Buried but not dead: resuscitating psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century

This paper argues that psychoanalysis is not dead, but in the process of being revived in a more cogent and less erroneous form so it may thrive in the twentieth century. The weak adaptive position is seen as the key error in mainstream psychoanalytic theory. Erroneous concepts, like the primacy of inner fantasies and memories in emotional life and the role of so-called transferences in psychotherapy, have been derived from this base. Affording current psychoanalytic thinking a strong adaptive position that sees coping with environmental impingements as the primary task of the human emotion-processing mind sets straight many existing misconceptions. Revising psychoanalysis in light of a strong adaptive position brings it into line with the theory of evolution, the basic theory of biology. It also clarifies the nature of dreams and leads to the creation of a quantitative, mathematically based, formal science of psychoanalysis replete with laws and regularities. Also explored is the neglect of the emotion-processing mind and efforts to overshadow mental concepts with ideas about the brain from neuroscience. The dangers of this loss of mind are reviewed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role played by existential death anxiety in the perpetuation of the errors rife in classical psychoanalytic thinking. Lessening our use of denial mechanisms in response to death anxieties is a key requisite for advancing psychodynamic theories in the next one hundred years.