Repository | Book | Chapter
(2016) The metamorphoses of the brain, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
If today one must be absolutely materialist, to echo Arthur Rimbaud's dictum, the neuro-turn imposes the question: which materialism? For, as I show in relation to broader society and the neurosciences themselves, materialism is invariably accompanied by its shadow of virtuality. One radical critique would be that the neurosciences fail to realise their own claim of materialism, because they lean, unwittingly on psychological paradigms. In this chapter I engage in a critical dialogue with Adrian Johnston, and his attempt to supplant the psychological rationale of neuroscience with a psychoanalytic one. My contention is that Johnston not only psychologises psychoanalysis, but also adopts a problematic naturalized materialism. In contradistinction to this, I propose that psychoanalysis deals with a decentred materiality, a materiality of Lacan's object a.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-50557-6_3
Full citation:
De Vos, J. (2016). The material brain: a plea for the uselessness of psychoanalysis, in The metamorphoses of the brain, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 53-90.
This document is unfortunately not available for download at the moment.