Lacan’s Attitude Toward the Neuroscience of Freud’s Project: A Neuropsychoanalytic Reading of Seminar VII

Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis and its discontents

Neuropsychoanalysis is an interdisciplinary field which seeks to link the findings of psychoanalysis with those of neuroscience. It views these two disciplines and their respective scientific objects (mind and brain) as two perspectives of the same underlying thing in nature. Combining the methodological advances afforded by modern neuroscience with the findings of psychoanalysis which privilege subjectivity in the clinical encounter creates an opportunity for radical advances in studying the mental apparatus (Dall’Aglio, 2022; Solms & Turnbull, 2002). 

Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis applies a specifically Lacanian perspective to neuroscience and non-Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2007; Bazan et al., 2021; Dall’Aglio, 2024a; Johnston, 2019; Morin, 2018). Due to Lacan’s heavy philosophical emphasis, privileging of language, and insistence on various forms of non-harmony, neuroscience faces unique challenges in attempting to dialogue with Lacanian psychoanalysis. Many anti-naturalist Lacanians criticize neuroscience on several fronts. For example, there is a risk of bio-reductionism and loss of psychoanalytic specificity when “translating” concepts into neuroscientific terms (Laurent, 2014). This is particularly the case when the materiality of the signifier is sought in the materiality of neural tissue (e.g., Ansermet & Magistretti, 2007; Bazan, 2011). 

Moreover, Lacan (in)famously employed (quasi)mathematical formulas, set theory, topology, and other abstract formulations to formalize psychoanalysis and the subject of the unconscious. For Lacan, the subject is principally empty, possessing no content – a void or lack in being which endlessly slips beneath the chain of signifiers. Redmond (2015) has asserted that neuroscience, by seeking to ground psychoanalytic concepts in the brain, cannot—in principle—capture the “empty” subject of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Along similar lines, Vanderveken (2018) has highlighted that the homeostatic principles according to which the brain operates are at odds with the death drive and jouissance. Jouissance drives a hole in homeostasis and cognition, rendering it incompatible with the instinctual systems and cognitive faculties taxonomized in affective and cognitive neuroscience.

Ferraro (2022) highlights the danger of discursive importation from neuroscience to psychoanalytic practice. The clinic of psychoanalysis is oriented toward the singularity of each subject, revealed and constructed through their speech, history, and broader social field. According to Ferraro, not only does neuropsychoanalysis misstep in seeking to explain or understand clinical phenomena in neurobiological terms; neuropsychoanalysis is, as it were, looking in the wrong place. The unconscious is not in the brain but out there in speech and the social order (see also de Vos, 2024). Neuropsychoanalysis risks importing a normative ethics of statistical averaging (along with bio-political control) into clinical practice. 

Elsewhere, I have addressed some of these criticisms (Dall’Aglio, 2019, 2020, 2022), many of which arise from misunderstandings of (neuro)biology (see also Leader, 2024). These criticisms also misunderstand or do not recognize the philosophical lens taken in (Lacanian) neuropsychoanalysis to non-reductively conceptualize the mind-brain relationship (Dall’Aglio, 2022, 2024b, 2024c; Johnston, 2019). Here, I will build on these prior rejoinders in relation to Lacanian commentaries on the neuroscientific dimensions of Freud’s (1895) Project for a Scientific Psychology.

Freud’s Project is arguably the first neuropsychoanalytic document. The fact that Freud sought to connect (eventual) psychoanalytic concepts with neurobiology is praised by those supporting a bridge between psychoanalysis and neuroscience. However, Lacanians frequently highlight not only that Freud abandoned the Project as an “abomination.” They argue that the neurobiological dimension is a secondary covering of what are fundamentally psychoanalytic ideas in the budding years of psychoanalysis. Commentaries by Lacanians—specifically Miller (1987), Laurent (2008), and Balzarini (2024)—characterize Lacan’s (1959–1960) reading of the Project in Seminar VII as a rupture from neurobiology. The emphasis on the signifier and sexuality (death drive, jouissance) is incompatible with and thereby rejects neurobiology. 

These criticisms would seemingly undermine any attempt at a Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis—were it not for the fact that Lacan’s actual comments on the neuroscience of Freud’s Project are much more nuanced. Lacan’s attitude toward neuroscience in Seminar VII—like his discussions on the mirror stage (Johnston, 2012) and metaphor and metonymy (Dall’Aglio, 2023b)—does not dismiss biology. Rather, biological concepts are informed by his meta-psychology and are a site of converging support for a topology of the mental apparatus compatible with a neuronic apparatus. The casting of signifier or neural trace is a false choice which obscures exploring how Lacan’s meta-psychological topology applies to subjective experience and the brain.

