Beyond mental man and neuronal man

By: Lamotte Jean-Luc

To develop a genuine science of man, it should be, not only to get rid of literary, but also, to make an antagonism of neuron (the nerve, which is in one side of the body) and the psyche : l spirit, this means all the rest, which we don not know where it is located. In other words, what I would like to show you, today, is that these two schools of thoughts, which are the neurosciences and psychoanalysis, come under a totally and obsolete dualism, despite the many debates that it continues to generate even today, here or over there.

In the neurosciences, you have a scientific apparatus absolutely remarkable and, in the other hand, this neuroscience has the right to seek in the cortical packaging…but about what? The specialists have never posed the question of how to formulate with precision the “data” they submit to their apparatus. Once again, their apparatus are absolutely wonderful, but that is being used for encephalography, scanners, Magnetic Resonance Imaging etc. that is what they are doing, generally, some of these specialists? Well! They put a guy in a camera, and they tell him: “Go! Think!” And then these scientists say to you: “Do you see the lights? On the right, left! Oh, there! But ask them the question: “What is to think?” At that time, they are going to seat, and they will say “serious problem! We don’t know about that.” In the end this is the projection of the nature sciences (the “nat-science”) that we try to apply it in a simplified form, which is the source of the faculty to know or “cognition” (this is why we call it as a “Cognitive” of something to give.) It is the “Neuronal man” by Pierre Changeux.

Most formidable, still, the neurosciences claim to give a report for almost all of the phenomena culture. Thus, some neurobiology is asking, with the greatest seriousness, if it exist a homosexuality gene, a gene of love, and even a gene of God! I am not inventing anything! I had here a special number of the “Science and life” magazine devoted to the question. It seems that “Neurotheology” is to working! It is done: “It was discovered (I quote) the crucial role of a small molecule among those who have faith.” The “neurotheologue” was questioned about the nature of God, and here is his answer: “Of course, the definition of God that we use is not the one from the theologian’s, which reflect accurately on the nature the attributes of God. To us, it is simply defined as a superior entity, often invisible, and the origin of the world.” We are pretty advanced!

And again: I have looked for, a magazine a “serious” one (“The World of religions”) which has devoted a file review for the question: “Are we programmed to believe?” I cannot resist reading you the first lines of the first article: “The spectacular advances of neurosciences, in particular the techniques of brain imaging, have helped to skip “the ecstasy” scanner. The images of a Buddhist brain…” (But is Buddhism a religion?)… “The Buddhist brain in meditation or the Franciscan’s ones in prayer have shown a neurological particular state, which opens the way to speculate: is the brain programmed to believe, or are religions “derivative” of cognitive processes?” I am not inventing anything. It is from Bouvard and Pécuchet, neither more nor less! You laugh about the “Neurotheology.” Well, be aware about that, in his last book, Changeux has just invented, in some way, the “neuroepistemology,” and the “neuroethic” (“The True, the beautiful, the Good”) “It is enormous!” Flaubert will laugh. I have said enough, I think, that you understand that, neurosciences are, currently, a genuine end of route. Why? Because, this does not possess a rationality human model, the questions that they make are silly. The most formidable thing is that the neurosciences, take it all! All the suckers throw themselves into them. Why it takes that? Here again, because this fact seems serious.

If the neurosciences represent, currently, the “nat-sciences” applied to the man, we can say that the psychoanalysts still practiced their art (they are less and less numerous, it is true, and, in less than ten years, they no longer exist), and they are somewhat the “new philosophers of the man” They talk a lot about losing of sight one of the great Greeks myths, condemning to a neo-philosophy: they represent the persistence of the Renaissance philosophers, exactly as the neuroscience represent the continuation of the “nat-sciences” of the same time. They are dependent of the tradition of “conventional humanities,” the others of positivism. It is true that we can say that any of the two schools has not put, neither a foot, in the field of a genuine Science of man.

In fact, we can consider that neurosciences and psychoanalysis are only half sciences. Some of them have a scientific apparatus absolutely wonderful, and which does not stop of progressing from day to day, but, as they have no model of the man, they do not build their data. The other – psychoanalysts- with this double-bottom that they pose in rights and that they call “unconscious” clearly defines their data, but they have no scientific laboratory to check the validity and their model of man and the pitch that they take on him. You see from where comes their antagonism, antagonism in which it is not to take sides. In other words, the neurosciences are real sciences in what they have a technical apparatus which is constantly progress from day to day but those are the real sciences of a false object, since they have no idea of what is a man. As to the psychoanalysis, we can say that it is the false science of a true object. Then some more conciliatory and another, say: “well let us put a little of ours: we can perhaps understand each other. And see that in the end, we are compatible.” But what can that give, I ask you, the amalgam of nonsense (as far as the amalgam is possible). How, for example, do you want  to hear about the Cognitive which are from God the effect of a molecule, and psychoanalysts which make it a neurosis or “sublimation” of a sexuality (confused with the desire that it inspires)?

