Abstract

Freud, working from a background in clinical neurology and against a backdrop of burgeoning theory development in biology and neurophysiology, thought that the layers of the mind mirrored the layers of the brain although he was well aware of the conceptual problems involved in trying to identify the two. His associationist view, based on a neurobiological and evolutionary approach to the mind tends to underestimate the role of consciousness in a holistic conception of the psyche. The role of language and the disciplines and practices which structure the psyche make it a domain in which negotiated solutions to life challenges are produced from the socio-cultural resources of discourse applied to the biological propensities resulting from innate dispositions and learning history. Although the biological and social realms obey fundamentally different rules, their psychological effects are realised in a common medium — the brain — a fact that can be detached from reductive approaches to psychology or psychiatry and can give substance to the idea of the body being inscribed like a surface on which events have left their trace