Lacanian criticisms of Freud’s neuroscience in the Project

Rejecting the neurological trace in favor of the signifier

Let us begin with the Lacanian privileging of the signifier—the differential element of language taken to be the material support for psychoanalytic praxis and subjective topology. Throughout the Project, Freud emphasizes the facilitations of different neuronal memory systems. At the most basic level, these facilitations refer to the consolidation of neurological traces: permanent alterations in (assemblages of) neurons which correspond to laying down memories of an experience due to the passage of energy (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2007; Bazan, 2024). Where many readings of the Project (Pribram & Gill, 1976) or Freud’s (1891) On Aphasia (Solms & Saling, 1986) see Freud articulating a model of the mind-brain relationship (e.g., linking the psychological phenomenon of memory to neurological traces), Lacanians instead read “shades of signifiers” (Miller, 1987, p. 23). 

At one level, this emphasis on signifiers over neurological traces is epistemological. For example, Jacques-Alain Miller does not reject that there are biological facts (e.g., we are biological organisms, with some universal biological features). Rather, he claims that psychoanalytic practice itself makes no contributions to biology (or to physics), as psychoanalysis is first and foremost an exchange of speech. In this view, Freud’s Project is a development of psychoanalytic thinking; it is not a contribution to neurobiology. Let us explicitly note the claim here: psychoanalysis does not generate knowledge which contributes to biology.

Miller makes another epistemological criticism against relying on biology as the “guarantee” of psychoanalytic work (Miller, 1987, p. 16). For instance, one might assert the reality of psychical trauma by claiming that it is inscribed in the brain. Here, biological materiality is taken to be the epistemological (and potentially ontological) support for psychoanalytic ideas and practice. The issue here is that, in psychoanalytic work, there is no intervention directly on the body (e.g., the analyst does not order a brain scan). For Lacanians, language itself is the material support of psychoanalysis: 

It [biology] is a vacuous reference for psychoanalysts; an effort to guarantee that they have a material correspondent to what they experience. But practically, is that the material of things? What you have to take into account is that language is the material. (Miller, 1987, p. 23)

Let us note this additional claim: the signifier is the material of psychoanalytic practice. The systems Freud describes in the Project do not find their support in the brain, but rather in the signifier. This Lacanian reading of the Project finds a signifying support, not a neuronal support, for the psychical apparatus. Signifier and neuron are opposed here. In his return to Freud’s Project, “Lacan substituted references to the sciences of language for the biological references of Freud” (Miller, 1987, p. 22).

These criticisms lead to the conclusion that neurological traces are, in fact, irrelevant to psychoanalysis. Éric Laurent argues that Lacan’s reading of the Project used the resources of structural linguistics and cybernetics to

situate the impasses of this memory’s functioning…Lacan, then, broke the direct link with the analogy of neurological traces by  rejecting that the Freudian “traces” inscribe themselves on the nervous system, claiming, by contrast, that they “are signifiers.” (Laurent, 2008) 

The shift to reading “signifiers” in the Project is cast as a rejection of “neurological traces” which “inscribe themselves on the nervous system.” Rather, the “impasses” of memory are produced by the parasitic impingement of the signifier upon the body. What is realized in the body is not an “analogy of neurological traces” (analogy indicating something imaginary) but instead “the impossible to represent” (Laurent, 2008). Note the shift to the symbolic (signifiers) and real (impasses of memory) invoked in the rejection of neurological traces. Real and symbolic are here opposed to (imaginary) neurobiology. 

Any attempt, then, to draw analogies to neurological traces is dismissed as psychotic—in the precise sense of foreclosing any lack in translation from subjective to biological (Laurent, 2014). Marco Balzarini steadfastly makes this point: 

Freud had already stated that theorizing about the inscription of subjective representations in neurons is a delirium…Although the ideas of this Project contain the germ of what will later be the basis of fundamental concepts in psychoanalysis, it must be assumed that such concepts came to light on the condition that Freud managed to separate himself from the neuronal paradigm. (Balzarini, 2024, p. 74)

We can articulate another claim: the emphasis on the signifier necessitates a rejection of neurological traces. 

Energy, homeostasis, sexuality, and drive

Lacanians assert that the death drive, a concept central to Lacan’s formulations of the insistent tension of sexuality and jouissance, is antithetical to biology. Both Miller (1987) and Balzarini (2024) cast biological systems as reflex systems which receive stimulation and react to discharge that excitation. Here, the primary process of the nervous system, from a biological standpoint, aims at homeostatic minimization of tension.

Yet, Freud’s Project articulates the necessity for the psyche to tolerate a minimum level of tension: an indestructible wish, a constant pressure, an urgency of life which perturbs the psychical apparatus—clear anticipations of the (in)famous death drive which lays beyond the pleasure principle. Due to the exigencies of life and prematurational helplessness, the child must rely on another person (see below) to satisfy the drives. In the experience of satisfaction, various facilitations are laid down, including paths for the specific action. Two phenomena occur here. First, the psyche must tolerate a minimal level of tension when drive arises to inhibit immediate (primary process) discharge and instead find the specific action. Here one can observe the secondary process which inhibits the tendency toward immediate discharge. Second, the facilitated traces of the specific action themselves maintain a level of tension, an indestructible wish which insists on its own repetition (Bazan, 2024; Freud, 1895; Miller, 1987). 

