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Jaak Panksepps Response: Commentary by HowardShevrinHoward Shevrinaa Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan Medical Center, Riverview Building,900 Wall Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, e-mail:Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Howard Shevrin (1999) Jaak Panksepps Response: Commentary by Howard Shevrin,Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 1:2, 247-250, DOI:10.1080/15294145.1999.10773265

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ONGOING DISCUSSION

Jaak Panksepp's Response: Commentary by Howard Shevrin

Mter reading Panksepp's response to the commentarieson his position paper, in my judgment several importantoutstanding issues still remained. I will address theseissues and conclude with a recommended empirical ap-proach which might deal with them. The issues arethese: (1) the relationship between affect and motiva-tion; (2) the relationships among conscious, uncon-scious, and nonconscious processes; (3) the relationshipbetween psychoanalytic and neuroscience methods.

Affect and Motivation

As I have tried to examine elsewhere (Shevrin, 1997),a widespread tendency exists in psychology, psycho-analysis, and neuroscience to conflate motivation withaffect. When, for example, Panksepp talks about theimportant SEEKING system he describes it as a kindof amorphous affect state with a certain indefinable"oomph." When this system is activated the animalpresumably begins a kind of restless movement in itssurround during which it may encounter food whichthen activates the eating system resulting in eating, ifpresumably the animal is hungry, or it will continueits aimless travels until it encounters something elseof interest, and so on. Yet this does not seem to be

.the way Berridge and Robinson (1995) describe thecraving system they have identified and which Pank-sepp uses as a basis for his SEEKING system. ForBerridge and Robinson a quite specific sensitizationof a particular craving occurs-a craving, for example,for a particular drug. Moreover, this craving operatesentirely independently of whether the stimulus is expe-rienced as pleasurable or unpleasurable. It is on thebasis of this finding and other theoretical considera-tions that I have argued elsewhere (Shevrin, 1997) andin my previous commentary, that experienced pleasure

Dr. Shevrin is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry, Michi-gan University Medical Center.

and unpleasure, which is for many the central affectivedimension, must be separated from the gratification orfrustration of a craving, or more generally of a desire,a wish, or a want-in short a motivation. One can grat-ify the craving for cocaine and feel awful right at thetime, or feel nothing at all. This is the burden of the Ber-ridge and Robinson finding. Panksepp's argument thatmotivation is the name of a class of events which in-clude affects does not accord with these findings or un-derstanding. Affect and motivation are separate mentalevents and have separate neurophysiological instantia-tions.

Once one accepts that affect and motive are dis-tinct mental and neurophysiological events then onecan begin to better appreciate the psychoanalytic em-phasis on the importance of drives. As Yorke makesplain in his commentary, the notion of drive does notaccord with Panksepp's effort to equate it with theamorphous SEEKING system which is inherently ob-jectless and amorphously affective. Rather, as in thespecificity for drug craving, drives are specific to ob-jects which can gratify the drive, most prominently inpsychoanalysis the sexual drive gratified by a rangeof sexual objects. And by the same token, gratificationmay result in unpleasure as well as pleasure, de-pending on context and the vicissitudes of individualdevelopment.

But there is a way in which the objectless charac-ter of Panksepp's SEEKING system might be com-bined with the psychoanalytic conception of drive. Ihave argued elsewhere (Shevrin and Toussieng, 1965;Shevrin, 1997) that in the earliest stage of infancycravings are experienced as peremptory and undeni-able, but without quality, by which I meant that theinfant is unaware of the nature of the gratifying objectalthough the craving itself is object-specific. It requiresa sensitive caretaker to figure out what the craving isabout, or as we say, what the baby needs. Interestingly,Berridge and Robinson consider the craving system tobe unconscious, although it is not clear whether they

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mean unconscious as a mental event or nonconsciousas a purely neurophysiological event, a point to betaken up below. In the grip of a craving the infantmight be said to be in an objectless SEEKING state,although the satisfying object required is quite spe-cific. Perhaps animals are in that craving state whenthey restlessly move about ignorant of the object theyseek. The infant will rather quickly develop beyondthis craving state and, as I have theorized, reach a pointat which they experience wishes, desires, or wants andare now very clearly conscious of the objects theyseek. I suspect that higher mammals reach this stateas well when one considers, for example, how care-fully and systematically social predators like lions andwolves organize hunting parties. They know what theyare after.

