A Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis

“Dall’Aglio really understands neuropsychoanalysis, and he presents it lucidly. In addition, he contributes to it, in novel and important respects. By ‘translating’ Lacan into neuropsychoanalytic terms, he also enables one to understand him in a new way (and in my case, for the first time).”

—Mark Solms, University of Cape Town, South Africa

“The tension between brain sciences and psychoanalysis appears unsurmountable: there seems to be no common language between the two. Here enters Dall’Aglio: instead of accepting the gap or privileging one side as the truth of the other, he triumphantly succeeds in mediating the two. Dall’Aglio’s achievement is nothing less than epochal: nothing will be the same after Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis, neither in neuronal sciences nor in psychoanalysis.”

—Slavoj Žižek, University of London, UK, and University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

This book brings together Lacanian psychoanalysis, neuropsychoanalytic work by Mark Solms and Ariane Bazan, Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience, Karl Friston’s free energy principle, Adrian Johnston’s transcendental materialist philosophy, and Darian Leader’s critique of jouissance in Lacanian theory. In doing so, it articulates a philosophical and scientific basis for Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis. A Lacanian perspective on Solms’s recent neuropsychoanalytic developments in affective consciousness and predictive coding furnishes an immanent critique that advances both Lacanian psychoanalysis and neuropsychoanalysis.

Dall’Aglio develops novel propositions for conceptualizing the Lacanian real, symbolic, and imaginary registers in the brain, treating affect systems like signifiers, viewing jouissance as surplus prediction error, and conceiving the brain as structurally antagonistic. It presents fresh theoretical and clinical insights in a manner that will be accessible to the interdisciplinary fields it draws upon. It will appeal to those working in neuropsychoanalysis, clinical psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, and critical theory.

John Dall’Aglio is a Clinical Psychology PhD Student at Duquesne University, USA. His research focuses on the intersection of psychoanalysis and neuroscience, especially Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis.