Understanding Freud´s models of the mind through the philosophy of mind - Understanding the current topics of the philosophy of mind through psychoanalysis

Hertha Firnberg Position T 48 Freud`s theory of mind Patrizia GIAMPIERI-DEUTSCH 29.06.1999 My research work project addresses a point of interface between philosophy and psychoanalysis (based on Freud`s models of mind) in the light of the "mentalistic turn" in the present philosophy of mind, which among other things faces the results of empirical sciences, as cognitive sciences and neurosciences. My research will - concern itself with the contemporary state of philosophical research into the theory of mind; - present the changing fate of the theory of mind or metapsychology in psychoanalysis diachronically (the development, its heyday, radical critique and, for some psychoanalysts, the continuing rejection, as well as the current renaissance); - at the same time present the current state of the psychoanalytical theory of mind; - look into the possibility of the integration of philosophical and psychoanalytical approaches. The psychoanalytical theory of mind offers models to conceptualise the connection between mental and somatic processes beyond untenable dualism and crude reductionism. At this level of theory, the meeting between psychoanalysis, a "science of emotional cognition" (R. Langs), and the other scientific disciplines, philosophy in particular, becomes possible; -look into the possibility of the integration of philosophical and psychoanalytical approches.