The cantankerous problem of psychic energy as-sociated with the concept of drive is best thought of,not as a dimensionless "oomph," but as a capacity todo work, the fundamental meaning of energy. In phys-ics work is measured as the product of the distancean object is translated in space and the force appliedto make it move that distance. Psychic work is bestthought of as the product of a motive force activating apsychological (neurophysiological) system over time.The stronger the motive force, or the longer the timeover which it persists, the more psychic work is beingdone. A craving infant, in need of food, can cry for along time and is thus performing a great deal of work,or the more fitting equivalent phrase would be exercis-ing a great deal of effort. The work I am talking aboutis not the physical effort expended in crying or flailingabout, but the psychic work of persisting in effortfulcraving. Once the craving is transformed into a knowndesire or want, an enormous amount of energy is con-served. And once language is acquired another qualita-tive transformation occurs with even greaterconservation of psychic energy. At the same time,whatever has been in the broad sense repressed andthus has not shared in these efficient transformationsremains at an earlier stage of effort with all of itsinefficient energy expenditures, prominent amongwhich are futile repetitions and reenactments whichamount to persistent effort, or continuing work. Morecould be said as to how this view would account fordisplacements, condensations, and other primary pro-cess manifestations, but for present purposes I simplywish to illustrate how it is possible to distinguishdrives (motivations) from affects and to incorporatean energy concept. The underlying model is not in thestrictest sense hydraulic, but is based on the Shannondefinition of information which must be clearly distin-

Howard Shevrin

guished from the way the term information is used bycognitive psychologists when they talk about informa-tion processing: the former is based on the conceptof reducing uncertainty, the latter on the content ofpsychic processes.

A word more about the primary process. In thisconnection I very much appreciated Panksepp's insis-tently calling attention to what he called the primitiveforce that affect organization can assume, and his will-ingness to consider equating this primitive force withthe psychic energy of drives. I believe that what I havedescribed above might provide an account of whatPanksepp is correctly addressing as important.

Conscious, Unconscious, and Nonconscious

Throughout the various discussions I felt that thesethree terms were being used by the commentators inquite different senses. Solms and Nersessian definedthe unconscious as quantitative and nonrepresenta-tional, but mental nonetheless; consciousness wasqualitative and representational. The neurosciencecommentators, in particular LeDoux, appeared toequate the unconscious with neurophysiological pro-cesses leaving open whether they qualified as mental;in this respect he might have been better served byreferring to these neurophysiological events as non-conscious. When, for example, LeDoux, citing his ownresearch, claimed that it wasn't until the fear pro-cessing in the amygdala activated working memorylocated in the cortex that fear as a conscious experi-ence emerged, he can best be understood as sayingthat nonconscious processes in the amygdala activateconscious processes in the cortex. This would parallelhow we describe any sensory system: light activatesretinal nerve endings, neural impulses are transmittedto the appropriate region of the cortex where con-scious perception emerges; we do not ordinarily con-sider the retinal activation and neural transmission aseither conscious or unconscious-they are simplynonconscious. At what point this nonconscious trans-mission becomes a mental event, either conscious orunconscious, is the crucial and unanswered question,and essentially constitutes a restatement of themind-body problem. For LeDoux the thalamic-amyg-dala circuit is simply part of a sensory system pro-cessing fear stimuli in much the same way that theeye processes visual stimuli. The problem with thisapproach is that we are not simply dealing with a sen-sory transmission process as in vision, but with a rep-resentational event in which something is known in

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Ongoing Discussion

no matter how primitive a form, by which I mean thatwhat is processed in the amygdala is mental as wellas physiological, whereas the sensory transmissionprocess is solely physiological.