Lacanians assert that this dimension—maintenance of tension, an indestructible wish underlying the repetition compulsion—is anathema to biology. Miller claims that there is no “biological urgency” like the wish that “never changes” (Miller, 1987, p. 21). Laurent (2008) claims that Freud’s energy in the Project is “irreducible to biological quantities as such” and that it is “reserved for experiences belonging exclusively to the domain of sexuality.” And Balzarini asserts:

If there is no cancellation for that stimulation, which comes from the body, then the flight reaction, the reflex act, is not enough as a defense to free oneself from the displeasure produced by the tension charge. Another proof of the lack of relationship between the nervous system and mental life. (Balzarini, 2024, p. 70)

In other words, these Lacanian readings of the Project claim that Freud’s conception of energy (constant tension, pressure, and insistent wishing) is incompatible with biology. The biological is the domain of instinctual reflex and discharge; the psychical is the domain of irremovable sexual pressure and the death drive. If biological homeostasis is incompatible with psychoanalytic drive, and Freud’s Project develops an apparatus which defies homeostasis (constant pressure, insistent wishing), then Freud’s Project in fact frees itself from biology (Balzarini, 2024; Miller, 1987).

The role of the Other

Merton Gill, coauthor of one of the first neurobiological assessments of Freud’s Project (Pribram & Gill, 1976), asked Jacques–Alain Miller about certain universal contents due to humanity’s common biological endowments. Gill recognized the role of the signifier in the idiosyncratic ways individuals may relate to these biological facts. Nevertheless, he highlighted that there are biological universals which provide innate meanings, a “universality of the signified” arising from the biological body (Gill, in Miller, 1987, p. 20). Today, this question might be updated in the form of homeostatic, basic emotional systems common to all mammals which render emotions intrinsically meaningful (Panksepp, 1998). For example, separation distress means that it is bad to be separated from caregivers. Feeling optimistically engaged means that it is good to proactively explore our environments. Emotional systems, which are necessarily valanced in pleasure–unpleasure series, bestow an innate set of biological values (Solms, 2020).

Miller acknowledges universal biological urges: “Sure we are biological creatures, and sure there are biological determinants” (Miller, 1987, p. 21). However, he responds to Gill by highlighting two facts in the Project: the child is born prematurationally helpless and must cry in a turn to the Other. The universal biological urges are defiled (denaturalized, ripped from their homeostatic reflexology) in the cry, warped and shaped by language. Freud (1895) further emphasizes that the cry itself is insufficient to achieve satisfaction, that another fellow human being must intervene. This Other facilitates the experience of satisfaction. This inaugurates a psychical domain (the relation to the Other) which is argued to be distinct from biology:

And from the beginning, the satisfaction of those biological urgencies necessitates the calling of the other. In that sense the biological urge is already modified because you know very well that what has begun to be more important than the satisfaction of thirst is that the other respond to the call. (Miller, 1987, p. 21)

Laurent links this social domain to the issue of sexual tension:

By forming the hypothesis that there exists something “beyond” the pleasure principle, Freud consummated his rupture with the biological mechanisms presupposed in the “Project,” and Civilization and Its Discontents affirmed that one must search for what is impossible to discharge—i.e., the impossible at the core of sexual satisfaction as such—in its connection to the social link. We pass, then, from the oeuvre of biological references to Freud’s anti-biological hypothesis, where the relationship of the body to the social implies an essential relation to a death that is no longer biological. (Laurent, 2008)

These Lacanian readings of the Project interpret the child’s cry to the Other as indicating: (1) the constant sexual tension which is impossible to discharge and therefore not biological; (2) the turn to the social, via the Other, inaugurating a further separation from biology. The demand for love supersedes the need for nourishment. This primordial social link is Freud’s “anti–biological hypothesis.” 

Laurent claims that Freud fully develops these ruptures from biology in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Civilization and its Discontents. Yet, precursors to the death drive (irremovable tension, exigencies of life, repetitive wish) and the social link (the premature child’s turn to the Other for the experience of satisfaction) are already present in the Project (Balzarini, 2024; Miller, 1987). These facts fuel the Lacanian argument that the rupture from biology is already immanent to the (metaphoric biological language in the) Project.

We can formulate an additional Lacanian reading of the Project. Although biological universals exist, the child’s turn to the Other to deal with the impossibility of sexuality inaugurates a social link which ruptures the relevance of any biological mechanisms.

