Posted by 
Modern neuroscience and psychoanalysis may have far more in common than many people realize, according to a new paper published in the neurocognitive journal Entropy. The researchers argue that today’s leading model of brain function shares striking similarities with ideas that originated with Sigmund Freud and have been developed by psychoanalytic theorists for more than a century. They suggest that combining these perspectives could lead to a more complete understanding of how the human mind works.
At the center of the comparison is the prediction paradigm, one of the dominant theories in modern neuroscience. According to this model, the brain constantly generates predictions about what will happen next and then updates those predictions by comparing them with incoming sensory information. Scientists believe this ongoing process helps shape perception, behavior, and emotional regulation.
Researchers Erik Stänicke, Bendik Hovet, Line Indrevoll Stänicke, and colleagues from the Department of Psychology argue that this framework closely resembles long standing psychoanalytic ideas about how people experience and interpret the world.
“For over 130 years, psychoanalysis has developed psychological theories about how predictions take place at a subjective level, which cognitive neuropsychology is now studying at a physiological level.”
Predictions, Projections, and Human Experience
The authors say neuroscience and psychoanalysis are describing many of the same underlying mental processes, but from different perspectives. Neuroscience focuses on the biological and computational mechanisms inside the brain, while psychoanalysis examines how those processes are experienced from a person’s point of view.
One example is the psychoanalytic concept of projection, which the researchers see as closely related to the brain’s predictive processes.
“When we attribute qualities, intentions or feelings to other people, our brain shapes our experience of the world in line with established expectations,” says Stänicke.
According to the researchers, our previous interactions with other people gradually influence what we expect from future relationships and situations.
“This corresponds to the neuroscientific distinction between changing one’s own predictions, perceptual inference, and the attempt to make the world conform to them, namely active inference.”
Brain Predictions and Mental Disorders
The paper also highlights another important similarity. Both predictive neuroscience and psychoanalytic theory describe the mind as a system that seeks stability and predictability, also known as homeostasis, a state of psychological balance.
Within the predictive brain model, this stability is achieved by reducing uncertainty. The brain continually tries to make the world easier to understand by relying on existing expectations.
“Psychoanalysts refer to the tendency in the mind to recreate familiar relational patterns, even when these are poorly adapted,” says Stänicke.
He believes this overlap between the two fields may offer valuable new ways of understanding mental disorders.
“Rigid and persistent symptoms, such as paranoid ideas or an internalized critical voice, may be stable but not very flexible prediction models,” says Stänicke.
“For example, there may be people who automatically expect criticism, rejection or hostility from others, and therefore interpret situations through this filter despite the fact that reality does not warrant it.”
According to the researchers, these deeply rooted mental models can persist because they reduce uncertainty, even if they also distort how reality is perceived. From this perspective, both psychoanalysis and predictive neuroscience help explain why lasting psychological change can take considerable time.
“In addition, both models give us insight into how parts of our expectations of the outside world are not only anchored cognitively, but in procedural memory that is expressed in relational ways of being,” he says.
Stänicke explains that expectations are stored not only as conscious beliefs, but also as deeply ingrained patterns that shape how people respond to and interact with others.
“Therefore, psychotherapy sometimes has to work relationally. For example, new experiences in the relationship between therapist and patient can gradually help to change entrenched relational patterns.”
Toward a More Complete Psychology
The researchers suggest that predictive neuroscience could provide a biological foundation for psychoanalytic ideas, while psychoanalysis could help neuroscience better understand how predictions are experienced, interpreted, and expressed in everyday life and relationships.
“Bringing these two fields together can open up for a more holistic psychology, in which both neurological mechanisms and subjective experience are included. In this way, we can understand subjectivity in a more scientific manner.”