As I believe Panksepp makes clear, LeDoux'sversion runs into difficulties precisely for the reasonjust given: for Panksepp affect organizations at alllevels are powerful influences on experience and ac-tion and possess mental status in their own right at alllevels including the thalamic-amygdala level. I believethat most psychoanalysts would concur, despite someconceptual confusion as to whether affects as mentalevents can be unconscious. In my judgment there issubstantial evidence that affects can be unconsciousmental events and are not limited to consciousness, orbe conceived according to LeDoux as nonconsciousphysiological events until cognized (Bernat, Bunce,and Shevrin, submitted; Wong, Shevrin, and Williams,1994; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, and Williams,1996; Shevrin, 1998).

Similarly, Panksepp takes Damasio to task forbasing his view of affect on the James-Lange theorywhich postulates that affects are perceptions of bodilyevents. If I understand Panksepp correctly, affects forhim are intrinsic brain organizations that are inher-ently mental, and which can be activated from variousdirections, including the body. Insofar as affects areperceptions it would seem that for Damasio affects arealways mental events; at what point in the transmis-sion of bodily stimuli perception occurs and how thistransformation takes place returns us to themind-body problem.

Inescapably the sense organ model of conscious-ness rears its head, quite explicitly in Solms and Ner-sessian's exposition of Freud. I have tried to addressthe problems in this model elsewhere (Shevrin, 1998).For present purposes I will limit myself to pointingout that the sense organ model of consciousness as-sumes that the critical cause-and-effect relationshipnecessary to explain mental events is that of a senso-rylike stimulus causing a perceptionlike response. Itis for this reason that Solms and Nersessian hypothe-size that the unconscious is quantitative and nonrepre-sentational in order to provide it with sensorylikeattributes, and consciousness with qualitative proper-ties. LeDoux from a very different perspective appearsto do the same thing, attributing sensory processingproperties to the amygdala and perceptionlike proper-ties to the cortex. Damasio similarly attributes sensorystimulus properties to the body and perceptionlikeproperties to affect' 'perceiving" regions of the brain.Panksepp, if I read him right, is taking a different tack

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and one with which I am in general agreement. Mentalprocesses including affect, whether conscious or un-conscious, are representational and qualitative as adirect result of their inherent organization; they do notacquire representational or qualitative status becausethey are a "perception" of something else. The perti-nent analogy is to how a muscle responds to neuralinnervation: it contracts because that is what it is builtto do; its contraction is not a "perception" of the"sensory" neural input. Similarly, the affect struc-tures of the brain respond to innervations in accordwith their built in structures and functions; they arenot "perceptions" of "sensory" inputs. Perceptionsresult when perceptual structures are activated. Asidefrom theoretical considerations, a growing body ofsubliminal perception and implicit memory researchattests to the qualitative and representational natureof unconscious processes.

As we proceed further in our discourse it will beof critical importance for each to be clear how theterms conscious, unconscious and nonconscious areused.

Psychoanalytic and Neuroscience Methods

In his commentary Green was much concerned withincompatibilities between the psychoanalytic and neu-roscience methods of investigation. While Pankseppwas especially intrigued with the contribution that apsychoanalytic account of subjectivity could make toneuroscience, Green appeared to be worried that thesubjective account rendered by psychoanalysis, andthe objective and in his view necessarily reductiveaccount offered by neuroscience, were simply not onthe same page. Panksepp at one point suggests that itmight be exciting to observe what happens to subjec-tive report in an analytic context under the influenceof various medications. Freud speculated that medica-tions might one day be discovered that directly af-fected drive strength and would thus change theimpulse-defense balance involved, for example, inproducing neurotic symptoms. There have been sev-eral reports in the analytic literature on the impact oflithium treatment on patients in psychoanalysis. Weknow that one effect of lithium is to dampen the mani-cally intensified libido of bipolar patients; often thatis one reason why some of these patients cease takingthe medication. But what effect does dampening libidohave on neurotic compromises based on dealing withpowerful libidinal impulses? Another instance con-cerns the effect of such drugs as Prozac and Anafranil

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in reducing obsessional and compulsive behavior. Ifpsychoanalytic theory is correct that obsessional andcompulsive behavior is often a defense against hostileimpulses, then one might predict that the chemicalaction of these drugs is to reduce the strength of hostileimpulses, as lithium"reduces libido. It might be possi-ble to determine if the drug action is exactly in thosebrain regions involved in aggression.