Lacan’s attitude toward the Project in Seminar VII

In Seminar VII, when introducing the fundamental concept of das Ding (a conceptually crucial step for later developments of objet a, the real, the Other, etc.), Lacan offers his own interpretation of the Project. He is clear that his commentary is not merely a summary:

You all know that on occasion I know how to take liberties with Freud’s texts and affirm my distance…I am proposing not simply to be faithful to the text of Freud and to be its exegete, as if it were the source of an unchanging truth that was the model, mold and dress code to be imposed on all our experience. (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 37)

Such comments might license the above Lacanian arguments that Lacan reads signifiers rather than neurological traces and biology in the Project. However, I will demonstrate—by discussing Lacan’s Seminar VII commentary on the Project—that Lacan’s attitude toward Freud’s neuroscience is much more nuanced. Specifically, I will show Lacan’s position that (1) the neuronic apparatus (and its neurological traces) is compatible with the logic of the signifier, (2) the drives reflect a rift within biological homeostasis, rather than a dimension separate from biology, and (3) the split between the biological and the social Other is inscribed into the biological itself. These remarks problematize the above Lacanian readings of the Project which seek to dismiss Freud’s neuroscience and divorce psychoanalysis from neuroscience. 

Facilitations and the structure of language

Much of Freud’s Project deals with different neurone systems. The φ system retains no modification or facilitation based on the passage of excitation. The ψ system, in contrast, retains permanent modifications in the facilitations between neurones, enabling the possibility of memory (representation; Vorstellung). The ω system furnishes indications of reality to distinguish internally–generated perceptions (hallucinations) from externally–generated perceptions. Among these systems, ψ is emphasized as retaining the history of experiences (of satisfaction, pain, etc.) via the mechanism of facilitation (Freud, 1895). Here, Lacan sees the precursor to the unconscious as a system of Vorstellungen wedged between perception and consciousness. In contemporary terms, facilitation corresponds to memory consolidation: changes in the synaptic connections between neurons based on prior experiences (Ansermet & Magistretti, 2007). 

Recall Laurent’s (2008) claim that Lacan’s recourse to linguistics and cybernetics leads him to reject analogy with neurological traces and formulate the impossibility of memory. However, Lacan does not simply reject neurological facilitations as Laurent suggests. Commenting on the issue of memory traces and the unconscious, Lacan invokes his aphorism: “the unconscious itself has in the end no other structure than the structure of language” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 32). At this point, he makes an unexpected invocation of atomistic theories of the nervous system:

It is this that gives value to atomistic theories. The latter do not cover any of those things they claim to cover, namely, a certain number of atoms of the neuronic apparatus, supposedly individualized elements of the nervous system. But, on the other hand, the theories of relations of contiguity and continuity illustrate admirably the signifying structure as such, insofar as it is involved in any linguistic operation. (Lacan, 1959–1960, pp. 32–33)

Here, Lacan is remarkably close to dynamic neuropsychology (Freud, 1891; Luria, 1976; Kaplan–Solms & Solms, 2002; Solms & Saling, 1986) in rejecting an emphasis on “supposedly individualized elements of the nervous system,” whether those be neurons or neural centers, in favor of interactions between neuronal elements and centers. As might be expected, he puts a linguistic spin by highlighting “relations of contiguity and continuity” (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 33). Yet, Lacan says this is the “value” of “atomistic theories” (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 32). These models of the nervous system “illustrate admirably the signifying structure as such” (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 33). Lacan is arguing that the atomistic theories of the nervous system reveal contiguous and continuous relationships between neural elements. In other words, the nervous system itself has a signifying structure.

Lacan makes a similar theoretical move when elaborating his interpretation of facilitation. He criticizes Strachey’s translation of the German Bahnung as facilitation:

Bahnung suggests the creation of a continuous way, a chain, and I even have the feeling that it can be related to the signifying chain insofar as Freud says that the development of the ψ apparatus replaces simple quantity by quantity plus Bahnung, that is to say its articulation. The English translation, “facilitation,” slides over the thing (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 39).

Here, ψ does not only involve quantities of energy (which pass easily through φ). In ψ, Freud highlights “quantity plus Bahnung,” which Lacan links to the signifying chain. Rather than a static memory trace, the permanent alteration in ψ encoding a Vorstellung, Lacan reads in Bahnung a creation of a chain, a network of memory traces involving relations of continuity and contiguity. 

One might interpret Lacan’s claim that “facilitation” “slides over the thing” as supporting the notion that neurological traces (facilitations as memory consolidation) miss the mark. On this point, I would agree: a static notion of memory does indeed miss the crucial dimension of an interrelated system of Vorstellung organized via Bahnungen. Yet, this is a comment on the structural quality of Vorstellung or neurological traces; there is no necessity to dismiss the possibility that neurological traces are articulated in a continuous, inter–related fashion (see Ansermet & Magistretti, 2007; Luria, 1976).

