Psychoanalytic psychotherapies and the free energy principle

Psychoanalytic therapies require a specific setting, psychic state, and processes such as transference, free association, dreaming, play, reflexivity, and narrativity to induce psychic transformations. These transformations involve non-linear processes that take time and involve high entropy states, characterized by an interplay between extension and reduction of free energy. This interplay allows new orders of subjective experience to emerge after states of disorder, following an energetic threshold that modifies mental functioning. High entropy states also foster random functioning and psychic malleability, enabling exploration of subjective experience. The model supports dialogue between psychoanalysis and other fields, including the neurosciences of subjectivity.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this paper I propose a model of the fundamental components of psychoanalytic psychotherapies that I try to explicate with contemporary theories of the Bayesian brain and the Free Energy Principle (FEP). I first show that psychoanalytic therapies require a setting (made up of several envelopes), a particular psychic state and specific processes (transference, free association, dreaming, play, reflexivity and narrativity) in order to induce psychic transformations. I then analyze how these processes of transformations operate and how they can be enlightened by the FEP. I first underline the fact that psychoanalytic therapies imply non-linear processes taking time to unfold and require a setting containing high entropy processes. More precisely, these processes are characterized by an interplay between extension and reduction of free energy. This interplay also favors the emergence of new orders of subjective experience, which occur following states of disorder, according to a certain energetic threshold allowing the modification and improvement of mental functioning. These high entropy states are also characterized by random functioning and psychic malleability which favors the exploration of subjective experience in an original manner. Overall, the approach proposed in this paper support the dialogue between psychoanalysis and other fields of research while underlining how psychoanalytical theoretical and conceptual constructs can also be useful to other disciplines, in particular the neurosciences of subjectivity.