My point in offering these admittedly speculativeexamples is to argue that it may not be necessary todraw upon the full subtle range of analytically elicitedsubjectivity to test a number of hypotheses of interestto analysts and neuroscientists, although I would notrule this alternative out as I will try to illustrate below.

Some Suggestions for an Empirically BasedConvergence of Psychoanalytic andNeuroscience Methods

In their concluding remarks Solms and Nersessian citea way in which psychoanalytic and neuroscience ap-proaches can be integrated by drawing upon neuropsy-chological lesion studies through which certainhypotheses can be tested bearing on psychoanalyticdream theory as contrasted with alternate theories.This is proving to be a rich and rewarding approachand is methodologically similar to the approach illus-trated above concerning the hypothetical working oflithium, Prozac, and Anafranil. But these approachesdo not deal directly with the analytic clinical situationas Green underscores. Panksepp would like to drawon the richness of subjective experience elicited inthe treatment situation itself. We have made a firstapproach to addressing this problem.

In our research we have combined clinical, cogni-tive, and neurophysiological methods with encourag-ing results (Shevrin, Willimas, Marshall, Hertel, Bond,and Brakel, 1992; Shevrin, Bond, Brakel, Hertel, andWilliams, 1996). We have been able to track electro-physiologically stimuli related to unconscious conflictand conscious symptom experience presented supra-and subliminally. The stimuli have been selected froma series of in-depth" clinical interviews conducted inthe context of a psychodynamic evaluation. Thus farwe have relied on the event-related potential as theneurophysiological marker. It is entirely possible tocombine this electrophysiological marker with neuro-imaging to establish patterns of localization, with skinconductance responses to measure sympathetic activa-tion (see Wong, Shevrin, and Williams [1994] for suchevidence), and with biochemical markers of stress and

Howard Shevrin

other affective states. The subliminal method allows usto operationalize unconscious processing, the clinicalmethod draws upon the full richness of subjectivedata, and the neurophysiological method provides botha converging measure independent of the other twomethods and an entree into brain events.

In closing, I would like to say that the initial posi-tion papers and subsequent commentaries and re-sponses have considerably enriched my knowledgeand stimulated many ideas and new possibilities. Ihope my comments have been of comparable interestto others.

References

Bernat, E., Bunce, S., & Shevrin, H. (submitted), Event-related potentials differentiate positive and negativemood adjectives during both supraliminal and subliminalvisual processing.

Berridge, K. C~, & Robinson, T. (1995), The mind of anaddicted brain: Neural sensitization of wanting versusliking. Curro Direct. Psycholog. Sci., 4:71-76.

Shevrin, H. (1997), Psychoanalysis as the patient: High infeeling, low in energy. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn.,45:841-864.

--- (1998), Why do we need to be conscious? A psy-choanalytic answer. In: Advanced Personality, ed. D. F.Barone, M. Hersen, & V. B. Van Hasselt. New York:Plenum Press.

--Bond, J. A., Brakel, L. A., Hertel, R. K., & Williams,W. J. (1996), Conscious and Unconscious Processes: Psy-chodynamic, Cognitive, and Neurophysiological Conver-gences. New York: Guilford Press.

---Toussieng, P. (1965), Vicissitudes of the need fortactile stimulation in instinctual development. In: ThePsychoanalytic Study of the Child, 20:310-339. NewYork: International Universities Press.

--Williams, W. J., Marshall, R. E., Hertel, R. K.,Bond, J. A., & Brakel, L. A. (1992), Event-related poten-tial indicators of the dynamic unconscious. Conscious-ness & Cognit., 1:340-366.

Wong, P., Shevrin, H., & Williams, W. J. (1994), Consciousand unconscious processes: An ERP index of an antici-patory response in a visual masking paradigm. Psycho-physiology, 31:87-101.

Howard ShevrinDepartment of PsychiatryUniversity ofMichigan Medical CenterRiverview Building900 Wall StreetAnn Arbor, MI 48105e-mail: shevrin@umich.edu

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