However, Lacan’s polysemy here is helpful. Not only does facilitation perhaps miss the signifying chain–like quality of Bahnung. Bahnung itself slides over the thing, the ultimate Thing: das Ding as the impossible–to–cognize void around which the Vorstellungen circulate. Lacan later affirms this interpretation:

In this orientation to the object, the regulation of the threat, the Vorstellungen relate to each other in accordance with the laws of a memory organization, a memory complex, a Bahnung (that is to say, a facilitator, but also, I would say more decidedly, a concatenation) whose neuronic apparatus perhaps allows us to glimpse those operations in a material form, and whose functioning is governed by the law of the pleasure principle. (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 58)

The Vorstellungen are organized in the fashion of Bahnungen, an interconnected network or concatenation around das Ding – never sufficiently filling the void yet oriented toward it. Linking Bahnung not merely to the signifying chain but also to a concatenation or an interrelated network of elements is consilient not only with Lacan’s links between cybernetics and linguistic organization. Recall his previous remark on atomistic theories of the nervous system which also illustrate the interrelationships of continuity and contiguity illustrative of linguistic structure. This is why Lacan can also say that the “neuronic apparatus perhaps allows us to glimpse those operations [of Vorstellungen organized via Bahnungen] in a material form” (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 58). 

Simply put, the materiality of the signifier might be grasped in the materiality of the brain insofar as they share a common organization of interrelated elements (Bazan, 2011; Dall’Aglio, 2024b, 2024c). Insofar as Lacan highlights that those material operations of the neuronic apparatus are governed by the laws of the pleasure principle, one can add that the Vorstellungen too (which Lacan reads as signifiers)—in accordance with the laws of memory organization in their facilitated circulation around das Ding—also obey the pleasure principle. Lacan’s actual comments are far from rejecting neurological traces, as many Lacanian arguments suggest. These organizational principles (pleasure principle, signifying chain, continuous and contiguous structure, etc.) are features which Lacan applies to the neuronic apparatus. Indeed, they might be glimpsed in the study of the brain.

A divided homeostasis

Recall that homeostasis (with its reflex–logic of discharging tension) is supposedly incompatible with the (Lacanian) death drive, sexuality, and jouissance (Balzarini, 2024). This is claimed to justify reading Freud’s Project as not biologically oriented (Miller, 1987) and as developing an anti-biological hypothesis (Laurent, 2008). Yet, Lacan’s actual remarks on homeostasis are quite surprising. Lacan inverts typical (non-Lacanian) readings of the reality principle which see it as bringing the organism into more accurate contact with the physical world. Instead, Lacan asserts that “it is clear that it [the reality principle] functions, in fact, to isolate the subject from reality” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 46).

One might expect Lacan to follow this remark with some reference to psychical reality or the signifier (as he does elsewhere). Yet, here, Lacan surprisingly invokes homeostasis: “We find in it [the reality principle] nothing more than that which biology, in effect, teaches us, namely, that the structure of a living being is dominated by a process of homeostasis, of isolation from reality” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 46).

This remark offers crucial insight into Lacan’s attitude toward and reading of biology. Within biology, Lacan sees homeostasis (and the reality principle) as isolating the organism from reality. In other words, the biological principle of homeostasis is not adaptive to reality. Homeostasis, as a reflex mechanism, is a tendency to discharge impingements from reality, not to mold oneself to reality. 

But wait! The critical Lacanian ear might be quick to point out that Lacan is here comparing homeostasis and the reality principle (rather than the pleasure principle guided by direct discharge). This reality principle, as Lacan develops in his reading of the Project, is not merely a corrective mechanism (which might be interpreted as adaptational). It is first and foremost perturbed by the Not des Lebens (the exigencies of life) and forced to maintain tension in order to find the specific action which eventually discharges some tension. Is this not an anti–biological, anti–homeostatic position?

Here we must emphasize that Lacan invokes biological homeostasis in his development of the reality principle. It isolates from reality. What the organism instead orients toward is the specific action as the means for metabolizing some of the tension from the Not des Lebens. In Lacan’s reading, this process is, in fact, within homeostasis.

But again, the critical Lacanian might say that I am slipping between the homeostasis of the pleasure principle and the logic of the reality principle: These are two contradictory principles. I agree, and this is precisely what Lacan argues in his reading of the Project. Freud’s neuronic apparatus is organized by a primary process pleasure principle which is insufficient to deal with the Not des Lebens. It is supplemented, not complemented, by a secondary process reality principle which installs a repetition compulsion via the specific action that in no way guarantees adaptation to reality. The imperfection of one system leads to the development of a second imperfect system which often fails. This is a division within the neuronic apparatus, a division within homeostasis. Homeostasis itself is divided between the tendency toward direct discharge (pleasure principle) and the necessity to maintain tension to find the specific action (reality principle). 

What Lacan critiques is not biological homeostasis. His issue is with an interpretation of homeostasis (and the reality principle) as adaptive to reality. For him, biology itself finds that homeostasis (whether in the pleasure principle or the reality principle) ultimately isolates the structure of the living being from reality. 

