of Psychoanalysis[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2020, 43(6): 1522-1528
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