Honestly, we can take from psychoanalysis, which had invented Freud, the beginning of a full understanding of this confrontation, what his successors, by laziness or impotence, have completely neglected. The unfortunate Freud, basically, was betrayed by his heirs. About what was he dreaming? About biology which one day will allow to find the cortical packaging of psychoses, of the neuroses, etc. Freud, which was infinitely more intelligent than those from today, wrote in 1920: “Biology is really a field to unlimited possibilities. We must expect to receive form it the lights, the most surprising lights, and we cannot guess the responses which it will give, in some decades, to the questions that we ask. It will perhaps be, and probably, responses such as they will make collapse the entire building of our artificial assumptions” (Gesammelte Werke). We wonder if analysts have never read Freud! That baptized themselves as “the neurologist Viennese” has not ceased to tell that: “All that I say, is very nice, but what will remain is the poetry if we never develop a new biology.” Why new? Because “veterinary” biology was from his time, was inadequate for mental pathologies that he was studying.

Well, this new biology in which Freud was presenting the emergence that (and the one that he dreamed), Jean Gagnepain masterfully presented the foundations in the last book he published prior to his disappearance, and which presents more than one will (“one more reason or one less – About medicine and theology”), in particular the first part of his work named: “Spirit of body, anthropology appreciation.” “Anthropology,” why? Because it is a biology which does not reduce what there is, in the man or in the chimpanzee, but biology of pathologies of the man, which does not excludes, of course, the taking into account of pathologies that we share with animals. Knowing these things, this will certainly make the “Oedipus complex,” no longer exist, either the “narcissism,” nor the “dual relationship” and everything about that. Continue to teach the psychoanalysis model as a dogma is, today, absolutely ridiculous.

You see that Jean Gagnepain is the end of the perennial debate about dualism: spirit against material, psyche against neuron, angel against evil, etc. which is still working on mentalities: nobody accepts having an ill mentality, but everyone accepts to have a little crazy nerve, especially with the stress of modern life etc.! It is true that there is a little more than a century of psychiatry distinguishing the psychastheniques (sick of the psyche,) and the (ill neuron,) I mean, in the one hand, “psychopath” (according to the terminology traditional of psychiatric) which were the mentally ill, and, in the other hand, “neuropaths”, which were, as we say “sick of raw nerves.” But now we can no longer accept the separation of neuron and psyche. The dualism became weak: we cannot say anything, concerning the culture of pathologies, which has a cortical packaging, and therefore neurological disorders. In the end we will have to call the psychology the “human neurology” and neurology, at least the one that is not interested but only in the multiple sclerosis, the “human psychology.” You have there, in a single and the same framework, (and we must insist on the fact that there is no it only one) two aspects of a same reality. We no longer have the right to oppose, a dualistic way what belongs, to the beast and what belongs to the angel. In fact, neurology and psychology are two aspects, natural or cultural, and what belongs to human. In short, there is no neurology, nor psychology: there is no that a single science, which is indeed this “anthropology” whose paternity belongs to Jean Gagnepain.

At the same time, it is not about doing the respective share of somatic and psychic. There is somatic everywhere. If we do not have the cortex that we have, we could not have, no more, the faculties we have now. What we need to review is not at all the ratio between the somatic and the psychic giving more importance to one or the other: it must be admitted that everything is psyquesomatique…or psychosomatic (call in the way you like). A man is an entirely being, so we cannot separate the factors that constitute him. I mean, we must to understand the contradiction of neurology and psychology, with the purpose of better understand the difference in the operation of animals and humans functioning. This difference was not until now sufficiently asked. Or, more exactly, it is raised by variety of specialists (by, ethnologists, neurologists or psychologists) if they do not meet, they will not invade the field of the other without ever happen, not a compromise, (since I have told you that this was impossible,) but to an overrun of their differences.

In other words, we must consider that a man is a spiritual body, or a body spirit, as you want. It is an absurdity to admit that a spirit is intangible. The spirit is the function of the body: we have a different body from the one of the chimpanzee; I mean a body able to make us access to faculties that are the language, technical, society and the rules. It is true that we cannot say that the body is the house, and that there is a spirit which is traveling in the interior. The spirit is the function of the body that we have.

In these conditions, and it is by these words that I will conclude, you understand that to speak of materialism or of spiritualism is a philosophical stupidity. Why? Because, of a side, we put the body, on the other, the spirit. But why do we have to favor one or another? Speaking of the spirit as something which has nothing to do with the body or talk about the body as something which has nothing to do with the spirit is not important. Not a question of opt for one or the other. We are neither body nor spirit, but a type of body particular which enables us to develop mind.

www.theory-mediation.com

Jean-Luc LAMOTTE, Anthropologist and essayist
Disciple of Jean Gagnepain, he published an Introduction in the Theory of the Mediation in the publishing De Boeck (2001), and contributes, at present, to spread the thought of the Master.
Teacher who has passed aggregation by classical literature, he taught at first the linguistics to the College of the Letters of Beirut (University of Lyon), then professed during ten years in preparatory classes in the entrance examinations of the superior teachers’ training colleges (in Montpelier, then in Versailles).
His career led him, on the other hand, to put itself in the service of the distribution of our language and our culture abroad (Means-0rient, Morocco, the United Kingdom). He also had the honor to collaborate in the works of the service of the publications of the Académie française.
Since 1991, he dedicates itself to his researches in clinical anthropology, led within the framework of the activities of the School of Rennes (University of Haute-Bretagne).