Consider Lacan’s later comment on homeostasis:

the homeostasis of the nervous system, which is the site of autonomous regulatory mechanism, is distinct from the general homeostasis (with all the potential for conflict that that implies), the homeostasis which activates the balance of moods. The balancing of moods occurs, but as an order of stimulation arising from within. (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 59)

One might claim that Lacan severs the “homeostasis of the nervous system” and its “autonomous regulatory mechanism” (i.e., the pleasure principle’s immediate discharge) from “general homeostasis.” However, this would contradict Lacan’s previous remark connecting biological homeostasis to the reality principle. Lacan does not say that neural homeostasis is distinct from the libido (as Laurent argues; see above). Lacan is making a more profound argument. Homeostasis itself is split, between “autonomous regulatory mechanism” and the general homeostasis of moods, “with all the potential for conflict that it implies” (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 59). In other words, the division of homeostasis again falls between an autonomous pleasure principle and a conflict of moods which leads to the irremovable tension at the core of the reality principle. Nowhere does Lacan say these features are incompatible with biology.

Topology of the neuronic apparatus

When discussing the child’s turn to the Other, Lacan makes a remark which might be seen as supporting a divorce from biology in his reading of the Project:

the pleasure principle cannot be inscribed in a biological system…the subject’s experience of satisfaction is entirely dependent on the other…the Nebenmensch…it is through the intermediary of the Nebenmensch as speaking subject that everything that has to do with the thought processes is able to take shape in the subjectivity of the subject. (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 39)

These comments are important to contextualize. The first line—“the pleasure principle cannot be inscribed in a biological system”—is Lacan’s summary of a presentation by Laplanche and Pontalis on the Project. While Lacan accepts this, he calls it a “paradox” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 39). With the remarks we have already discussed, we might wonder whether this paradox arises from Lacan’s link between the biology of homeostasis and both the pleasure and reality principles.

The key signifier here is “inscribed”. The paradoxical difficulty is not between the pleasure principle and the biological system but the fact that a biological system alone fails to inscribe the pleasure principle—that is, fails to achieve the satisfaction of discharge due to the Not des Lebens. This is why Lacan says that “the mystery isn’t so great if we see that… the subject’s experience of satisfaction is entirely dependent on the other” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 39). A biological system requires an Other to intervene, to provide the specific action which facilitates the experience of satisfaction. Crucially, this intervention from the Other inscribes a facilitation (a signifying chain) in the biological system which shapes the subsequent thought processes of the subject.

The critical Lacanian might here say that this licenses the shift away from biology, instead toward the Other and the social link. But let us consider Lacan’s depiction of the Project’s Nebenmensch (the primordial Other)—which can be carved along the topology of Lacan’s three registers. There is the fellow human being to whom the subject can relate and understand (imaginary). In relation to the Nebenmensch who appears as a speaking subject in relation to the drives, certain representations (Vorstellungen; signifiers) emerge and impinge upon the subject as paths toward (repeating) the experience of satisfaction (symbolic). And there is the monstrously unknown dimension of the Nebenmensch, the gaping void (das Ding) around which the Vorstellungen gravitate but never fill (real). One can observe here the social (signifier, symbolic) and sexual (impossible, real) dimensions invoked by Laurent (2008) in the rejection of biological traces.

For Lacan, these three registers demarcate the Nebenmensch as an “original division of the experience of reality” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 52). That is, this topology is logically prior to the clear organization of inside and outside: das Ding is the “first outside” prior to the organism’s detour through “external reality” in search of the impossible–to–refind lost object (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 52).

But Lacan describes das Ding not merely as the unknown dimension of the Other. This void is affirmed “through an unchanging apparatus, which remains together as a thing, als Ding” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 51). In other words, there is not only an unknown, unchanging piece of the Other; this is also a feature of the neuronic apparatus. Here, Lacan sticks to Freud’s twisted, extimate topology:

The perceptual complex, if it is compared with other perceptual complexes, can be dissected into a component portion, neurone a, which on the whole remains the same, and a second component portion, neurone b, which for the most part varies. Language will later apply the term judgment to this dissection and will discover the resemblance which in fact exists between the nucleus of the ego and the constant perceptual component [on the one hand] and between the changes cathexes in the pallium [on the other]; it [language] will call neurone a the thing [das Ding] and neurone b its activity or attribute—in short, its predicate. (Freud, 1895, p. 328, emphases in the original)

The division of the Nebenmensch into uncognizable das Ding and cognizable attribute is also a division within the neuronic apparatus: between the ψ nucleus (with unchanging cathexes, constantly bombarded with stimuli from the drives) and the ψ pallium (with changing cathexes). This is not a division between biology and socially–induced sexual impossibility. It is a division within the unconscious itself (Copjec, 2004).

