Bulletin of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society

The founding members of the group had a productive year and attended several congresses to present their research work; the most important was the 14th Neuropsychoanalysis Congress held in Cape Town, where Jesús Baca Plasencia presented a poster entitled “The ego genesis: a neuropsychoanalytical study.” He combined the Freudian and the neurobiological perspective about the early development of the ego and proposed several correlations between the Freudian theory and two neurobiological approaches in which he considered the epistemological implications of the task and established a coherent epistemic foundation for the correlations. Two main early developmental processes of the Freudian theory were addressed: the autoerotic and the narcissistic phases. The neurobiological perspective is based on the work of Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms, specifically the development of the self related to the various types of consciousness proposed by Damasio, and several concepts regarding the id and the ego recently published by Mark Solms. María Isabel Rodríguez Luna presented “Clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis: a case study of an adolescent patient” during the research sessions. She discussed the integrative teamwork necessary to help an anorexic patient with epilepsy, focusing mainly on the clinical application of a neuropsychoanalytical treatment that entails the integral vision of physicians and the psychodynamic psychotherapist. The treatment aims to help the progress of the patient’s mind-body interaction and takes into account the fundamental aspects of clinical work with adolescents and eating disorders. Daniela Flores Mosri presented “A neuropsychoanalytic comprehension of borderline organizations: an affective approach” during the research sessions. Universidad Intercontinental in Mexico City is supporting this research project that focuses on the use of case study material to integrate an affective approach, both from psychoanalysis and from neuroscience, by taking into account the work of Jean Bergeret, Michael Balint, Helene Deutsch, and Jaak Panksepp, among others. Clinical psychoanalytic data seen from an affective point of view seem to be congruent with many of Jaak Panksepp’s descriptions related to the basic emotion systems. Borderline disorders can be understood from many perspectives, most of which emphasize the pathology of object relations. Object relations are distorted as a result of the affective dysregulation from major narcissistic injuries that seem to have an early impact on the SEEKING, PANIC, RAGE, and FEAR systems. The group was invited to discuss this topic at the 13th National Congress of the Mexican Association for Group Analytic Psychotherapy held in October 2013. The founding members also started open study group sessions in October held at Universidad Intercontinental in Mexico City. The aim of these sessions is to share and discuss neuropsychoanalytic topics of relevance to a growing audience in Mexico. Professionals from several fields have attended, including psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists. Interest keeps increasing in the country and the group welcomes everyone who wants to learn and discuss more about the dialogue between neuroscience and psychoanalysis.