Letter to the Editor by Leon Hoffman

The following is an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times by Leon Hoffman 

To the Editor,
 
Thank you very much for the story on Charles Brenner.
 
I thought your felicitous phrasing of conflict and compromise formation theory has no peer. 

“that the engine of human motivation was more like a psychological calculator, continuously computing ratios of pleasure versus pain: the gratification that would come from a love affair, for instance, versus the risk of discovery and abiding ache of guilt.
In analytic therapy, patients could reach a compromise between incompatible wishes that resolved some of the distress and was useful, Dr. Brenner argued.”
I will certainly quote you as I write about this further. In fact, in your phrasing you highlight the power of this theory and its consistency with our information age as we understand more and more about the power of computation. What is very interesting about the history of psychoanalysis is the tension between structural theories and functional theories.
 
Freud began his career as a neurologist arguing in his monograph on Aphasia against the localization theories of the time, and stressing the complex interactions among various areas of the brain. When he developed psychoanalytic ideas, he vacillated between structural constructs and functional (interaction) constructs.
 
This tension between structure and function continues in psychoanalytic theorizing to this day. Brenner fell in the camp where function is the only conceptualization that matters because when one sits with a patient one is only thinking (consciously and unconsciously) about the current state of the patient. For Brenner, in my opinion, realms of theory (such as constructs as ego, self, objects, etc).which were outside of the immediate clinical encounter were pure speculation and really irrelevant.
 
It is interesting that with our modern development in neuroscience we seem to be returning to giving priority to structure over function. Even though the term “function” is used in fMRI, the goal is to describe in more and more detail the areas of the brain which are responsible for this activity or that activity, whether it be moral behavior or planning.
 
Could one not say, for example, that the current vogue with “Executive function” and its localization in the frontal lobe equivalent to the construct of “ego’ and its residence in a particular portion of the brain?
 
Maybe at one time you will write a story about the parallels between the development of psychology and the development of neuroscience and the constant tension between whether to give priority to structure or to function. Obviously both are central.
 
Best regards
 
Leon