One might argue that Freud’s language of neurones here is metaphoric and that what he is truly describing is the topology of the subject (not the brain), where there is an extimate real which reverberates with the Other as das Ding. But this interpretation is difficult to tally alongside Lacan’s remark that Freud’s Project describes a “a topology of subjectivity, of subjectivity insofar as it arises and is constructed on the surface of an organism” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 40). It is not merely that signifiers are related to the organism and realized at points of impossibility within the living being (Laurent, 2008). Once again, Lacan’s claim is much deeper. Lacan appears to propose that the topology he develops is applicable to both subjective experience as elucidated in psychoanalysis and the organization of the neuronic apparatus.

A later discussion of das Ding and pain further supports this theoretical stance. Lacan notes that pain (or, more specifically, jouissance) is one indicator of the proximity of das Ding. In the Project, pain indicates the impossibility of motor discharge, of the flight reaction (cf. Laurent’s remarks on the subject realizing itself through impossibility). This leads Lacan to claim that pain is not simply a “sensory reaction”; it is “an intermediary between afferent and efferent,” between sensory and motor neural systems (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 59). 

This reasoning, however, does not inspire separation from biology (as Balzarini and Laurent would have it). At this point, Lacan shares that his hypothesis is, in part, inspired by neurobiology:

Besides – this idea occurred to me a long time ago, and I hope you will not find it absurd – in the organization of the spinal marrow, the neurons and axons of pain coexist at the same level and at the same spot as certain neurons and axons of the tonic motor system. (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 59)

Lacan’s meta-psychological development here draws upon both psychological (i.e., pain at the impossibility of motor response) and neurobiological (i.e., the organization of pain and tonic motor neurons in the spinal cord) lines of evidence. Indeed, Lacan appears to be expressing an anticipation familiar to those working in neuropsychoanalysis: that suspicious colleagues might find our neurobiological inspirations “absurd”. It is not a leap to claim that Lacan is here thinking neuropsychoanalytically.

Later, Lacan discusses the ego’s original defense against das Ding as “hurting itself” by way of a symptomatic lie, analogous to a crab giving up its own claw (Lacan, 1959-1960, p. 73). In this, Lacan finds further evidence for “the connection I [Lacan] developed between the motor system and pain” (Lacan, 1959–1960, p. 73). Why would Lacan make these remarks if his effort was to divorce psychoanalytic ideas from the neurobiological baggage of the Project? It is clear that Lacan’s meta–psychological topology (of signifying chains, das Ding, pain, and so on) is an overarching model which not only applies to the neuronic apparatus but also finds support from neurobiology (the atomistic theories of the nervous system, the organization of the spinal neurons). 

Implications of Lacan’s reading of the Project

Let us recall the Lacanian arguments for why the Lacanian reading of the Project is a rupture from biology. 

• Attention to the signifier licenses a rejection of the neurological trace; they are distinct domains. 
• The constant pressure of the drive, ineliminable by the reflex, is at odds with biological homeostasis; therefore, the Project develops an anti–biological hypothesis. 
• The dependence on the Other for the experience of satisfaction transcends the biological level of urges and homeostasis.

It suffices to note a common feature across these critiques: The biological and psychoanalytic appear to be separate domains with different organizational principles (e.g., trace versus signifier; drive versus homeostatic reflex; Other versus biology). In contrast, Lacan’s actual comments support a more integrative view: The apparent division between the biological and the psychoanalytic is, in fact, a division within the neuronic apparatus—that is, a division within the biological. 

Lacan’s comments on the neuroscience in the Project can be summarized as:

• The organization of signifiers (Vorstellungen) in a signifying chain (Bahnung) is a continuous and contiguous linguistic structure whose operations can appear in material form in the neuronic apparatus.
• The constant pressure of the drive which intervenes at the level of the reality principle is also a feature of homeostasis. Homeostasis is itself divided between immediate discharge (pleasure principle) and orientation toward tension necessary for the specific action (reality principle). Both serve the biological function of homeostasis to isolate the organism from reality.
• The child’s turn to the Other—and the Other’s splitting into the familiar and das Ding—is a topology which arises in the neuronic apparatus itself.

Remaining issues

Issues of energy

The critical reader might remark that there are still some issues unaddressed. For instance, Lacan (1959–1960) reads Freud’s Project not as seeking consilience with Helmholtzian physics and energy, but rather as responding to the inertia of clinical symptoms. It is therefore notable that the clinical section of the Project (Part II) highlights sexuality, whereas sexuality is less central in Parts I and III (Balzarini, 2024). This might support arguments to the extent that libido is a special energy not compatible with Helmholtzian physical laws (Laurent, 2008).

