Andrea Clarici: A History of Neuropsychoanalysis | Ep. 4

This episode features Andrea Clarici, a medical doctor and child neuropsychiatrist, who explores the integration of neuroscience and psychoanalysis through the lens of neuropsychoanalysis. Drawing on his background in neurophysiology, medical training, and clinical experience at the Tavistock and Anna Freud clinics, he argues that medicine and psychoanalysis are mutually dependent disciplines, with neuroscience providing scientific models of the mind and psychoanalysis offering crucial insights into subjective experience, emotion, and human relationships. He discusses key developments in neuropsychoanalytic theory, including the dissociation of dreaming from REM sleep, the proposal that the id is fundamentally conscious, and the reconceptualization of unconscious fantasies as automatized predictions. Clarici also examines the application of Bayesian models of mind to clinical practice and his ongoing work investigating the psychological dimensions of bodily illness within hospital settings.