Here, it is important for Lacanian psychoanalysis to dialogue with contemporary developments in biology. While Freud indeed lacked the scientific resources to quantify the energy he spoke of, biology and physics have made considerable strides since 1895. In his response to issues of biology, Miller remarks: “You may dream you will manage to make contemporary energy quantitative someday. But there is no one less well–equipped than the psychoanalyst to get inside this realm” (Miller, 1987, p. 16). Today, psychic energy has indeed been quantified (Carhart–Harris & Friston, 2010; Friston, 2010)—not as a substance but as an informatic quantity compatible with Lacan’s cybernetic inspirations (Dall’Aglio, 2023a). In fact, it was a psychoanalyst (Mark Solms) who demonstrated the deep consilience between informatic free energy, functional neuroanatomy, and the meta–psychology of the Project (Solms, 2020). It is difficult to continue to uphold a categorical division between psychic energy and quantifiable (physical–informatic) energy when Lacan himself admits the compatibility between linguistic-signifying organization and the “negative entropy” of informatic systems (Lacan, 1972–1973, p. 17).

Issues of indestructible desire

Similarly, Miller seeks to separate wish from biology: 

Do you think that what Freud called Wunsch is a biological instance? He said that the Wunsch remains the same all the time. It never changes. He said that “drives” insisted, persisted, without ever relenting. There is not any biological urgency which is of this type. (Miller, 1987, p. 21)

Miller’s argument here would need to be supported by evidence to the effect that there is nothing in biology which remains the same and relentlessly persists. While Lacan does not comment on this issue in Seminar VII, the reader should be aware that there do in fact exist memory systems in the brain which are indelible (LeDoux, 1998) and linked to repetitive drive pressure (Bazan & Detandt, 2013). Moreover, contra Balzarini’s (2024) position that a rejection of the reflex arc equates to a rejection of biology, biology and neuroscience have, for quite some time, extended their models of both biological processes and mental functions beyond the reflex arc: for example, circular causality (Luria, 1976), feedforward and feedback motor comparator models (Bazan, 2011), and predictive coding (Friston, 2010)—to only name a few. These Lacanian arguments reflect more of a biological strawman to contrast the psychoanalytic position (Leader, 2024).

Future questions for a Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis

It is beyond the scope of this paper to properly develop the compatibility between these Lacanian principles and contemporary neuroscience, such as the organization of the signifier in the neuronic apparatus (Bazan, 2011; Bazan et al., 2021), informatic free energy and jouissance (Dall’Aglio, 2021, 2023a, 2024a), indestructible neurological traces which exert a constant pressure toward repetition (Bazan & Detandt, 2013; Solms, 2018, 2020), and the real–imaginary–symbolic curvatures of the Nebenmensch in relation to the brain (Dall’Aglio, 2019, 2024a). Moreover, I have not developed how contemporary philosophies of the relationship between mind and brain are compatible with Lacan’s position in Seminar VII where he seems to apply his meta–psychology to the neuronic apparatus as well (Dall’Aglio, 2024b, 2024c; Johnston, 2019). These areas all demonstrate the contribution of psychoanalysis to neurobiology, despite Miller’s (1987) claims to the contrary. These are topics of future research. 

However, I would like to end on a point of agreement with Miller (1987). I wholeheartedly agree that references to biology (or any other science, for that matter) should not be the guarantee of psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis is unique in insisting on the problematics around reliance on any guarantee, any guiding Other that obscures the inconsistency of any symbolic system (including neurobiological systems structured like a language; Dall’Aglio, 2025). Biology should not function as a master discourse or master signifier to assure the truth of psychoanalysis. A proper neuropsychoanalysis keeps both neurobiology and psychoanalysis on equal ground and straddles the antagonism at the heart of their subject–matter (Dall’Aglio, 2024b). Suggested modifications to psychoanalysis from the side of neurobiology must be tested in the clinic as the “final court of appeal” (Solms, 2013, p. 18).

Additionally, I agree with Miller (1987) that biology should not be the material support of psychoanalysis—with the caveat that the material support of psychoanalytic practice is speech. Psychoanalytic theory, on the other hand, can find support from multiple sources. Lacan himself drew upon cybernetics, neurobiology, philosophy (Aristotle, Nietzsche, utilitarianism), and literature in Seminar VII. These ideas inform psychoanalytic theory, which then shapes psychoanalytic practice. But the careful analyst—whether informed by neurobiology or any other field—must keep theory in mind to use it without believing in it (Azeen Khan, personal communication).

Conclusion

While some might find it absurd to connect Lacanian psychoanalysis with neuroscience and propose meta–psychological advances inspired by this connection, this is an absurdity which Lacan himself engaged in. A close reading of Lacan’s remarks on Freud’s Project in Seminar VII reveals that Lacan’s thinking is much more nuanced and open to neurobiology than Lacanian presentations of the Project suggest. Just as the crab gives up its claw in the face of pain and (motor) impossibility, perhaps it is time for Lacanian psychoanalysis to give up its neuro–phobia and take up the task of formulating the impossibility at the heart of the brain itself.